Performing a constitution: a history of Magna Carta in Shakespeare’s King John

ABSTRACT

Despite its now totemic constitutional status, Magna Carta is not explicitly mentioned in Shakespeare’s history play of King John. King John has been interrogated by literary scholars for references to the charter and investigated by historians for potential oversight. Yet, often overlooked are the sporadic references to Magna Carta in nineteenth-century productions of the play. During the nineteenth century, Magna Carta’s legal significance waned as clauses were removed from legislation. Its political purchase is well-documented, including its use by the Chartists, and its use in nationalist-based support for wars at the start and end of the century. What is often unheeded in legal scholarship, is the shifting cultural significance of the charter. A performance history of Shakespeare’s King John exposes the different treatment of Magna Carta in productions of Shakespeare’s play and related theatrical representations of the charter in popular melodrama and pantomimes in the nineteenth century. This paper uses archival material of theatre productions to interrogate the status of Magna Carta through a performance history of Shakespeare’s King John in nineteenth-century London. Investigating the representations of Magna Carta in theatre productions offers a complex picture of the charter’s place in the history of British constitutionalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Magna Carta
• Shakespeare
• performance studies
• constitutional law
• theatre

1. Introduction

Magna Carta is not explicitly mentioned in Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of King John. It is a fact that has confounded literary scholars and historians.¹ Some argue that Shakespeare did not know about the charter,² others maintain that the political climate in Elizabethan England would have made it too sensitive to include a reference to the limitation on the Crown’s prerogative,³ and others note that the charter was not relevant for the anti-papal characterization of John that is the focus of Shakespeare’s play.⁴ Despite the well-known absence of the charter in the play, in The Era on Sunday 30th March 1856 there is an advertisement for a production of King John at the Great National Standard Theatre in Shoreditch: ‘[t]he play has in itself everything to recommend it. It is a Great National Drama, written by our Great National Poet, vividly illustrating that great national event, the signing of the Magna Carta’.⁵ A decade earlier, in 1846, Lloyd’s Illustrated News advertised that the Royal Britannia Saloon in Hoxton would produce Shakspere’s Drama of King John; or, Magna Charta.⁶

The newspapers and archives say little else about these productions, raising instead potentially two questions; why is Magna Carta being alluded to or represented in nineteenth-century productions of King John? And, relatedly, how is the charter represented through these and related productions? Explorations of these questions involve a performance history of nineteenth-century productions of King John, and whilst only conjectures can be proffered on why the charter was included in some productions and not others, the ‘chains of conjecture’⁷ that emerge from the performance history highlight the interrelationship between the construction of the character of King John, those of Magna Carta in contemporary political and legal discourse, and the shifting representations of the act of sealing the charter.

What these two incidents in 1846 and 1856 highlight is that the story of Magna Carta and King John does not end in the 1590s when Shakespeare wrote the play. Rather, plays are to be understood and critiqued as performances,⁸ as individual productions, specific performances, and the audience reception construct new meanings of a play. Not much performed during the late 1600s and early 1700s,⁹ King John saw somewhat of a revival in the 1800s. This revival coincides with an increased ‘presence’ of Magna Carta in the productions. This includes references in advertisements and reviews¹⁰ (including contemporary debates on why the charter is or is not in King John), references in playbills, discussions in the programmes, as well as explicit mentions or representations in the performance.

Through an investigation into the representations of Magna Carta in nineteenth-century productions of King John in London, this article explores how Magna Carta is constructed as a foundational, constitutional document. Performance studies highlight the way a performance is both representative and constitutive of the real,¹¹ and under this approach, the representations of and allusions to Magna Carta in the various productions of King John are constitutive of the charter’s meaning.¹² The subjectivity of performance compounds the finding of a singular meaning,¹³ and instead there are multiple interpretations of the same performance, and in this case, multiple interpretations of the significance of Magna Carta. Harnessing this complex relationship between law and theatre,¹⁴ this article explores how Magna Carta’s status is constructed and how it evolves over time.

In exploring why nineteenth-century productions might include references to Magna Carta, we can look to the political context and the significance of the charter. The first part of this article sets out the political and legal backdrop for the cultural exploration, specifically how the waning legal significance of Magna Carta in the nineteenth century sits alongside its use by popular political movements. An alternative starting point for exploring why productions might have included the charter is a study of theatre history in the nineteenth century, to understand the trends and fashions. The second part of the article considers two main ‘trends’ in nineteenth-century theatre, the turn to history in the Antiquarian or Archaeological style,¹⁵ and the popularity of burlesque and melodrama. Against that context, the article then investigates different productions of King John to explore how Magna Carta was represented. Surveys of the newspapers show that there is barely a year in the nineteenth century when a version of King John is not performed or sections of it are not read at ‘Readings’; there are productions by Charles Kemble (Covent Garden), William Charles Macready (working across the 1830s and 1840s, and (as will be discussed below) whose work was influential on other theatre managers), Samuel Phelps (Sadler’s Wells Theatre), and Charles Kean (Princess’s Theatre). The article takes three theatre managers as key interventions across the nineteenth century, Richard Valpy (1800–1803), Charles Kean (1850s), and Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1899).

One of the challenges of doing performance history is piecing together an accurate reconstruction of the production. Performance studies make use of promptbooks (books used by stage managers), actors’ studybooks or rehearsal copies, as well as reviews, programmes and promotional materials to try to reconstruct the production.¹⁶ However, reviews are personal and often emphasize different elements of the same performance,¹⁷ and promptbooks can be ‘tricky, secretive and stubborn’ documents to work with because they do not convey motive nor intention, and at times show only ‘cuts, calls and cues’.¹⁸ There are also discrepancies in how much detail newspapers and periodicals provide about the performances; for example, ‘by 1852 the London critics’ reports had markedly diminished from the generous essays of a decade earlier, and except for remarks on the actors and the acting they had mostly become mere “notices”’.¹⁹ Nonetheless, using these sources, this article attempts to reconstruct what happened in particular productions of King John, and by using advertisements as well as the playbills and programmes, motivations behind the production can be inferred.

The production of a play is at the ‘intersection of history, material conditions, [legal, political and] social contexts’.²⁰ By way of an example of the importance of historical context, the use of jingoistic language in Richard Valpy’s 1800 production of King John should be read against the backdrop of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Consulate in France. With respect to material conditions, in the early nineteenth century, as a response to the regulation of theatres in the eighteenth century,²¹ there is a division between legitimate and illegitimate theatre; there are patent theatres (for example, Drury Lane and Covent Garden) that can produce classical theatre such as Shakespeare, and there are ‘minor’ theatres that instead produce burlesques.²² Scholars have shown how legitimate and illegitimate theatre inform one another and how these forms of entertainment compete for audiences.²³ Likewise in the later part of the nineteenth century, classical theatre competed with pantomime and other forms of ‘spectacular’ entertainment, such as exhibitions at Madame Tussauds.²⁴ This article explores how these different factors influence the constitutional construction of Magna Carta.

2. Magna Carta in the nineteenth century

A history of Magna Carta will often assert that the charter was rediscovered by Edward Coke in the seventeenth century,²⁵ how the multiple copies (i.e. the 1215 and 1225 versions of the charter) were reconciled by William Blackstone,²⁶ and then throughout the nineteenth century it develops a constitutional ‘totemic’ status.²⁷ How this status is constructed is through complex intersections across law, politics, and culture. Whilst its status as a legal document declined in the nineteenth century through a series of legislative reforms, it was increasingly asserted by popular political movements (e.g. the Chartists²⁸ and the Magna Charta Association²⁹). This section considers the waning legal status of the charter, its role in political movements, and how it is discussed by constitutional theorists. The section then considers the broader cultural history of the charter in the nineteenth century and its interrelationship with the changing characterization of King John in the Victorian era.

On the one hand, the charter is a legal text written into legislation, on the other through sealing the charter it is a performative act of holding a sovereign authority accountable. As an act, the granting, sealing, or signing of the charter is intertwined with the changing popular representations and characterizations of King John; either as a tyrant from which the barons extracted the charter, or as a benevolent king who gifted the people the rights and liberties under the charter. These approaches to the charter wax and wane through the nineteenth century.

In legal terms, at the start of the century, the charter was referenced in ‘major political trials of radical’ thinkers.³⁰ It was ‘used to challenge the suspension of habeas corpus in 1817’, it is mentioned during the Queen Caroline affair of 1820,³¹ and also ‘used in court by the Cato Street conspirators at their trials for high treason in 1820’.³² However, in the mid-nineteenth century, legal reforms removed chapters of Magna Carta from the statute books.³³ Starting with the ‘deletion of chapter 26 of Magna Carta by the Offences Against the Person Act 1828’,³⁴ there was further reform in ‘1863 as part of the Statute Law Revision Act (26 and 27 Vic c. 125)’.³⁵

Despite its waning legislative position, the charter resonated with popular movements. For example, the Reform Act of 1832 ‘was explicitly presented as a new Magna Carta’.³⁶ The charter was subsequently invoked in the Chartists' call for a People’s Charter in 1838.³⁷ Throughout the 1840s, the Chartist movement sought political reforms, with further petitions in 1842 and 1848.³⁸ However, scholars note that these invocations of Magna Carta were ‘made without any serious reference to its actual historical contexts’.³⁹ The ambiguity of the charter means it was able to be used for causes across the political spectrum. Whilst ‘[i]t was invoked predominantly by those challenging the government and seeking parliamentary reform’, ‘loyalist prints also engaged Magna Carta’ to contest ‘dangerous Jacobin propaganda’.⁴⁰

Constitutional historians in the nineteenth century debate the role of the charter. On the one hand, it is part of an ‘ancient constitution’ in which Magna Carta is merely a reaffirmation of charters dating back to Edward the Confessor (an idea developed during the seventeenth century),⁴¹ and on the other it is perceived as the ‘birthplace’ of British freedoms and liberties. This notion of an ancient constitution continued into the nineteenth century as ‘Whig historians and jurists continued to write a narrative that placed the “Great” Reform Act at the culmination of a long and “glorious” history stretching back through the “Great and Glorious” Revolution of 1688 to the “Great Charter” of 1215’.⁴² Likewise, Benjamin Disraeli in ‘his Vindication of the English Constitution presented a history of the constitution reaching back to Magna Carta and the “memorable” Parliament of 1264’.⁴³ Rather than a new assertion of rights, FW Maitland argued that the charter contained ‘little that is absolutely new’, and in the main accepted the reforms of Henry II.⁴⁴ Francis Burdett – a political reformer – asserted the idea that ‘Magna Carta represented a reassertion of England’s “ancient” constitution and legal rights’.⁴⁵ In contrast, ‘[David] Hume denounced Whig notions that Magna Carta reaffirmed an ancient constitution, depicting instead a continuously changing English constitution, […] slowly evolving to meet new generations needs’.⁴⁶ Walter Bagehot described Magna Carta as ‘a great mixture of old and new; it was a sort of compact defining what was doubtful in floating custom, and was re-enacted over and over again’.⁴⁷ Specifically, he notes that ‘[t]he liberty existed before’.⁴⁸ These competing accounts of the new and the ancient are rehearsed in the nineteenth-century theatre productions.

