A Scribbled Form: Shakespeare’s Missing Magna Carta

The surprise absence of Magna Carta from King John has been attributed to Shakespeare’s obliviousness. But the Catholic cult of the Great Charter as a contract between church and state suggests that the “earthy name” of Runnymede is implied by the religious politics of the play. In particular, references to the Charter’s instigator, Archbishop Langton, and John’s assertion of “the free breath of a sacred king,” relate to Pope Innocent’s doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies and assume fresh significance in light of political theology. Then, the play’s obsession with agency emerges as a response to the representational regime inaugurated in Magna Carta, and its skepticism toward writing as a reflex of Shakespeare’s authorial anxieties. This drama of weak sovereignty escapes the impasse of the Trauerspiel, however, through its staging of the “glory” described by Giorgio Agamben as constitutive of democracy: an aesthetic turn figured both in the Bastard’s project to “Be great in act” and in the capacity of audiences to acclaim or “gape and point” at kings.