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Although the sixteenth century Protestant construction of the reign of King John is a familiar one – John reconfigured into a heroic-victim of the Papacy, providing evidence of England’s pre-Reformation Protestant past – what has received no attention is a further transformation of John that occurs in the last major sixteenth century text to consider his reign. Shakespeare’s King John makes full recourse to earlier Protestant reconstructions of John’s reign but goes further. This paper demonstrates John’s transformation in Shakespeare’s play from the Protestant victim of Fish’s Supplication of Beggars, Bale’s King Johnan and Foxe’s Acts and Monuments into a full-blown Protestant martyr.

Although the sixteenth century Protestant construction of the reign of King John is a familiar one – John reconfigured into a heroic-victim of the Papacy, providing evidence of England’s pre-Reformation Protestant past – what has received no attention is a further transformation of John that occurs in the last major sixteenth century text to consider his reign. Shakespeare’s King John makes full recourse to earlier Protestant reconstructions of John’s reign but goes further. This paper demonstrates John’s transformation in Shakespeare’s play from the Protestant victim of Fish’s Supplication of Beggars, Bale’s King Johnan and Foxe’s Acts and Monuments into a full-blown Protestant martyr.