A cultural history of the charter in the nineteenth century exposes the popularization of the scene in Runnymede as a significant, constitutional moment. There were stained glass windows depicting the event,⁴⁹ including ‘the unveiling, by the Right Honourable the Speaker of the House of Commons, of a stained glass window in commemoration of the 700th anniversary of the granting by King John of his first charter to the corporation’ (which theatre manager and King John actor, Mr Beerbohm Tree was invited to),⁵⁰ as well as memorials erected, such as the tablet erected at Abbey Church in Bury St Edmunds in 1847, to mark where the barons had met ahead of demanding that King John submit to the charter. The inscription on the tablet refers to ‘And Freedom unforgetful still recites / This second birthplace of our native RIGHTS’.⁵¹ The idea of ‘second birthplace’ here invokes the approach to Magna Carta as an intervention in constitutional history, but one that is placed within a broader constitutional history. A few years prior, in 1842 and 1843, a copy of the charter was put on display at the British Museum.⁵² Throughout the century, there were also cartoons published,⁵³ illustrations people could purchase,⁵⁴ and mugs and other trinkets sold.⁵⁵ In the late 1890s, Madame Tussaud’s presented ‘King John and the Magna Charta’. In describing the wax-work scene, the reporter in the Standard refers to ‘the “Great Charter” of our English liberties’, and King John is ‘[t]he unscrupulous King’ ‘presented as sitting in ornamented robes at a table in the act of signing the Charter’.⁵⁶

Scholars note that King John went through a ‘re-branding’ in the nineteenth century.⁵⁷ In the sixteenth century, King John was heralded as an anti-papal hero, foreshadowing Henry VIII’s break with Rome.⁵⁸ It is this image of John that Shakespeare invokes in King John.⁵⁹ Some productions in the nineteenth century continue this heroic construction of John. Jesse M Lander and JJM Tobin, for example, argue that Macready in the 1830s and 1840s was ‘[f]eeling that other actors had played up the patriotic aspect of John to the detriment of his darker side’.⁶⁰ As discussed in Section 4, in the 1820s and 1830s there are reports of the audiences’ reception of King John as a hero who stood up to the Papal legate, these accounts can be read alongside a background of growing anti-Catholicism in England; following the Act of Union in 1800, there had been an increase in anti-papal sentiment, with political slogans of ‘No Popery’ featuring at the General Election in 1826, and anti-Catholicism was then exacerbated in response to the 1829 Catholic Emancipation Act, which allowed Catholics to sit as MPs.⁶¹ However, in the nineteenth century, John became the tyrant depicted in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1820).⁶² The productions of Shakespeare’s King John mirror this tyrannical construction of John; Macready’s John was ‘the wicked and weak-minded tyrant’,⁶³ Phelps’s portrayal of John is noted as giving ‘due prominence to the blackheartedness and irresolution of King John’,⁶⁴ Kean’s John is described as a ‘man both weak and wicked’.⁶⁵ Often in cultural and political discourse in the nineteenth century, Magna Carta becomes the answer to these vices. Elizabeth Penrose wrote that King John was ‘the worst king and the worse man that ever wore the crown of England’, but that Magna Carta ‘brought the most lasting good to the nation’.⁶⁶ Liberal and Whig commentators, ‘now viewed him as an exemplar of all that was bad about unfettered monarchical rule’.⁶⁷ For these commentators, ‘the sole positive achievement of John’s rule had been the enforced signing of Magna Carta in 1215’.⁶⁸ John’s constitutional significance is cemented in 1867, with the statue in the Houses of Parliament.⁶⁹ The interrelationship between King John and the charter is part of the construction of the constitutional status of Magna Carta.

The productions of Shakespeare’s King John in the nineteenth century are an often-over-looked part of this complex web of legal, political and cultural constructions of Magna Carta. Whether its significance lies in the legal provisions or as a symbolic act, or if the charter is perceived as new or part of an ancient constitution, and whether it was extracted or gifted are themes that emerge across theatrical representations of Magna Carta. If the significance of Magna Carta is constructed from an intersection of legal, political, and social factors, then representations of the charter in popular culture – including in theatrical productions – is an important part of the constitutive fabric that gives the charter its meaning.

3. Theatre in the nineteenth century

In exploring the references to Magna Carta in productions of King John in the nineteenth century, it is necessary to consider how the trends and fashions that were prevalent in theatre might have influenced these references to the charter. Two main trends will be discussed in this section. The first key trend is the ‘archaeological’ approach to theatre that was popular across the century.⁷⁰ The second trend is the popularity of melodrama and burlesque, as well as pantomime. A key feature of these forms of entertainment was the spectacle; for example, horses on stage and extravagant ‘living pictures’ known as tableaux.

3.1. As historical accuracy

One key trend in nineteenth-century theatre was the antiquarian or archaeological turn, which prioritized historical accuracy.⁷¹ This drive for historical accuracy was manifested in the scene artwork and the costumes, as sets and costumes were designed to reflect the medieval period.⁷² This archaeological turn is often attributed to JR Planché, who designed the costumes for the 1823 production at Covent Garden.⁷³ King John was a good play to use an antiquarian and archaeological approach because of its medieval pageantry.⁷⁴

One of the obvious manifestations of this archaeological trend is the attention given to the costumes. The Morning Chronicle in 1824, for example announced that ‘[e]very character will appear in the precise Habit of the Period’.⁷⁵ In playbills,⁷⁶ programmes, and reviews, the costumes are said to derive from a series of ‘authorities’:

King John’s Effigy, in Worcester Cathedral, and his Great Seals; Queen Elinor’s Effigy, in the Abbey of Fonteveraud; Effigy of the Earl of Salisbury, in Salisbury Cathedral; Effigy of the Earl of Pembroke, in the Temple Church, London; King John’s Silver Cup, in the possession of the Corporation of King’s Lynn, Norfolk; Illuminated MSS in the British Museum, Bodleian, and Bennet Collect Libraries, and the Work of Camden, Montfaucon, Sandford, Strutt, Gough, Stothard, Meyrick.⁷⁷

One of the costumes for King John is ‘taken from the representation of an armed Knight on his own Great Seal’,⁷⁸ presumably the same seal that was used to seal Magna Carta.⁷⁹

This antiquarian trend was repeated across the century. Macready, for example, ‘extended the theatrical antiquarianism pioneered by the Kemble-Planché version of the play’.⁸⁰ In 1852, a review of Kean’s King John notes ‘[…] the strict regard paid to correctness in every detail of costume, decoration, and scenery’.⁸¹ This tradition can also be seen in the 1890s; for example, the 1891 programme for King John (performed at The New Theatre, Oxford, 4 February 1891) features a knight leaning against a medieval door on the front page,⁸² thanks is expressed for the loan of Chain Mail and Tapestries,⁸³ as well as heraldic shields acting as a border for the page.⁸⁴

The archaeological turn in theatre can be linked with the educative function of Victorian theatre, and Victorian Shakespeare in particular. The idea that these productions were a point of public education resonates with the views of contemporaries: ‘Mackinnon, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, believed that Kean deserved to be honoured by the state for using the theatre to teach history’⁸⁵ and Ellen Kean wrote to Queen Victoria on behalf of her husband that Kean was ‘[…] enabling the stage to become “one of the first scholastic teachers of the time”’.⁸⁶ Kean in 1858, wrote in the playbill essay

[t]his play has been revived by me, with the view of adding another to the list of Shakspere’s historic dramas presented at this theatre, under the belief that history, heightened by the charm of the most exquisite poetry, and combined with pictorial and correct embellishment, tends to promote the educational purposes for which the stage is so pre-eminently adapted.⁸⁷

The archaeological turn should be placed alongside the use of the medieval past in constructions of national identity in the nineteenth century, as well as the prevalence of this history in the theories of the ‘ancient constitution’. There was an emphasis on constructing a particular British history⁸⁸ that was built on a medieval past.⁸⁹ Kathryn Prince argues that Kean’s commitment to historical accuracy was a response to the audience’s expectations; the ‘detailed historical accuracy during the 1851/2 season suggest that he had recognised what these tourists might want to see’.⁹⁰ Magna Carta, as discussed above in relation to the ‘ancient constitution’, was part of that ‘medieval heritage’.⁹¹ It is plausible then that inclusions of Magna Carta in productions during the nineteenth century speak to a public consciousness of Magna Carta that is in part tied up with this particular historical construction of British identity.

