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All three of these plays were definitely written during the 1590s, suggesting King John must also have been written in that decade. [142] Furthermore, Barron Brainerd's statistical analysis of Shakespeare's plays places King John just past the mid-way point of the decade, after Richard II and prior to Henry IV, Part 1. [145]
The first page of King John from the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623. King John is closely related to an anonymous history play, The Troublesome Reign of King John (c. 1589), the "masterly construction" [9] the infelicitous expression of which led Peter Alexander to argue that Shakespeare's was the earlier play. [13] E. A. J.
John Bale's morality play Kynge Johan [:King John], c. 1547, is sometimes considered a forerunner of the genre. King John was of interest to 16th century audiences because he had opposed the Pope; two further plays were written about him in the late 16th century, one of them Shakespeare's Life and Death of King John.
For Shakespeare, as he began to write, both traditions were alive; they were, moreover, filtered through the recent success of the University Wits on the London stage. By the late 16th century, the popularity of morality and academic plays waned as the English Renaissance took hold, and playwrights like Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe revolutionised theatre.
Thought to be a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher, due to the style of the verse. Shakespeare is thought to have written Act I, scenes i and ii; II, ii and iv; III, ii, lines 1–203 (to exit of King); V, i. King John: 1595–1598 [42]
Shakespeare, as was customary for other playwrights in his day, used history, other plays, and non-dramatic literature as sources for his plays. Additionally, tragedy was a new and exciting theatrical phenomenon in the late 16th century, rather than an established and self-evident dramatic form; because of this, Shakespeare and his ...
The Shakespearean histories are biographies of English kings of the previous four centuries and include the standalones King John, Edward III and Henry VIII as well as a continuous sequence of eight plays. Shakespeare was living in the reign of Elizabeth I, the last monarch of the House of Tudor, and his history plays are often regarded as ...
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970), ISBN 978-0-517-26825-4. Gramercy Books. Gramercy Books. Nearly 800 pages long plus an index, the work was originally published in two volumes; Greek, Roman and Italian in the first and 'The English Plays' in the second.