King John

King John is a history play about the reign of England's King John, whose right to the throne is challenged on behalf of his young nephew Arthur, and whose reign is observed with sharp wit by Philip the Bastard.

Main characters

• King John of England
• Queen Eleanor, his mother
• Arthur, Duke of Brittany, his nephew
• Constance, Arthur's mother
• Philip the Bastard, illegitimate son of Richard the Lionheart
• King Philip of France and the Dauphin Lewis
• Cardinal Pandulph, the papal legate
• Hubert, one of John's followers

Plot summary

This summary gives away the ending.

France supports young Arthur's claim to the English throne, and war follows. A marriage alliance brings a brief peace, but the Pope's legate Pandulph excommunicates John and turns France against him again. Arthur is captured, and John orders Hubert to blind and kill him. Hubert cannot bring himself to do it, but Arthur dies anyway, falling from the castle walls while trying to escape.

Believing John responsible for the boy's death, the English lords desert to the invading French. John submits to the Pope to save his crown, and the Bastard rallies English resistance. The lords return when they learn the French plan to betray them. John dies poisoned by a monk, and his son is proclaimed Henry III.

Themes

• Legitimacy and the right to rule
• Political expediency ('commodity')
• Grief and loss
• England against foreign power

Famous lines

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet... Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Salisbury, Act 4 Scene 2

Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them.

The Bastard, Act 5 Scene 7

More in our collection of famous Shakespeare quotes.

Sources

An anonymous two-part play, The Troublesome Reign of King John (1591), and Holinshed's Chronicles. Magna Carta, now the best-remembered event of John's reign, is never mentioned.

On stage and screen

Constance's grief for Arthur is sometimes linked to the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet in August 1596, though the play's date is too uncertain to be sure. Salisbury's line is the origin of the misquoted phrase 'to gild the lily'.

See where King John sits in Shakespeare's career on the timeline, or read about the playhouses it was written for.