ABSTRACT
In England: An Elegy, Roger Scruton identifies four themes in Shakespeare that go 'to the heart of English culture'. They are: 'the theme of the common people', 'the theme of the individual', 'the theme of England', and 'the theme of enchantment'. Shakespeare's histories dramatise the English constitution and present the Crown as its core idea. The Crown is the mysterious corporate person which is the spirit of England. The King John admired or defended by Bale, Tyndale and Foxe is a more complex creature in Shakespeare's play. According to Dermot Cavanagh: 'As John Bale's work demonstrates, the reputation of King John was central to the formation of protestant historiography in England during the sixteenth century'. King John is all about England, or rather all about England's, competing images of a nation torn between Europe and Britain, divided by religion and monarchy.
