Sources
King John is closely related to an anonymous history play, The Troublesome Reign of King John (c. 1589), the "masterly construction" but infelicitious expression of which led Peter Alexander to argue that Shakespeare's was the earlier play. Honigmann elaborated these arguments, both in his preface to the second Arden edition of King John, and in his 1982 monograph on Shakespeare's influence on his contemporaries. The majority view, however, first advanced in a rebuttal of Honigmann's views by Kenneth Muir, holds that the Troublesome Reign antedates King John by a period of several years; and that the skilful plotting of the Troublesome Reign is neither unparalleled in the period, nor proof of Shakespeare's involvement.
Shakespeare derived from Holinshed's Chronicles certain verbal collocations and points of action. Honigmann discerned in the play the influence of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, Matthew Paris' Historia Maior, and the Wakefield Chronicle, but Muir demonstrated that this apparent influence could be explained by the priority of the Troublesome Reign, which contains similar or identical matter.
Read more about this topic: King John (play)
Famous quotes containing the word sources:
“Even healthy families need outside sources of moral guidance to keep those tensions from imploding—and this means, among other things, a public philosophy of gender equality and concern for child welfare. When instead the larger culture aggrandizes wife beaters, degrades women or nods approvingly at child slappers, the family gets a little more dangerous for everyone, and so, inevitably, does the larger world.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century)
“The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“On board ship there are many sources of joy of which the land knows nothing. You may flirt and dance at sixty; and if you are awkward in the turn of a valse, you may put it down to the motion of the ship. You need wear no gloves, and may drink your soda-and-brandy without being ashamed of it.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)