3.2. As melodrama

The Victorians loved King John for its passion, especially the part of Constance, whose outraged defence of her son Arthur’s claim to the throne thrilled their melodramatic souls. (Catherine Bates, Times Literary Supplement 13 April 2001)

As the quote indicates, melodrama in the nineteenth century was a very popular form of entertainment. It is defined as ‘a form of dramatic composition in prose partaking of the nature of tragedy, comedy, pantomime, and spectacle, and intended for a popular audience’.⁹² Related to melodrama is burlesque (a genre of theatre that satirizes classical theatre⁹³), pantomime (which involves parodic recreations of plays and stories, often including mime, music, comedy and farce⁹⁴), and parody.⁹⁵ During the nineteenth century, burlesque, melodrama, and pantomime competed with more classical theatre for audiences.⁹⁶ There is then an interwoven history between Shakespeare productions, pantomime, burlesque and melodrama,⁹⁷ and King John was a popular figure of pantomime.⁹⁸

In the 1820s there were several pantomimes centred on the life of King John.⁹⁹ In April 1823, the Royal Coburg Theatre staged a production of Henry Milner’s Magna Charta! Or, The Eventful Reign of King John. Although reference to Shakespeare was removed from the playbill, this play was a burlesque on Shakespeare’s King John.¹⁰⁰ The playbill describes the acts: ‘[i]n Act III. The Plain of Runnymede’, there is a ‘Pledge of faith between the King and the Barons’ followed by the ‘Solemn, Impressive, and Memoriale Ceremonial of Signing Magna Charta!’.¹⁰¹ Schoch’s reading suggests Milner represents the charter as an agreement between the barons and the king; ‘the signing of the Great Charter not as royal acquiescence to aristocratic force but, in a more topically Whiggish spirit, as the reconciliation of the monarch to the people’, and as such distinct from the revolutionary means of securing rights and liberties in France.¹⁰² However, in Magna Charta, the death of Prince Arthur is used to emphasize the ‘demand’ by the barons.¹⁰³ ‘Falconbridge brings the dead Arthur out of the moat’ and says ‘[…] till John shall grant us a charter to secure our rights and liberties’.¹⁰⁴ According to Moody’s reading of the play, ‘King John capitulates in desperation and signs the charter in a last-ditch attempt to hold on to his crown’.¹⁰⁵ Indeed, the Morning Chronicle notes ‘the subject was the obtaining the Magna Charta from King John’.¹⁰⁶ After the King drinks the poison, the chorus shouts ‘Britain’s the land of liberty’,¹⁰⁷ which Moody argues shows that ‘[i]n Milner’s melodramatic version of history, the signing of Magna Charta thus becomes the triumphant conclusion of King John’s reign’.¹⁰⁸ Moody argues that Magna Charta presents both the idea of ‘legitimate resistance to state power’ through the rebellion of the barons, as well as ‘patriotic claptraps’ which celebrate English exceptionalism.¹⁰⁹ The different readings by Schoch and Moody are evocative of the competing representations of the charter across nineteenth-century theatre.

In 1840, Covent Garden staged The Fortunate Isles, or the Triumph of Britannia. Described as a ‘grand allegorical and national masque’, there were a series of tableaux with musical interludes.¹¹⁰ One newspaper summarizes the play as ‘intended to represent, partly in allegory, and partly historically, the progress of England from the moment when she rose, Venus-fashion, from the deep, even to the Victoria era’.¹¹¹ In Fortunate Isles, ‘[a]t the appearance of Liberty, her chains fall off; and a tableau vivant of Runnymede exhibits King John signing Magna Charta’.¹¹² The stage was ‘under-written in illuminated letters with “Nolumus leges Anglise mutare” [We do not wish for the laws of England to be changed]’.¹¹³ As will be discussed below, Richard Valpy’s 1800 edition of King John also invoked this ‘call’. The character of Time in Fortunate Isles says: ‘[f]rom the iron hand of might / Gallantly to wrest thy right’.¹¹⁴ In this production, the charter is constructed as part of a wider constitutional history that is contrasted with the threat of revolutionary change, and the use of ‘wrest’ places emphasis on the charter as an act of extracting rights from a tyrannical sovereign.

From December 1842 to January 1843, around the time when Magna Carta was on display at the British Museum, the Theatre Royal at Covent Garden had a Christmas pantomime production of Punch’s Pantomime; Or, Harlequin King John; And Magna Charta. The playbill references Shakespeare’s play when it refers to King John as ‘a character naturally drawn by Shakspere’.¹¹⁵ The comedic description of ‘A Small Van with a Great Charta’ is paired with ‘A strong muscular demonstration – King John being in difficulties, puts his name to a Bill’.¹¹⁶ The ‘muscular demonstration’ is evocative of King John being forced to agree to the demands in Magna Carta. The Era offers a more detailed account; the barons ‘resolve to wait on the King and extort their rights’, ‘[t]he great Charter is brought on by the Parcels’ Delivery Company’, and ‘[t]he King, after various attempts to cheat his people, signs […]’.¹¹⁷ The symbolism invoked here is of the barons extracting rights from a cheating tyrant.

In 1851, the Standard Theatre staged a production of Magna Charta, the People’s Charter; or, the Birthright of Britons. This production offers a more ambiguous reading of the charter. The playbill notes that Act III will depict ‘Meeting of the Barons at St Edmund’s Bury, their determination to war against John till the ratification of the Charter’.¹¹⁸ There is also a scene that depicts ‘Signing the Charter’, which is described as ‘The Signing the Mandate, Liberty and Rights of the Subjects. The Sovereign’s Signet, and THE PEOPLE’s CHARTER’.¹¹⁹ At one point in the dialogue in the play, the charter is constructed as iterative of the ancient constitution; the Earl of Pembroke says: ‘[…] do demand this Charter from him, founded on that of Henry the First, and Edward the Confessor […]’.¹²⁰

However, later in Act III, scene IV the character of Baron Fitzherbert offers an alternative status for the charter; ‘[c]ome, the king, the barons, and the people meet to fix their country’s rights, and lay the basis of its constitution’.¹²¹ ‘[L]ay the basis’ is evocative of the theory that Magna Carta is a unique intervention in constitutional history. When it comes to the act of ‘signing the Charter’, the play represents this moment as one where King John gives the people the charter; ‘[…] and here from me take this, (signing the Charter) which secures the Peers their privileges, and gives my People here their Rights by Magna Charta’.¹²² This reading is in contrast with the indication in the playbill that the Barons threaten King John with war, and the ‘demand’ from the Earl of Pembroke in Act III scene I. The play then presents competing representations of the charter.

This ambiguity around the status of the charter is continued in the reviews of Magna Charta. One commentator notes

[…] the scene of which is laid in the time of King John, who appears in the last scene in the act of delivering to his barons the famous Magna Charta, and not the “People’s Charter”, with which we had at first supposed the drama to have had some remote connexion.¹²³

Modern scholarship constructs an intertextuality between Magna Carta and the People’s Charter, but this commentary highlights the more complex relationship between the two texts; on the one hand, suggesting that this Whiggish parallel was apparent to audience members, and on the other, the suggestion of not even a ‘remote connexion’ evokes the often loose and anachronistic usage of Magna Carta in the Chartist movement.

The success of these forms of theatrical entertainment may have influenced artistic decisions in productions of Shakespeare; whilst competing for audiences, ‘illegitimate’ and ‘legitimate’ theatre might have borrowed from each other.¹²⁴ Moody highlights the competition between JR Planché’s King John at Covent Garden and the Coburg’s Magna Carta; ‘Grandiose in scale and visually spectacular, Magna Charta confirmed the Coburg’s determination to rival the visual antiquarianism and scenic attractions of the patent houses’.¹²⁵ In 1831, this idea of competition between the two forms of theatre and its impact on King John is noted; ‘the meagre’ audience might suggest that ‘all taste for what is called the legitimate theatre is at an end’.¹²⁶ In 1844, ‘[t]here are many who might be disposed to sneer at the idea of the representation of Shakspeare in Sadler’s Wells […]’.¹²⁷ In 1849, a production of King John is compared with the pantomime; ‘[t]he fighting in the Pantomime is infinitely better done. The Pantomime creates, if possible, increased interest’.¹²⁸ This competition between legitimate and illegitimate theatre is also referenced later in the nineteenth century; for example, in 1866 one journalist comments on how unusual it is for an ‘East-end Theatre […] to rely upon legitimate drama as a means of attraction at the holiday season’.¹²⁹

One aspect of these burlesque forms of entertainment that began to appear in Shakespeare productions in the later part of the nineteenth century is the tableaux. ‘Tableaux punctuate the melodrama with moments of visual stasis, moments when acting bodies freeze to form a still picture (and in fact the tableau was often called “Picture” in the playtexts of the period)’.¹³⁰ In 1852, Kean’s production of King John includes a ‘magnificent series of historic tableaux’, which the journalist notes ‘continues to attract great and admiring audiences’.¹³¹ Kean also includes tableaux in 1858, there is a suggestion that Phelps introduces ‘graphic stage-pictures’ into his production of King John in 1865,¹³² and this culminates in the tableaux in Tree’s 1899 production. These tableaux seem to accentuate the educative function of theatre; with one commentator in the 1850s noting ‘[i]f the history of England can, as has been said, be learned from Shakspere’s plays, to Mr Kean belongs the merit of having set before us the most gorgeously and authentically illustrated edition’,¹³³ and another commentator in the 1890s notes that the audience in the late nineteenth century ‘like to take their pictorial history in big doses’.¹³⁴ Understanding key trends in nineteenth-century theatre highlights the complex web of economic and cultural factors that inform constructions of Magna Carta in productions of Shakespeare’s King John.

4. Nineteenth-century productions of Shakespeare’s King John

Despite the references to Magna Carta in the burlesque and pantomime culture, throughout much of the 1820s–1850s productions of Shakespeare’s King John did not include references to the charter. Possible explanations for this ‘absence’ include potential censorship through the Office of the Lord Chamberlain,¹³⁵ political sensitivities attached to the charter following its invocation in the Queen Caroline Affair in 1820 or use by the Chartists in the late 1830s and 1840s. Focusing on the performance history highlights alternative explanations. In the 1820s, the play was popular for its anti-papal sentiment,¹³⁶ in which King John is constructed as a hero where depictions of the charter would have distracted from this, and this anti-papal construction of the play continued to get responses from audiences in the 1850s.¹³⁷ Another explanation is the use of the Macready promptbook by other directors and stage managers and Macready had not introduced references to the charter. Shattuck argues that Kean ‘simply took over Macready’s King John’,¹³⁸ and Phelps used Macready’s text and directions for his productions in 1844 and 1851 at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, and at Drury Lane in 1865, 1866¹³⁹ and 1867.¹⁴⁰ Newspaper commentaries on the productions note that there were little changes from the text.¹⁴¹ The focus of this article, however, is on the representations of the charter in the productions and as such this section takes three theatre managers as key interventions across the nineteenth century where the charter was ‘present’: Richard Valpy (1800–1803), Charles Kean (1850s), and Beerbohm Tree (1899).

