King John is the protagonist of John Bale's sixteenth-century Protestant play King Johan, in which he is depicted positively as a bulwark against the papacy.[2]
John was the subject of an anonymous Elizabethan play, The Troublesome Reign of King John, in 1591. The play reflects the sympathetic view of King John during the English Reformation; it depicts John as "a fearless resister of the Papacy".[3] This play is believed by many Shakespeare scholars to have been a source for Shakespeare's play.[3]
King John appears in the plays The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington (1598) by Anthony Munday. Munday's two plays feature the exploits of Robin Hood, and John is depicted as Robin's enemy in these plays. Munday's work thus incorporated King John into the Robin Hood legends.[4] As a result of this, John and one of his Justices in Eyre, the Sheriff of Nottingham, are frequently portrayed as villain and henchman in later versions Robin Hood legends. These usually place the Robin Hood stories in the latter part of Richard I's reign, when Richard was in captivity and John was acting as unofficial regent.[4]
John was the subject of a Shakespearean play, King John (written c. 1595, and published in 1623).[3]
Prince John is a central figure in the 1819 historical romance Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott, and is depicted in subsequent adaptations. Ivanhoe helped popularize the image of King John as cruel and villainous.[5] The novel also calls John a "Norman", although contemporary documents from the period of John's reign do not refer to the monarch as a Norman.[5]
The children's novel The Constable's Tower: or the Times of Magna Charta (1891) by Charlotte Mary Yonge, revolves around John signing Magna Carta, and also features the Siege of Dover during the First Barons' War.[7]
King John is the subject of A. A. Milne's poem for children, King John's Christmas (1927), which begins "King John was not a good man", but slowly builds sympathy for him as he fears not getting anything for Christmas, when all he really wants is a rubber ball.[8]
In the comic parody 1066 and All That (1930) John is depicted as "an Awful King".
The Devil and King John by Philip Lindsay (1943) is a highly speculative but relatively sympathetic account.[9]
Below the Salt (1957) by Thomas B. Costain depicts the First Baron's War and John's signing of Magna Carta.[10]
John is a character in James Goldman's 1966 play The Lion in Winter, which dramatises Henry II's struggles with his wife and sons over the rule of his empire. John is portrayed as a spoiled, simple-minded pawn in the machinations of his brothers and Philip II of France.[11]
James Goldman also wrote a novel called Myself As Witness (1979), a fictional record of the later years of John's reign purportedly kept by the chronicler Gerald of Wales.[12]
Sharon Penman's Here Be Dragons deals with the reign of John, the development of Wales under Llewelyn's rule, and Llewelyn's marriage to John's illegitimate daughter, Joan, who is depicted in the novel as "Joanna". Other novels of hers which feature John as a prominent character are The Queen's Man, Cruel as the Grave, The Dragon's Lair, and Prince of Darkness, a series of fictional mysteries set during the time of Richard's imprisonment.
John is featured in several books by Elizabeth Chadwick, including Lords of the White Castle, The Champion, and The Scarlet Lion.
Judith Tarr features a sympathetic Prince John as the protagonist of her fantasy novel Pride of Kings (2001).[13]
Film
John has been portrayed on film by:
Herbert Beerbohm Tree in the silent short King John (1899), which recreates his death scene at the end of the Shakespeare play
George Courtenay in the silent adaptation of Ivanhoe (1913)
Lawrence Adams in the soft porn film The Ribald Tales of Robin Hood (1969)
Frank Braña in the Italian film Il Magnifico Robin Hood (1970)
Daniele Dublino in the Italian film L'Arciere di Sherwood (1970)
Peter Ustinov provided the voice of Prince John in the Disney animated film Robin Hood (1973), in which the Regent of England is depicted as an anthropomorphic lion and a cowardly, infantile, comical villain who sucks his thumb at the mention of his mother and is repeatedly humiliated by Robin Hood (himself depicted as an anthropomorphic fox)
Oscar Isaac in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood (2010) as neither hero or villain but as a corrupt yet intelligent ruler who forms an alliance with Hood to defeat the French invaders.
Paul Spurrier (as a boy) and John Duttine (as an adult) in the BBC TV drama series The Devil's Crown (1978), which dramatised his reign and those of his father and brother
Jonathan Hyde in the American TV film Princess of Thieves (2001), which depicts Prince John trying to seize the throne from the rightful heir, Prince Philip, an illegitimate son of King Richard
Toby Stephens in the 2009 season of the BBC's Robin Hood series, playing John as a manipulative, insecure, spoilt brat who resents his elder brother and desires the throne of England whilst constantly demanding affirmation that he is loved by his people, despite his vindictive treatment of them.
