How we cite our quotes: (Act.Scene.Line)
Quote #1
KING JOHN
You came not of one mother then, it seems.
BASTARD
Most certain of one mother, mighty king—
That is well known—and, as I think, one father.
But for the certain knowledge of that truth
I put your o'er to heaven and to my mother.
Of that I doubt, as all men's children may. (1.1.59-64)
These lines from near the beginning of King John express a basic truth about the past: we can't know exactly what happened. If we can't even know exactly who our own father is, then how can we hope to understand the great complexities of history?
Quote #2
KING JOHN
What earthly name to interrogatories
Can taste the free breath of a sacred king?
Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name
So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous,
To charge me to an answer, as the Pope.
Tell him this tale, and from the mouth of England
Add thus much more, that no Italian priest
Shall tithe or toll in our dominions;
But as we under God are supreme head,
So under Him that great supremacy
Where we do reign, we will alone uphold
Without th' assistance of a mortal hand.
So tell the Pope, all reverence set apart
To him and his usurped authority. (3.1.153-166)
Many of the events in King John find echoes in events from Shakespeare's day, or in events from earlier, that people were talking about in Shakespeare's day. Because Queen Elizabeth was a Protestant, and kept England an officially Protestant country during her war with Catholic Spain, people in Elizabethan England contextualized her activity by looking back to Henry VIII, Elizabeth's father, who was the first English king to break decisively with the Catholic Church. Even though King John didn't actually break with the Church, his conflict with Pope Innocent III made people in Shakespeare's day see him as a precursor to Henry VIII and, hence to Queen Elizabeth. King John's words in this passage sound especially familiar to the ideas put forward by Parliament in the 1534 Act of Supremacy, which asserted that there was no higher authority on English land than the king.
Quote #3
KING JOHN
Though you and all the kings of Christendom
Are led so grossly by this meddling priest,
Dreading the curse that money may buy out,
And by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust,
Purchase corrupted pardon of a man
Who in that sale sells pardon from himself,
Though you and all the rest so grossly led
This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish,
Yet I alone, alone do me oppose
Against the Pope, and count his friends my foes. (3.1.168-177)
This passage has pretty much the same historical resonances as the one before it. Members of Shakespeare's original audience would have seen King John's conflict with Pope Innocent III as a foreshadowing of Henry VIII's break with the Church, and their own Queen Elizabeth's Protestant stance against Catholic Spain. In fact, these lines have more in common with the rhetoric of Shakespeare's Reformation Period than they do with the thinking at the time of the historical King John.