4.1. Valpy’s King John (1800–1803)

In the early 1800s, the text of King John was altered by Richard Valpy in his production, which was performed at the Reading Grammar School in 1800, to mark the ‘subscription to the naval pillar, to be erected in honor of the naval victories of the present war’,¹⁴² and at Covent Garden in 1803.¹⁴³ Valpy alters the text to insert two references to Magna Carta. The first reference is in Act IV Scene 1, King John says:

                 – we will seal the Charter*

Of English Liberty! – Meantime, but ask

What else you would reform, and I will hear,

And grant you your requests.¹⁴⁴

Valpy adds a footnote about the charter, which includes a reference to John Denham’s poem, Coopers Hill (1642). It states:

Here was the Charter seal’d, wherein the Crown

All marks of arbitrary pow’r lays down.

Tyrant and Slave, those names of hate and fear,

The happier style of King and Subject bear.¹⁴⁵

There is a difference between Valpy’s benevolent construction of John as someone who ‘hears’ and grants requests, and King John the tyrant and wielder of arbitrary power in Denham’s poem. Whilst the theatre audiences would not have been privy to these footnotes, putting these two contrasting constructions of King John alongside each other in the text is evidence of the complex and multiple interpretations of the charter, and the role of the characterization of John in the construction of the charter’s significance.

In this footnote, Valpy then offers an explanation as to why Shakespeare excludes references to Magna Carta: ‘The silence of Shakespeare on the great subject of English Liberty has been considered as a proof of the spirit of the Prerogative during the reign of Queen Elizabeth […]’.¹⁴⁶

The charter is then elevated as a powerful document too dangerous for Shakespeare to discuss. Yet, he goes on to suggest that the charter had been largely forgotten about or dismissed when he draws a comparison between a monument at Runnymede and the naval pillar that the production is commemorating: ‘[…] the recollection that a subscription, which was begun a few years ago, to erect a monument in Runnimede, was not only discouraged, but ridiculed by a party in this Country? […]’.¹⁴⁷

Valpy also inserted a reference to Magna Carta in the speech of The Bastard in Act V scene II, before line 151:

           And has not John

Seal’s the GREAT CHARTER of our liberties?

Blest with our rights, we urge no further claim.

The English Laws are written in our hearts;

We will not change them!† May they last for ever!

The happiness of those, who feel their blessings,

  The admiration of the envying world!¹⁴⁸

‘Blest’ is suggestive of the charter being gifted, rather than being wrestled from the tyrant king. Moreover, ‘no further claim’ is evocative of the barons being subdued. This reflects Denham’s poetic construction of ‘King and Subject’, which as discussed above, Schoch argued was a motif in nineteenth-century burlesque productions. Valpy’s representation of the charter as a ‘gift’ from a benevolent monarch invokes this English exceptionalism as distinct from the revolutionary French.

This speech and the footnotes that accompany the Bastard’s speech further complicate the construction of the Charter. The first footnote states:

The English were considerably relieved from the systematic oppression of the two first Williams by the Charters of Henry I, Stephen and Henry II, and by the Constitutions of Clarendon [which were passed by Henry II in 1164].¹⁴⁹

In referencing the other charters, Valpy constructs a constitutional history that pre-dates Magna Carta. John’s charter is not a novel intervention or the ‘birthplace’ of liberty, it is merely iterative of a more ancient constitution.

The second footnote, which is appended to ‘We will not change them!’ in the Bastard’s speech, reads: ‘Nolumus Leges Angliae Mutare!’.¹⁵⁰ This is interpreted as we are unwilling to change the laws of England and evokes both the Barons response to the Merton Charter in 1235 and King Charles I’s response to the Nineteen Propositions in 1642. This repetition alludes to a constitutional history that does not change. Invoking an English constitution that is contrasted with the French revolution.

Commentators note that this production acts as a commentary on the French Revolution and Valpy is contrasting ideas of British liberty with French tyranny.¹⁵¹ For Valpy, Magna Carta is foundational to the idea of British liberty, but it is placed within a longer constitutional tradition.¹⁵² At the turn of the nineteenth century, references to the charter in popular culture were used to symbolize British liberty, which conservative commentators felt was being threatened by the French.¹⁵³ Magna Carta, which was conceptualized as part of the evolving ‘ancient constitution’ was contrasted with the hasty rewriting of the constitution in France.¹⁵⁴

Valpy’s production also demonstrates the duality of the charter. Valpy, tapping into popular culture at the time, uses Magna Carta to elicit a patriotic response from the audience.¹⁵⁵ The charter is at once a foundational document for liberty and a national symbol, its significance is constructed through a complex mix of the two. This duality of the charter will play out across the Victorian period as its cultural significance waxes and wanes.

4.2. Kean’s King John (1850s)

During the 1850s, Charles Kean is the manager of the Princess’s Theatre. Kean is said to have gone further in his search for historical accuracy.¹⁵⁶ ‘During Kean’s management of the Princess’s Theatre in London, he revived King John twice – on February 9, 1852, and on October 18, 1858’.¹⁵⁷ In contrast to productions in the 1820s–1840s, it is in these productions that there is a move towards an increased ‘presence’ of Magna Carta, from commentators drawing on it in their reviews,¹⁵⁸ to explicit references in the advertisements¹⁵⁹ and the playbill. As noted above, by the 1840s, Magna Carta is reassociated with freedom and liberty through the Chartists' People’s Charter, celebrated through exhibitions and memorials,¹⁶⁰ and popular burlesque and pantomime productions have popularized theatrical representations of the charter.

Reviews of the 1852 production suggest that the popularity of the play still centres around the anti-papal sentiment that was popular in the 1820s and throughout Macready’s productions. A commentator in John Bull notes the continued anti-papal response of the audience:

One thing struck us forcibly. King John’s well-known tirade against Papal aggression – his declaration that “no Italian Priest shall toll or tithe in our dominion”, was received with vociferous acclamations, as loud as they would have been twelve months ago, when the whole country was in a blaze of indignation. Now-a-days the public seem to have lost all interest in the subject, unless when reminded of it by a passage in a plays.¹⁶¹

As noted above, commentators argue that Magna Carta is not referenced in Shakespeare’s text because it would detract from the construction of John as an anti-papal hero, and Macready’s productions and Kean’s 1852 production seem to suggest that the charter as a symbolic limitation on John’s power wanes in significance when John is perceived as a hero in a context of anti-Catholic sentiment.

One question about Kean’s 1858 production is whether it included a tableau of the sealing of Magna Carta. Many commentators note that it was only Beerbohm Tree who included the tableau of Magna Carta. However, Ros King claims that Kean did.¹⁶² As noted above, tableau were popular in the burlesque, melodrama, and pantomimes of this era, so it is plausible that Kean included similar tableaux to appeal to the audiences. The Morning Post provides evidence that there were tableaux in Kean’s 1858 production, but it does not provide details of what the tableaux included.¹⁶³ In the review of the production, John Bull notes specifically that the audience do not get to see King John in the ‘only act that associated him with the grandeur of English history’,¹⁶⁴ which suggests that the tableaux do not portray Magna Carta. Nevertheless, the charter is ‘present’ in the production in other ways.

In 1858, Kean published a souvenir edition of the play. The front page reads ‘Price one shilling. To be had in the theatre’, suggesting that audience members could buy copies at the performance. The preface to this edition is a copy of the text that appeared on the playbill for the production. In the playbill/preface, Kean acknowledged that the sealing of Magna Carta was not included in Shakespeare’s text. He suggests that this was a result of ‘motives influential at the time’ that ‘doubtless prevented Shakespeare from alluding to the remarkable political event’.¹⁶⁵ This invokes the idea, as seen in Valpy’s notes in 1800, that it was too politically sensitive for Shakespeare to include the charter. Kean then refers to the charter as ‘the remarkable political event that renders the reign of John all important to the constitutional historian’.¹⁶⁶ Kean goes beyond using the charter as historical context,¹⁶⁷ he calls on the audience to reflect on the charter: ‘we cannot at the present day, refrain from extending our vision beyond the limits of the scene, and reflecting upon the inscrutable ways of Providence’.¹⁶⁸ Kean guides that reflection:

This man of sin, this violator of every law, human and divide, becomes the instrument by which the liberty of England was founded. His very enormities furnish the occasion of that invaluable boon wrung from the Royal felon by his angry and excited Barons; and to the hand of a murderer is this country indebted for the signature which establishes the Great Charter of English Freedom.¹⁶⁹

In this call to the audience to reflect on the charter during the performance, Kean places Magna Carta into the production as it is part of the audience’s experience of the play.

Kean constructs the charter as a foundational document of liberty and freedom. The use of ‘founded’ is evocative of the charter as the ‘birthplace’ or a novel rather than ancient constitutional text. In referring to the charter as ‘the Great Charter of English Freedom’,¹⁷⁰ Schoch argues that for the majority of people in this Victorian audience, Kean’s discussion of Magna Carta in the playbill/preface would have ‘resonated […] with their own cherished values of freedom and liberty’,¹⁷¹ and as such Magna Carta as a foundation of liberty had purchase amongst the paying theatre-going public. Kean also taps into the idea that the rights in the charter were ‘wrung’ from the tyrant, rather than gifted by a benevolent king. These constructions in popular culture sit alongside its loose invocations in political movements across the 1830s and 1840s and its waning legal significance after the 1830s.

4.3. Beerbohm Tree’s King John (1899)

On 20th September 1899, Shakespeare’s King John produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. The production was akin to the ‘archaeological’ style that had been prevalent in the 1830s–1850s,¹⁷² with lavish scenery and costumes.¹⁷³ Unlike Tree’s 1889 production of King John at the Crystal Palace,¹⁷⁴ the production at Her Majesty’s Theatre is littered with references to Magna Carta; there are references to the charter in the souvenir programmes, and there is an extravagant tableau of ‘The Granting of Magna Carta’ visualizing the sealing of the charter at the beginning of Act III,¹⁷⁵ and there are also discussions of the charter and its inclusion in this production in the reviews.

4.3.1. Magna Carta in the programmes

Magna Carta is present in the programmes for Tree's 1899 production. One of the general programmes (MS111/93) from the 1899 production features the ‘seal’ of King John ‘as appended to Magna Carta’.¹⁷⁶ As part of the production at Her Majesty’s, there were also a selection of souvenir programmes produced (HBT 40/1 dated 13^th November 1899¹⁷⁷ and HBT142/1 which is undated¹⁷⁸ but newspapers suggest it was to be circulated on the opening date of 20th September 1899¹⁷⁹). The 13th November 1899 souvenir programme, designed to mark the sixtieth performance,¹⁸⁰ includes a copy of a photograph of ‘The Granting of Magna Charta’ tableau from the production.

