SOURCE: Wixson, Douglas C. “‘Calm Words Folded Up in Smoke’: Propaganda and Spectator Response in Shakespeare's King John.” Shakespeare Studies 14 (1981): 111-27.

In the following essay, Wixson describes King John as an “open” form of Elizabethan political propaganda that makes an appeal for political unity.

The low view of political life, Faulconbridge's determination to run with the times, conflicts in which both sides lose, divided loyalties, endless “jawboning”—these are elements of Shakespeare's King John that ought to make it material for a successful modern production. Yet this play continues to languish, awaiting some future rebirth of interest, meanwhile attracting relatively little attention from scholars or producers. There have been, of course, long periods in the past when John thrived.¹ Have we misread the play in our own time? I suggest here that we might consider freeing John from the bondage of historical circumstance or formal dramaturgical convention. It...