SOURCE: “King John and Historiography,” in ELH, Vol. 55, No. 2, Summer, 1988, pp. 309-32.

In the following essay, Braunmuller compares the accounts of Shakespeare's King John, Holinshed's Chronicles, and Sir John Hayward's writings, to discern Shakespeare's perception and treatment of historiography.

Meercraft: By my ’faith you are cunning i’ the Chronicle, Sir. Fitzdottrel: No, I confess I ha’t from the Play-books, And think they’are more authentic. Engine: That’s sure, Sir. 

—Ben Jonson, The Devil Is an Ass

Thinking about Renaissance English history plays, we typically but wrongly treat the chronicles as sources of a different color. Making Comedy of Errors from Menaechmi, or Measure for Measure from Promos and Cassandra, or a history play from Hall and Holinshed, Foxe and Stowe, are similar creative acts because Hall, Holinshed, Foxe, Stowe, Whetstone, Plautus, and their reified texts are, as sources, similar. Like the Elizabethans, we have trouble understanding...