The HBT142/1 programme has a much more extensive discussion of Magna Carta. On page one of the HBT142/1 programme, it states '[…] the people, through the nobles, exacted from an absolute sovereign that Great Charter of their liberties, the advantages of which, in the guise of freedom, justice and equality, we to-day enjoy’.¹⁸¹ It then goes on, ‘[t]he masses of the people were waiting for the moment when, their ancient language restored and their ancient laws secured to them, they should be moulded into an united English nation’.¹⁸² The reference to ‘an united English nation’ confirms Schoch’s argument that throughout nineteenth-century theatre, there is ‘an enduring obsession with recovering the Middle Ages as a mythologized original moment for English national character and political identity’.¹⁸³ Here the reference to ‘ancient laws’ and ‘language restored’ invokes the idea that the charter is reiterative of an ancient constitution which predates it, and ‘exacted’ invokes the charter as a symbol of holding a sovereign to account.

Also, in HBT142/1, Tree included a section dedicated to ‘Magna Charta'. It refers to the granting of the charter as ‘the most important event in John’s reign and one of the most solemn moments in our history’.¹⁸⁴ This programme includes a discussion on why Shakespeare did not include the charter in the original play; ‘[o]f course, the Charter was no novelty, nor did it claim to establish any new constitutional principles’.¹⁸⁵ As with the introduction to the programme, this discussion reiterates the ‘ancient constitution’, with the charter being constructed as a reassertion of rights and freedoms. The programme furthers the mythmaking of the constitutional significance of the charter when it states, ‘[t]he law was written for everyone to read’.¹⁸⁶ However, the charter of 1215 is written in Latin a language used in the law and for records, but not by the people of England more broadly at the time.

One of the unique features of the HBT 142/1 programme is that Tree includes ten of the most important provisions from the charter’s sixty-one clauses, calling them ‘the Ten Commandments of our existence as a free people’.¹⁸⁷ Specifically it states ‘[i]t is unnecessary to recall all the sixty-one articles of the famous grant’.¹⁸⁸ Here the text of the law (the other fifty-one articles) is dismissed as irrelevant, rather it is the act of granting the charter that is significant for Tree.

4.3.2. Magna Carta as a tableau

The performance history suggests that Tree’s 1899 production is the first production of Shakespeare’s King John to include a tableau of the sealing of Magna Carta. The tableau lasted for 1 min,¹⁸⁹ at the beginning of Act III before scene I in Tree’s revised structure and depicts the ‘Granting of Magna Carta’. Though present in the production, Schoch notes that ‘Magna Carta remained silent, as if its already cliched significance could be fully expressed in dumbshow’.¹⁹⁰ Likewise, Lander and Tobin argue that the ‘dumb-show’ nature of the tableau is significant; ‘[i]t allows Beerbohm Tree to display a historical fact as punctual, vivid, existing beyond the rhetoric of praise and blame’.¹⁹¹ However, audience members with the HBT142/1 programme on the opening night in September 1899 would have been subjected to the explicit ‘rhetoric of praise and blame’ in the discussion on the charter, and audiences on other nights would have been able to infer this ‘praise and blame’ through the actions and timed musical intervention during the tableau.

The notes from the 13th September rehearsals, give more information about what happens during the tableau. The notes demonstrate the specific movements as well as the ‘shout from everyone on stage’¹⁹²:

Super is holding document, puts it on table in front of JOHN, points to it for JOHN’S signature. After John has put his hand to the seal – inspiring music – then shout from everyone onstage.¹⁹³

In this rendition, the handing of the document to John could be constructed as a visual representation that John submits to the demand of the barons. Yet, the notes from the rehearsals of the production show changes to the suggested movement during this tableau, as a different undated note states:

Document is on table – Mr Tree [as King John] enters, goes towards table, man takes up document, gives it to Mr Tree, who reads it, looks round at Nobles, puts down the document, looks around again, then puts finger on paper – Music changes to ‘joyous rainbow’ strain – Mr Tree gives paper back to man – Loud cheers.¹⁹⁴

The movement here could evoke the reluctance of John to seal Magna Carta, which resonates with the HBT142/1 programme’s construction of the nobles ‘exacting’ the charter from him.¹⁹⁵ The additional detail in this stage direction of, ‘gives paper back’, is evocative of the idea that John gives the charter to the people. In contrast to the 13th September where the act of sealing was sufficient as indicated by the ‘music’ and shouts when he touches the seal, the ‘cheers' in this rehearsal happen when the people are in possession of the charter. These two versions of the tableau present distinct constitutional readings of the charter as one is more ambiguous about whether John is forced to sign the charter, the other exaggerates the symbolism of the charter as an act of holding a sovereign to account, as well as placing emphasis on the idea that the people now possess rights.

In his production, Tree’s character development for King John was premised on constructing a downfall for the ‘tyrant’ in Act III.¹⁹⁶ The tableau of Magna Carta is positioned as part of this downfall.¹⁹⁷ Ellison summarizes this:

John’s dark tyranny and superstition are finally replaced with the light of Victorian progress. The final scenes of the play celebrate the liberal, tolerant society Victorian England believed itself to be, and what it believed to have been the founding document of that society, the Magna Carta.¹⁹⁸

In contrast to the characterization of John as the anti-papal hero, which was invoked across the earlier nineteenth century, the Victorian characterization of John is of a tyrant and the charter constrains him.¹⁹⁹ Tree’s production builds on the Victorian characterization of John,²⁰⁰ and his representation of John is described by one commentator as full of ‘cowardice, deceit, and superstition’.²⁰¹ Where previously audiences had cheered the anti-papal speeches, in Tree’s King John, the reviews note how the audience cheered at the sealing of Magna Carta.²⁰²

In a published interview in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1899, Tree discusses the tableau. He states

[w]e shall represent the granting (for it was not really the signing, you know) of Magna Charta at Runnymede. […] You must remember that the play is intended not only to interest the middle-aged people, but also to instruct the young folks generally.²⁰³

This echoes the ‘educational duty’ of nineteenth-century theatre.²⁰⁴ Shakespeare’s history plays could be ‘pressed into service to teach the great national epic, the slow march from savage and superstitious medieval tyranny to triumphant Protestant empire’.²⁰⁵ One commentator notes the public’s appreciation of history; ‘[n]o doubt the “sticklers” will take exception to the introduction of the tableau of King John signing the Magna Charter. They will regard it as little short of rank heresy. The public, however, won’t heed their criticism’.²⁰⁶ Focusing on the tableaux and its reception highlights how the competing factors of spectacle, audience expectation, the role of theatre, and the characterization of John combine to construct the significance of Magna Carta.

4.3.3. Magna Carta in the reviews

The press reviews show that the audience had expectations that the charter would be in the production, as they had come to associate King John with the charter. Throughout the nineteenth century, commentators noted the absence of the charter in Shakespeare’s play.²⁰⁷ Ellison notes that contemporary newspapers said that ‘so fundamental had Magna Carta become to the narrative of Victorian liberalism that Tree’s public [in 1899] would have found a play about King John which failed to mention Magna Carta … utterly incomplete’.²⁰⁸ The Daily Telegraph commented that the inclusion of a reference to the charter was for the ‘gratification of the general public’.²⁰⁹ Schoch argues that ‘[a]udiences expected to see a version of the medieval past which confirmed not to Shakespeare’s expectations, but to their own’, and that there was ‘pressure within the theatre to realize onstage the signing of the Magna Carta’.²¹⁰

Reviews of the 1899 production are also useful for unpacking the construction of Magna Carta.²¹¹ Specifically, there are commentators that complain about the inclusion of Magna Carta. For example, in The Morning Post, it states:

For, once, however, Mr Tree’s cultivation of the muse of history has led him astray […] He introduces a tableau representing John signing the Great Charter in presence of the principal English personages of Shakespeare’s play. Nothing could be falser to the historic sense. […] Constitutional ideals became prominent in the next century: to Shakespeare there were of no account […] But in this play, and in an Elizabethan view of John’s reign, the Great Charter has no place. This tableau is, therefore, a distortion of Shakespeare as bad as anything of Colley Cibber’s, and cannot be justified on historical ground […].²¹²

The commentator’s sense of history is a history that should maintain the ‘accuracy’ of Shakespeare’s text, rather than seeking to amend the text of the play to reflect historical events. A similar critique is offered by Harold Child in 1969 in his commentary on the stage history of King John, where he critiques Tree’s inclusion of the tableau noting the ‘infelicity of this idea’.²¹³ This is evocative of Shakespeare and Magna Carta as quintessentially national ‘totems’ being placed into competition.

These critiques of the inclusion of the tableau shed light on the different approaches toward Magna Carta. For example, in the Racing Illustrated, the journalist writes:

[…] do you think that the greatest dramatist the world has ever known could not have misjudged the importance of Magna Charta in the life of the chief person in his play, that he knew its great dramatic possibilities, and that he willingly omitted all reference to it from malice aforethought, recognising the fact that a Court dramatist in the time of Elizabeth would be doing a very malapropos thing if he showed that self-willed sovereign how the barons wrenched from the Crown some of its most cherished prerogatives? […] you know that Shakespeare left it out on purpose.²¹⁴

The ‘dangerousness’ of mentioning the charter is an idea that Valpy also subscribed to at the start of the century. The idea that it would be dangerous for Shakespeare to allude to the charter and the limitations placed on the Crown’s prerogatives in Elizabethan England is in stark contrast to the suggestion of the previous commentator who argued that Elizabethans were not concerned with constitutional issues. Looking at the performance history exposes the complexity of the narratives that work to construct the constitutional status of Magna Carta.

