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

In the following excerpt, Braunmuller argues that no distinction can be made between the so-called truth of Shakespeare's historical sources and the so-called fiction of his dramatic sources or of his own play King John.

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

—Ben Johnson, 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...