SOURCE: “‘The Sequence of Posterity’: Shakespeare's King John and the Succession Controversy,” in Studies in Philology, Vol. 92, No. 4, Fall, 1995, pp. 460-81.

In the following essay, Lane outlines the ways in which Shakespeare altered the historical account of King John in order to raise questions about Queen Elizabeth's successor.

Thus you see, this crown is not like to fall to the ground for want of heads that may claim to wear it, but upon whose head it will fall is by many doubted. 

—Thomas Wilson¹

This matter doth rather require the mouth of all England, then of anie one man. 

—Peter Wentworth²

When Parliament convened in February, 1593, the queen was 59 years old, her age intensifying public concern over that “uncertain certainty,”³ the as-yet unsettled succession on her death. This apprehension had persisted since early in her reign, the succession issue having been the focus of domestic politics as early...