The Boer War started in October 1899, only a month after the production opened. Against this background, the production took on different meanings.²¹⁵ Writing in Pick-me-up one commentator notes ‘[b]ut in these stirring moments it becomes practically a patriot’s duty to go and cheer a piece which broadly hints that England, with one hand tied behind it, can fight all the rest of the world put together’.²¹⁶ As the months went on and British troops were in South Africa,²¹⁷ reviewers were drawing parallels in the play; ‘[…] there is no question that recent events will lend its patriotic language the utmost possible significance’.²¹⁸ The British rationale for the Boer War was the protection of civil rights and these civil rights were explicitly represented in the production through the tableau of the sealing of Magna Carta. Kachur writes; ‘[…] Tree’s staging of King John with the Magna Carta intact could serve as a reminder to audiences of their ancestors’ struggles and conflicts which gave rise to the very freedoms that they now enjoyed – ones now denied British citizens demanding liberation in South Africa’.²¹⁹ Since the 1800s, the British national identity has been intertwined with a belief in its role in the foundation of liberty and freedom. As seen in Valpy’s 1800 production, the English are constructed as the creators and saviours of freedom. The same sentiment is invoked again in the 1899 production. Foulkes argues that the ‘interpolated tableau, the Signing of Magna Carta (held for a full minute), celebrated prized freedoms’.²²⁰ In the 1899 production, it is a combination of John’s submission (as it is presented in the tableau), the document itself (as it is discussed in the programme), and its political and cultural usage, which combine to give the charter meaning both as constitutive of national identity and ideas of liberty.

5. Conclusion

To mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta in 2015, The Globe with Royal & Derngate (Northampton) staged a production by James Dacre of King John. Performances took place in Salisbury Cathedral, Temple Church in London, Holy Sepulchre Church in Northampton, and The Globe in London. London in 2015 was infused with Magna Carta; The British Library and Temple Church hosted exhibitions, and there were walking tours that highlighted ‘milestone[s] of law and liberty’ across London, evoking ‘a unique relationship’ between London and the Great Charter.²²¹ If the audience at The Globe had escaped this spatializing of Magna Carta in London,²²² the promotional materials for King John had an ‘800th Anniversary’ logo in the corner; subtle in its size and positioning, but nevertheless present, this logo acted as a reminder of the legacy of Magna Carta.²²³ Moreover, in Dacre’s production, explicit reference was made to Magna Carta during the performance which drew a cheer from the audience.²²⁴ This production of King John, and the nineteenth century productions discussed in this article, demonstrate both that there is an ongoing relationship between Magna Carta and Shakespeare’s play, and that the play has an ongoing role in the construction of the meaning and significance of the charter.

Through the performances, and an understanding of their historical, material, and political context, the construction of the charter’s status can be unpacked. In discussing nineteenth-century productions of King John, this article has demonstrated how the significance of the charter is constructed from a mix of the text of the charter, the action of sealing it, its later usages in political protests, but also market competition across theatres and conceptualisations of national identity and even religious context. As such, these nineteenth-century productions demonstrate the versatility of the charter. It has been used as a tool for the construction of a national identity that harks back to a medieval past, as well as a national identity founded on an ancient constitution of rights and freedoms, specifically utilized to garner anti-French sentiment. The charter is also a well-known cultural icon used in a competitive market space to draw audiences.²²⁵ Some productions construct the charter as a ‘gift’ others place weight on the extraction of these rights and freedoms from King John. Some perceive the charter as the ‘birthplace’ of liberty, others invoke the ancient constitution where Magna Carta is merely a re-inscription of those ancient rights. The fluidity with which Magna Carta is remembered and forgotten, and what it is remembered for, problematizes its singular ‘totemic’ constitutional status. The complex mix of legal, political, cultural, and religious history demonstrates the different uses of a charter that is conceptualized as a ‘foundational document’ for the UK constitution.

This article started from the intriguing position that the charter is absent in the text of Shakespeare’s play, but it is present in certain nineteenth-century performances of King John. Despite its waning legal status during this period, the performance history exposes the multiple constructions of the charter. This investigation into the representations of Magna Carta in King John demonstrates how the myth of Magna Carta is constructed and the ease with which that myth gains and loses importance.

Acknowledgements

The archival work was funded by the Society of Legal Scholars Research Activities Fund (April 2020). Thank you to the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham, the Bristol Theatre Archives at the University of Bristol, and the Shakespeare Collection at the Birmingham Archives. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Durham Human Rights Centre event marking 800 years of Magna Carta in 2015, the ‘Dark Side of Magna Carta’ SLS seminar at Newcastle University in 2015, and the Law and Humanities workshop at the University of Verona in 2023. With thanks to Oskar Cox Jensen, Kay Crosby, James Harriman-Smith, Matteo Nicolini, Colin Murray, Matthew Nicholson, Aoife O’Donoghue, and Ian Ward, as well as to the Newcastle University Law Librarians. Thanks also to Ann Sinclair for her research assistance work on this project. Thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Edward Jenks, ‘The Myth of Magna Carta’ (1904) 4 Independent Review 260; Max Radin, ‘The Myth of Magna Carta’ (1947) Harvard Law Review 1060, 1061, 1083; Tim Spikerman, Shakespeare’s Political Realism: The English History Plays (State University of New York Press 2001) 167. The idea that Shakespeare was not concerned with constitutional issues is echoed in the 1969 introduction to King John by John Dover Wilson, who states that it might have been because of ‘the blindness of the age to the constitutional struggles and social movements’. See John Dover Wilson, The New Shakespeare: King John (CUP 1969) lxxviii.

2 Jenks (n 1); RV Turner, Magna Carta: Through the Ages (Pearson 2003) 147.

3 Radin (n 1) 1083. See also British Library, ‘Little Ado About Something Rather Significant: William Shakespeare and Magna Carta’ British Library (23 August 2015). In the 1970s media, this was the opinion of David Williams. See David Williams, ‘Shakespeare and the Tragedian’ The Telegraph (1972) 9.

4 Thomas Merriam, ‘Is it Time to Re-Think King John?’ (2016) 32(3) Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 591, 593–94. See also, Virginia Mason Vaughan, ‘Between Tetralogies: King John as Transition’ (1984) 35(4) Shakespeare Quarterly 408, 415; David Bevington, ‘The Debate About Shakespeare and Religion’ in David Loewenstein and Michael Witmore (eds), Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion (CUP 2015) 36; Igor Djordjevic, King John (Mis)Rembered: The Dunmow Chronicle, the Lord Admiral’s Men, and the Formation of Cultural Memory (Ashgate Publishing Limited 2015) 165; Roy Battenhouse, ‘King John: Shakespeare’s Perspective and Others’ (1982) 14(3) Notre Dame English Journal 191, 196.

5 The Era, 30th March 1856.

6 Lloyd’s Illustrated Newspaper, 25th October 1846.

7 Ian Ward, The Reformation of the Constitution: Law, Culture and Conflict in Jacobean England (Bloomsbury Publishing 2024) 4.

8 This is ‘stage-centred criticism’, led by John Styan. See JL Styan, The Shakespeare Revolution: Criticism and Performance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press 1977); JC Bulman, ‘Introduction: Shakespeare and Performance Theory’ in JC Bulman (ed), Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance (Routledge 1996) 1.

9 There are no records of performances before the Reformation. See AR Braunmuller (ed), William Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of King John (OUP 2008) 84.

10 For example, see The Sporting Times, 28th June 1873 (‘Apart from the fact that during the reign of the weak and treacherous prince whose name gives the tragedy its title, the Magna Charta laid the foundation of British liberty […]’).

11 See Nicole Rogers, ‘The Play of Law: Comparing Performances in Law and Theatre’ (2008) 8 Queensland University of Technology Law and Justice Journal 429, 436.

12 Bulman (n 7) 1.

13 See Richard Schechner, ‘Performance Studies in/for the 21st Century’ (2001) 26(2) Anthropology and Humanism 158–66, 162.

14 See Alan Read, Theatre and Law (Palgrave 2016); Rogers (n 10) 429.

15 See Geraldine Cousin, King John (Manchester University Press 1994) 45. See also Russell Jackson, ‘Shakespeare in London’ in Gail Marshall (ed), Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press 2012) 148, 155.

16 For a discussion on the types of source material, see Genevieve Love, ‘Shakespeare and Performance’ (2009) 6(3) Literature Compass 741–57, 743.

17 One example of this is the lack of clarity around whether Charles Kean included a tableau of Magna Carta in his production.

18 CH Shattuck, The Shakespeare Promptbooks: A Descriptive Catalogue (University of Illinois Press 1965) 3 and 5.

19 WC Macready, King John: A Facsimile Prompt-Book (ed Charles H Shattuck (1962)) 57.

20 Bulman (n 7) 1.

21 Regulating Places of Public Entertainment Act 1752; The Theatre Regulation Act 1843 abolished the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate theatre. Jane Moody, Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1770–1840 (Cambridge University Press 2000) 18.

22 Moody (n 20) 18.

23 Ibid 119–20; Jane Moody, ‘Writing for the Metropolis: Illegitimate Performances of Shakespeare in Early Nineteenth-Century London’ (2002) 47 Shakespeare Survey 61, 64; Lucy Barnes, ‘A Crowded Stage: The Legitimate Borrowings of Henry Milner’s Mazeppa’ (2015) 42(1) Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 50, 61.

24 See RW Schoch, Shakespeare’s Victorian Stage: Performing History in the Theatre of Charles Kean (Cambridge University Press 1998) 76.

25 JC Holt, Magna Carta (3rd edn, Cambridge University Press 2015) 34. See also Sir John Baker, The Reinvention of Magna Carta 1216–1616 (CUP 2016).

26 Holt (n 24) 47.

27 Judi Atkins, ‘(Re)imagining Magna Carta: Myth, Metaphor and the Rhetoric of Britishness’ (2016) 69(3) Parliamentary Affairs 603.

28 The suffragettes used the charter in the early part of the twentieth century in their political messaging. See Votes for Women, 27th January 1911 in A collection of press cuttings, pamphlets, leaflets and letters mainly relating to the movement for women’s suffrage in England, formed and annotated by M. Arncliffe Sennett (British Library).

29 Alexander Lock, ‘Reform, Radicalism and Revolution: Magna Carta in 18th and 19th Century Britain’ in Lawrence Goldman (ed), Magna Carta: History, Context and Influence (Institute of Historical research 2018) 101, 115.

