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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING JOHN Preface. The First Kdltion. Xing John was first printed in the First Folio, where it occupies the first place in the division of ' Histories.' The ten plays belonging to this series form as it were a great national Epic on the crises in English History from the reign of Richard II. to that of Richard III., with King John and Henry VIII. respectively as the Prologue and Epilogue of the whole. The Editors of the Folio were guided absolutely by chronological sequence in their arrangement of these plays: hence the place of King John. Source of the Play. Shakespeare's King John is a recast of an older play entitled ' The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England, ' printed for the first time in 1591, and again in 1611 and i6zz. It is significant that the title-page of the 1611 edition states that the play was ' -written ty W. Sh.; ' in the later edition boldly expanded to ' W. Shate- sfeare.' ' The TrouUetome Raigne ' may sai'ely be assigned to about the year 1589, with its pseudo-Marlowan lyrical note and classical frippery so common in the plays of the period, e. g.: -- The whistling leaves upon the trembling trees, Whistle in concert I atn Richard's son: The bubbling murmur of the water's fall, Records Philippus Reffiusfilius: Birds in their flight make music -with their wings, Filling the air with glory of my birth: Birds, bubbles, leaves, and mountains, echo, all Ring in mine ears, that I atn Richard's son' Cp. Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles, ed. by Dr F. J. Furnivall, Vols. 40, 41 (Ifaz litfs Shakespeare Library; Nichols' Six Old Plays, etc.). t ' The Troublesome Raigne' must be carefully distinguished from Bale's 'Kynge Johan' (about 1548, printed by the Camden Society, ed. by J. P. Col...

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