SOURCE: Tucker, Kenneth. “‘Cry, havoc!’ King John and the Darkling Plain.” In Shakespeare and Jungian Typology: A Reading of the Plays, pp. 15-32. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2003.

In the following essay, Tucker considers themes associated with the chaotic, unpredictable, and Machiavellian political world of King John.

Among Shakespeare's history plays King John has seldom received accolades. Early in the twentieth century, E. K Chambers, in his Shakespeare: A Survey, dubbed it an “incoherent patchwork” (102). E. M. W. Tillyard in his classic, if controversial, Shakespeare's History Plays, though finding the drama “full of promise and new life,” laments that “as a whole it is uncertain of itself” (266). More recently Russell Fraser has aligned himself with its detractors, marshaling a battalion of judgments against it. Fraser finds the play “all carapace, and you look in vain for interior logic” (154). Maurice Charney remarks upon “the shapelessness of the play” (151). Deeming...