30 Lock (n 28) 111.

31 See The Queen and the Magna Charta or, The Thing That John Signed (1820); Queen Caroline. Britain’s Best Hope!! England’s Sheet-Anchor!!! (1820). For a discussion see, Anna Clark, ‘Queen Caroline and the Sexual Politics of Popular Culture in London, 1820’ (1990) 31 Representations 47–68, 59; Tim Fulford, Romanticism and Masculinity: Gender, Politics and Poetics in the Writings of Burke, Coleridge, Cobbett, Wordsworth, De Quincey and Hazlitt (Palgrave Macmillan 1999) 167; James Grande, William Cobbett, the Press and Rural England: Radicalism and the Fourth Estate, 1792–1835 (Palgrave 2014) 130.

32 Lock (n 28) 111.

33 Turner (n 2) 184.

34 See Alexander Lock and Jonathan Sims, ‘Invoking Magna Carta: Locating Information Objects and Meaning in the 13th and 19th Centuries’ (2015) 15 Legal Information Management 74, 75.

35 Lock (n 28) 116. See also Holt (n 24) 34.

36 Lock (n 28) 113.

37 Turner (n 2) 186.

38 For a discussion, see Lock (n 28) 49.

39 Lock (n 28) 115.

40 Ibid 112.

41 JGA Pocock, ‘Burke and the Ancient Constitution – A Problem in the History of Ideas’ (1960) 111(2) The Historical Journal 125.

42 Ian Ward, Writing the Victorian Constitution (Palgrave 2018) 19.

43 Ward (n 41) 52–53.

44 Frederick Pollock and FW Maitland, The History of English Law (2nd edn, Cambridge University Press 1968 [1989]] vol 1, 172.

45 Anne Pallister, Magna Carta (1971) 59–63 cited in Lock and Sims (n 33) 82.

46 Turner (n 2) 179.

47 Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution. (Introduction by R H S Crossman. Collins 1972) 258.

48 Bagehot (n 46) 258.

49 Morning Post, 31st May 1817; John Bull, 27th February 1841.

50 The Era, 14th October 1899.

51 The Lady’s Newspaper & Pictorial Times, 21 August 1847.

52 Morning Post, 27th December 1842; The Era, 23rd April 1843.

53 For example, the satirical magazine, Punch included a comic about the tableaux; ‘King John signing the Long Lease of Her Majesty’s Theatre’ (Punch, 18th October 1899).

54 Punch No 359, Morning Post, 24th May 1848; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 11th April 1869.

55 Lock (n 28) 101–02.

56 The Standard, 28th December 1896.

57 For a discussion on the shifting characterizations of King John see Djordjevic (n 4) 188.

58 Merriam (n 4) 593–94. See also Mason Vaughan (n 4) 415; Bevington (n 4) 36.

59 Merriam (n 4) 593–94. See also Mason Vaughan (n 4) 415; Bevington (n 4) 36; Djordjevic (n 4) 165; Battenhouse (n 4) 196.

60 JM Lander and JJM Tobin (eds) The Arden Shakespeare: King John (3rd edn, Bloomsbury 2018) 94.

61 John Wolffe, ‘The Roots of Anti-Catholicism’ in John Wolffe (ed), The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain 1829–1860 (OUP 1991).

62 Nicholas Vincent, ‘The Making of a Monster: King John in fiction from Bale to the Victorians’ (2016) 47 International Review of Law and Economics 60, 62.

63 The Standard, 28th March 1837 (discussion of the production at Covent Garden).

64 The Sporting Times, 29th September 1866.

65 John Bull, volume XXXII, no 1627, 14th February 1852.

66 Elizabeth Penrose, A History of England with Conversations at the End of Each Chapter (London 1859), 107–16 cited in Vincent (n 61) 62.

67 James Ellison, ‘Beerbohm Tree’s King John (1899): A fin-de-siècle Fragment and its Cultural Context’ (2007) 3(3) Shakespeare 293–314, 298.

68 Ellison (n 66) 298.

69 ‘Two statues are placed in position on either side of the first arch, completed – one of King John, of Magna Charta fame’ (The Standard, 26th December 1867).

70 See Cousin (n 14) 45. See also Jackson (n 14) 155.

71 See Kathryn Prince, ‘Shakespeare in the Periodicals’ in Gail Marshall (ed), Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press 2012) 72.

72 See for example, Stuart Sillars, Shakespeare and the Victorians (OUP 2013) 54.

73 See Cousin (n 14) 45. See also Jackson (n 14) 155.

74 Adrian Poole, Shakespeare and The Victorians (Bloomsbury Publishing 2004) 22–23.

75 Morning Chronicle, 5th April 1824.

76 See Playbill for King John at the Princess’s Theatre, London, 9 February 1852 (Princess’s Theatre production file, Theatre Museum, London) ‘There is little difficulty in collecting safe authority for the costume of King John’s reign. Tapestry, illuminated manuscripts, and tombs supply abundant evidence. The habits of many of the principal characters are copied from monumental effigies […]’.

77 The Examiner, 30th November 1823. For a discussion, see Schoch (n 23) 75–76.

78 The Examiner, 30th November 1823.

79 The audience might not necessarily equate the seal with the charter as many representations of the Runnymede events use images of John signing the charter instead. See Anthony Musson, ‘Visual Representations of Magna Carta’ (2014) 15(1) Insights on Law & Society 20, 23.

80 Lander and Tobin (n 59) 95.

81 John Bull, volume XXXII, no 1627, 14th February 1852.

82 ‘King John’ by William Shakespeare (1891), Programme for production of ‘King John’; programme is annotated with date of attendance, 9 Feb 1891 (Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham, MS108/2/25) page 2.

83 ‘King John’ by William Shakespeare (1891), Programme for production of ‘King John’; programme is annotated with date of attendance, 9 Feb 1891 (Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham, MS108/2/25), page 2.

84 ‘King John’ by William Shakespeare (1891), Programme for production of ‘King John’; programme is annotated with date of attendance, 9 Feb 1891 (Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham, MS108/2/25).

85 RW Schoch, Queen Victoria and the Theatre of her Age (Palgrave 2004) 174.

86 Ellen Kean, a letter to Queen Victoria, 28 June 1857, (Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, Yc 402 (49)) cited in Schoch (n 84) 176.

87 Reynold’s Newspaper, 24th October 1858.

88 See Schoch (n 23); see also Poole (n 73).

89 Schoch (n 23) 115.

90 Prince (n 70) 72.

91 Schoch (n 23) 151.

92 Frank Rahill, The World of Melodrama (Pennsylvania State University Press 1967) xiv.

93 Richard Schoch (ed), Victorian Theatrical Burlesques (Routledge 2003) xii.

94 For a discussion see Moody (n 20).

95 Rohan McWilliam, ‘Melodrama and Class’ in Carolyn Williams (ed), The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama (CUP 2018) 163, 170.

96 Moody (n 20); Barnes (n 22). For an example, in October 1837, two productions represented King John; at the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane Shakespeare’s King John was performed and in St James’s Theatre King John (with the Benefit of the Act) was performed.

97 For an example of this tradition of altering Shakespeare’s text for burlesque, see the 1837 ‘burlesque upon Shakespeare’ performed at St James’s Theatre entitled King John with the benefit of the act written by Gilbert Abbott à Beckett. It is described as ‘a parody on Shakspeare’s play’ with a ‘grotesque imitation of Kean’. Morning Chronicle, 17th October 1837.

98 In addition to the examples discussed, in January 1849 the Victoria Theatre staged a production of Magna Charta (see Playbill from Victoria Theatre, Magna Charta (1840) in Old Vic (London) Archive, University of Bristol Theatre Collection, OB, SV, 216), in the 1870s there was an anonymous manuscript of a burlesque that might not have been performed entitled, King John, A Grand, New, Entirely Original, Historical Burlesque in Five Scenes (see RW Schoch, Not Shakespeare: Bardolatry and Burlesque in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press 2002) 154), and in 1873, it is reported that Mr Reece ‘is writing a new extravaganza for the Strand on the subject of “King John, or Magna Carta”’ (see The Sporting Gazette, 22 March 1873).

99 In addition to the example discussed, in 1822 there was a pantomime entitled Gog and Magog, or Harlequin Antiquary. See, Morning Post, 27th December 1822.

100 Moody (n 20) 119–20; Moody (n 22) 64; Barnes (n 22).

101 Playbill from Royal Coburg Theatre, Magna Charta: or, the Eventful Reign of King John (1823) in Old Vic (London) Archive, University of Bristol Theatre Collection, OB, SV, 69.

102 Schoch (n 97) 154.

103 Cf Schoch who argues that ‘Milner recasts the signing of the Great Charter not as royal acquiescence to aristocratic force but, in a more topically Whiggish spirit, as the reconciliation of the monarch to the people.’ Schoch (n 97).

104 Moody (n 22) 65.

105 Ibid.

106 Morning Chronicle, 29th April 1823.

107 Scene xviii cited in Moody (n 20) 121.

108 Moody (n 20) 121.

109 Ibid 121–22.

110 The Era, 16th February 1840.

111 Ibid.

112 Ibid.

113 Morning Post, 13th February 1840.

114 The Fortunate Isles or The Triumph of Britannia by J.R. Planché (1840) 7.

115 Poster for Punch’s Pantomime; or, Harlequin King John; and Magna Charta in Covent Garden 1842–1846 Archive, University of Bristol Theatre Collection, MM_2_TH_LO_COV_24, Dg31.

116 Poster for Punch’s Pantomime; or, Harlequin King John; and Magna Charta in Covent Garden 1842–1846 Archive, University of Bristol Theatre Collection, MM_2_TH_LO_COV_24, Dg 31.

117 The Era, 1st January 1843.

118 Magna Carta; or, The Birthright of Britons. A Grand Equestrian Drama!! In Oxberry’s Budget of Plays. (Vickers, Holywell-Street, and Cleave, Shoe-Lane 1844).

119 Magna Carta (n 117).

120 Ibid Act III, Scene I, page 298.

121 Ibid Act III, Scene IV, page 301.

122 Ibid Act III, Scene IV, page 302.

123 Reynold’s Newspaper, 10th August 1851.

124 Barnes (n 22) 51.

125 Moody (n 20) 120.

126 The Satirist, 20 November 1831.

127 Morning Chronicle, 12th October 1844.

128 The Satirist, 3rd February 1849.

129 The Era, 8th April 1866.

130 Carolyn Williams, ‘Melodrama and the Realist Novel’ in Carolyn Williams (ed), The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama (Cambridge University Press 2018) 209, 217.

