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.
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