In the Library
King John
William Shakespeare, 1596
- Form
- Form Play
- Reading time
- Reading time 1.5 hours
- Chapters
- Chapters 16
- Length
- Length 22k words
£1.99
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What buying means
- Yours for good, on every iPhone you sign in to.
- Read in the app’s own reader, with the original beside the translation where there is one.
- Downloaded, so it reads with no signal.
- The same price as in the app. Folio already opens every book on this shelf; buying keeps this one after Folio ends. A refund takes it back.
About the book
The one thing everyone knows about King John never appears in his play: no Magna Carta, no barons at Runnymede. What Shakespeare wanted instead was a small room, a boy, and a man sent with hot irons to put out his eyes. Arthur is John's nephew and the stronger claim to the throne, and when Hubert arrives with the warrant the child does not plead so much as remember: the night he sat nursing Hubert's aching head, the handkerchief he tied around it. Around that scene stand two voices you will not shake. Constance, mad for a son still living, tells the court that grief fills the room up of her absent child, lies in his bed, walks up and down with her, puts on his pretty looks. And the Bastard, Richard the Lionheart's unclaimed son, watches kings trade a war for a wedding and names the only god they serve: Commodity. The crown is a thing men reach for; all Arthur ever wanted was to be out of prison and keeping sheep, as merry as the day is long.