SOURCE: Ortego, Philip D. “Shakespeare and the Doctrine of Monarchy in King John.” CLA Journal 13, no. 4 (June 1970): 392-401.

In the following essay, Ortego argues that King John, like Shakespeare's other history plays, invokes the Tudor doctrine of providential, divine-right monarchy as a tool of political legitimacy and social unity.

In the very first play of the Histories, King John, Shakespeare omits the most significantly important event of the time, videlicet, the baronial charter of concessions called the Magna Carta. In the Birth of Britain Winston Churchill describes this singular event as follows:

On a Monday morning in June, between Staines and Windsor, the barons and Churchmen began to collect on the great meadows at Runnymede. An uneasy hush fell on them from time to time. Many had failed to keep their tryst; and the bold few who had come knew that the King would never forgive this humiliation...