131 Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 28th March 1852. See also Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 15th February 1852 (‘a succession of unrivalled living pictures, and presenting an accurate and instructive reflex of the appearance of our kings, our nobility, and their trains, six hundred years ago’).

132 Le Follet, volume 9, no 230, 1st November 1865.

133 Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 28th March 1852.

134 Hearth and Home volume XVII no 438, 5th October 1899.

135 For discussions on censorship, see RJ Goldstein, ‘Political Censorship of the Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Europe’ (1987) 12(3) Theatre Research International 220; David Thomas, David Charlton, Anne Etienne, ‘Statutory Theatre Censorship, 1737–1892’ in David Thomas and others (eds), Theatre Censorship: From Walpole to Wilson (OUP 2007) 24–68; RW Schoch, ‘Reforming Shakespeare’ (2005) 34 Media, Technology, and Performance 105–19.

136 The Morning Post reports of ‘astounding and reiterated bursts of applause from the House’ when King John says ‘Yet I, alone, alone do me oppose/Against the Pope, and count his friends my foes’, and there was ‘Universal and indignant hisses’ in response to Cardinal Pandolf, the papal legate to England during the reign of King John (see Morning Post, 23rd January 1827). Writing in the Standard a spectator confirms the ‘burst of feeling’ from the audience which accompanies King John’s stand ‘Against the Pope’ (see; The Standard, 13th October 1836).

137 The Standard, 10th December 1850 (‘But the great incident of the evening was the celebrated interview with the legate from the Pope. The frequency with which the memorable defiance of the Papal mandate has been quoted of late, and the concurrent spirit of Protestant repudiation in which the public receive it, promised an excitement of no common kind.’); Lloyd’s Illustrated Newspaper, 15th December 1850; John Bull volume VVV, no 1566, 14th December 1850.

138 Macready (n 18) 3.

139 Mr Phelps’ portrayal of King John is noted as giving ‘due prominence to the blackheartedness and irresolution of King John’ (The Sporting Times, 29th September 1866).

140 Macready (n 18) 6.

141 For example, a description of Mr Phelps’ King John at Sadler’s Wells in 1849 notes that ‘it is altered as little as possible from the original text’ (The Lady’s Newspaper, 3rd February 1849).

142 Richard Valpy, King John, as Historical Tragedy, Altered from Shakespeare, as it was acted at Reading School, for the Subscription to the Naval Pillar, to be Erected in Honor of the Naval Victories of the Present War (1800).

143 See Dover Wilson (n 1) lxxiv.

144 Valpy (n 141) 50.

145 Ibid.

146 Ibid.

147 Ibid.

148 Ibid 72–73.

149 Ibid 73.

150 Ibid.

151 Frans De Bruyn, ‘Shakespeare and the French Revolution’ in Fiona Ritchie and Peter Sabor (eds), Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century (CUP 2012) 305.

152 De Bruyn (n 150) 305.

153 See the caricature by James Gillray, ‘The Promised Horrors of the French Invasion’ (1796) that pictured English radicals burning copies of Magna Carta as the French invaded a street. Cited in Ian Hampsher-Monk (ed), The Impact of the French Revolution: Texts from Britain in the 1790s (Cambridge University Press 2005) 300. See also Mike Rapport, ‘The International Repercussions of the French Revolution’ in Peter McPhee (ed), A Companion to the French Revolution (John Wiley & Sons 2014) 383–84.

154 Morgan Rooney, The French Revolution Debate and the British Novel 1790–1814: The Struggle for History’s Authority (Rowman and Littlefeld 2013) 48–50. See also Clive Emsley, Britain and the French Revolution (Routledge 2014) 11.

155 Using King John as a rallying call for patriotism was repeated in 1804, when Kemble added ‘jingoism’ to the final act, calling for invaders to leave Britain. See LA Beaurline (ed), Shakespeare’s King John (Cambridge University Press 1990) 6.

156 Poole (n 73) 25.

157 Macready (n 18) 8.

158 Morning Chronicle, 10th February 1852. See also, Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 15th February 1852.

159 Morning Chronicle, 10th February 1852 (‘The England and the France of the time of Magna Charta passed before us’).

160 The Lady’s Newspaper & Pictorial Times, 21 August 1847.

161 John Bull, volume XXXII, no 1627, 14th February 1852.

162 Ros King, ‘Dramaturgy: Beyond the Presentism/Historicism Dichotomy’ in Graham Bradshaw, Tom Bishop and Tetsuo Kishi (eds), Special Section, Undating Shakespeare (Ashgate Publishing 2008) 6, 8.

163 Morning Post, 19th October 1858.

164 John Bull, volume XXXVIII, no 1976, 23rd October 1858.

165 Charles Kean, ‘Shakespeare’s Play of “King John”, Arranged for Representation at The Princess’s Theatre, with Historical and Explanatory Notes’ (John Chapman and Co 1858) vi–vii.

166 Kean (n 145) vii cited in Schoch (n 23) 151.

167 In the Historical Notes to Act First, it states under the explanatory reference to King John, ‘The Great Charter was Signed by the King at a Conference Between Him and the Barons at Running-Mead, or Runnemede, Near Staines, on the 19th October, 1215’. Kean (n 164) 16.

168 Kean, Shakespeare’s Play of ‘King John’, vii cited in Schoch (n 23) 151.

169 Kean (n 164) vii.

170 Ibid.

171 Playbill, King John, Princess’s Theatre, London, 9 February 1852 (Princess’s Theatre production file, Theatre Museum, London) cited in Schoch (n 23) 151.

172 Ellison (n 66) 295.

173 See ‘Our London Correspondence’ 20 September 1899 Glasgow Herald Issue 225 in The British Library Newspapers.

174 In 1889, Tree had staged a production of King John at the Crystal Palace, and reviews of the production do not mention the inclusion of the tableaux or any reference to Magna Carta (The Era, 21st September 1889; Punch, 28th September 1889; Pall Mall Gazette, 20th September 1889).

175 Virginia Mason Vaughan, ‘A Study in Subversion and Containment’ in Deborah T Curren-Aquino (ed), King John: New Perspectives (University of Delaware Press 1989) 71.

176 ‘King John’ by William Shakespeare, Programme for production of ‘King John’ and includes synopsis of scenery (Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham, MS111/93).

177 King John Souvenir Programme (1899) in Herbert Beerbohm Tree Archive, University of Bristol Theatre Collection, HBT/000040/1.

178 Programme for King John by Beerbohm Tree in Herbert Beerbohm Tree Archive, University of Bristol Theatre Collection, HBT/000142/1.

179 The Era, 2nd September 1899.

180 The Licensed Victuallers’ Mirror (London, England) 6th November 1899.

181 Programme for King John (n 177) page 1.

182 Ibid.

183 Schoch (n 97) 152.

184 Programme for King John (n 177) page 8.

185 Ibid.

186 Ibid.

187 BA Kachur, ‘Shakespeare Politicized: Beerbohm Tree’s King John and the Boer War’ (1992) 12 Periodicals Archive Online 25, 38.

188 Programme for King John (n 177) page 8.

189 Fly Plot for King John by Beerbohm Tree in Herbert Beerbohm Tree Archive, University of Bristol Theatre Collection, HBT.00040.7.

190 Schoch (n 97) 154.

191 Lander and Tobin (n 59) 102.

192 Notes from 13th September for King John by Beerbohm Tree in Herbert Beerbohm Tree Archive, University of Bristol Theatre Collection, HBT.00040.44

193 Notes from 13th September for King John (n 191).

194 Magna Charta notes for King John at Her Majesty’s Theatre by Beerbohm Tree in Herbert Beerbohm Tree Archive, University of Bristol Theatre Collection, HBT. 000040.13

195 Programme for King John (n 177) page 1.

196 For a discussion on the shift from Hero to Tyrant see ‘King John’ The Era (London, England) 23 September 1899 Issue 3183.

197 Ellison (n 66) 302.

198 Ibid.

199 Ibid 298.

200 The Daily Telegraph discusses King John as a tyrant. See, ‘Her Majesty’s Theatre’ The Daily Telegraph (London, England) 21 September 1899 Issue 13844 p. 8; Ellison (n 66) 297.

201 The Sporting Gazette, 23 September 1899.

202 See ‘“King John” in London’ Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales) 22 September 1899 Issue 9464.

203 Pall Mall Gazette, 19th September 1899.

204 Ellison (n 66) 296.

205 Ibid.

206 Hearth and Home, volume XVII, no 438, 5th October 1899.

207 See The Standard, 27th December 1875.

208 Ellison (n 66) 296.

209 ‘Her Majesty’s Theatre’ The Daily Telegraph (London, England) 21 September 1899 Issue 13844 p. 8

210 Schoch (n 97) 153.

211 For example, the satirical magazine, Punch included a comic about the tableaux; ‘King John signing the Long Lease of Her Majesty’s Theatre’ (Punch, 18th October 1899).

212 The Morning Post, 21 September 1899. For a discussion that contests this reading of Elizabethan constitutionalism, see Ian Ward, ‘A Charmed Spectacle: England and Its Constitutional Imagination’ (2000) 22 Liverpool Law Review 235.

213 Harold Child, ‘The Stage-History of King John’ in The New Shakespeare: King John (CUP 1969) lxxviii.

214 Racing Times, 7 October 1899.

215 BA Kachur, ‘Shakespeare Politicized: Beerbohm Tree’s King John and the Boer War’ (1992) 12 Periodicals Archive Online 25, 29.

216 Pick-Me-Up, volume XXIII, no. 577, 21st October 1899.

217 Braunmuller (n 8) 91.

218 The Anthenaeum, 23 September 1899, 427; ‘Gossip of the Day’ Yorkshire Evening Post 21 September 1899 Issue 2829, 2.

219 Kachur (n 214) 38.

220 Richard Foulkes, Performing Shakespeare in the Age of Empire (Cambridge University Press 2002) 135–38.

221 ‘London and Magna Carta’ (leaflet from City of London, The British Library and The Inns of Court, 2015).

222 Radin (n 1).

223 The use of promotional materials by producers is seen in Kemble’s production, but also Richard W Schoch considered advertising. See Schoch (n 23). See also Prince (n 70) 73.

224 Clare Brennan, ‘King John Review – a Stunning Pageant’ The Observer (3 May 2015).

225 For a discussion on the commercial value of Magna Carta in a different context see Lock and Sims (n 33).