"LEGITIMATION, NAME, AND ALL IS GONE": Bastardy and Bureucracy in Shakespeare's King John
In a play where the central concern is the exercise of legitimate power-power between classes, between individuals, between nations, between the crown and its subjects-the first appearance of Philip Bastard in act one engages nearly all the claimants who vie for legitimacy during the course of King...
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| Published in: | Journal for early modern cultural studies 2004-10, Vol.4 (2), p.35 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | In a play where the central concern is the exercise of legitimate power-power between classes, between individuals, between nations, between the crown and its subjects-the first appearance of Philip Bastard in act one engages nearly all the claimants who vie for legitimacy during the course of King John. Anderson discusses the nature of the privilege, which derives from the loss of the very legitimacy that all parties seem to covet early in William Shakespeare's play, King John. With its representation of a monarch who becomes nothing more than a "scribbled form, drawn with a pen," King John appears interested in the powerful claims of an emerging bureaucratic network of authority exemplified by the Bastard's "madcap" relationship to his past, his crown and his country. |
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| ISSN: | 1531-0485 1553-3786 |