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

Abstract

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.