SOURCE: “King Johan and Sixteenth-Century Drama,” in John Bale's King Johan, edited by Barry B. Adams, The Huntington Library, 1969, pp. 55-65.

In the following essay, Adams acknowledges King Johan's unique attributes while refuting the theory that the play greatly influenced later works.

Most students of the Elizabethan drama agree that King Johan exerted no direct influence on either the Troublesome Raigne or Shakespeare's King John. W. W. Greg's opinion that all three plays “follow in common a Protestant tradition” in their treatment of King John has not won universal acceptance, but it has at least discouraged attempts to link Bale's play very closely with the later King John plays.¹ Certainly it seems unlikely on the face of it that a playwright from the 1580's or 1590's would be familiar with a manuscript play written at least fifty years earlier and which has left no record of performance...