SOURCE: Blanpied, John W. “Stalking ‘Strong Possession’ in King John.” In Time and the Artist in Shakespeare's English Histories, pp. 98-119. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983.

In the following essay, Blanpied regards King John as a transitional play that adheres to the events of its source while simultaneously parodying the work, and as one in which Shakespeare does not invoke the providential theme of English history, thereby leaving a sense of incompleteness in the drama.

King John is the “morning-after” play¹—cautious, suspicious, coldly analytical. It opens vigorously enough—nothing like Richard's boldly knowing wink at the audience, but still, with John speaking in a naturally strong public voice that, say, York would admire in a king. But in private John suffers the nagging of his mother. Then he must adjudicate a quarrel between brothers, and while he waxes magisterial, one of those brothers—the Bastard—begins to...