Robert Farquharson in a 1931 BBC Radio London performance of Shakespeare's The Life and Death of King John.[14]
Carleton Hobbs in a 1944 BBC Radio broadcast of Shakespeare's The Life and Death of King John (with Ralph Richardson playing Philip Faulconbridge).[15]
Robert Harris in a 1958 BBC Radio broadcast of Shakespeare's The Life and Death of King John.[16]
Robert Eddison in a 1967 BBC Radio broadcast of Shakespeare's The Life and Death of King John.[17]
Hadyn Jones in the 1971 play John, By the Grace of God by Lydia Ragosin, Haydn Jones and Beatrix Lehmann. This play depicts John as being secretly a pagan.[18]
Jack Shepherd in a 1990 BBC Radio "modern-dress" adaption of Shakespeare's The Life and Death of King John.[19]
King John was depicted in a 1955 Classics Illustrated adaption of Scott's Ivanhoe.[20]
References
^"US Supreme Court Courtroom Friezes" (PDF). Retrieved 19 February 2019.
^"John Bale, author of the innovative historical drama King Johan in the 1530s – the decade of the English Reformation - presents the medieval monarch as “ a faithful Moses" who "withstood proud Pharaoh ( the pope ) for his poor Israel.""Bartlett, Robert. Medieval Panorama. Thames & Hudson : London, 2001. ISBN 9780500237861 (p.10)
^ a b c"King John", in Michael Dobson, Stanley Wells, Will Sharpe, Erin Sullivan (eds.) The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Corby : Oxford University Press 2015. ISBN 9780198708735 (pgs. 276-279)
^ a bBrownlie, Siobhan, Memory and Myths of the Norman Conquest. Woodbridge, Suffolk; Boydell & Brewer Ltd., 2013. ISBN 1843838524 (pp. 124-5)
^ a bMcGarry, Daniel D., White, Sarah Harriman, Historical Fiction Guide: Annotated Chronological, Geographical, and Topical List of Five Thousand Selected Historical Novels. Scarecrow Press, New York, 1963 (pgs. 62. 64).
^Myron J. Smith, War story guide: an annotated bibliography of military fiction. Scarecrow Press, 1980. ISBN 978-0810812819 (p. 17).
^"Milne's King John—alone, without friends, receiving Christmas greetings only from himself and never getting presents—seems designed as an object lesson encouraging readers, but especially its children-listeners, to be good so as to receive gifts from Father Christmas." Hodgdon, Barbara, The End Crowns All : closure and contradiction in Shakespeare's history.
Princeton; Princeton University Press, 1991. ISBN 9780691608808 (p.22)
^"Review: The Devil and King John by Philip Lindsay". The Spectator Magazine, 16 April 1943 (pg. 20).
^Smith, Myron J. War Story Guide: an annotated bibliography of military fiction. Scarecrow Press, 1980. ISBN 978-0810812819 (p. 25).
^Palmer, R. Barton (2009). "Queering the Lionheart: Richard I in The Lion in Winter on stage and screen". In Kathleen Coyne Kelly & Tison Pugh (ed.). Queer movie medievalisms. Ashgate. p. 58.
^Evans, Michael R. Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. ISBN 9781441146038 (p. 112)
^"Pride of Kings by Judith Tarr". Publishers Weekly, September 4th, 2001. Retrieved May 26th, 2020.
^"Shakespeare's King John" BBC London Regional Service, 8 June 1931. Retrieved 14 June 2021.
^"The Life and Death of King John" BBC Home Service, December 22, 1944 .Retrieved 13 June 2021.
^The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company 1957: King John BBC Third Programme, 29 June 1958. Retrieved 14 June 2021.
^"The Life and Death of King John" BBC Network Three, 2 March 1967 .Retrieved 13 June 2021.
^"John, by the Grace of God" BBC Radio 4 FM, 5 April 1971.Retrieved 13 June 2021.
^"The Life and Death of King John" BBC Radio 3, 22 June 1990.Retrieved 13 June 2021.
^Jones, William B. Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, with Illustrations. McFarland, 2002. ISBN 9780786410774 (pgs. 49 , 163)
