Theme: Shakespeare's historical dramas

2.3 The main themes analysis
Power
In the play, Arthur has the best legal claim to England's throne, but the problem is that he's just a little kid, and he isn't exactly fit to rule. As we see, Arthur's legal right to rule is nothing without the power to back it up. That's why John, who has all the power, gets to keep the crown... until he gets poisoned by a monk, anyway.
That brings us to our next point. The play also explores the monarch's relationship with the Catholic Church. King John thinks that he can defy Pandolf and the Pope and get away with it because he is a king, with military power, while the Church only has spiritual power. But he underestimates the Church's power of moral authority—basically, the power of its words. Through these words, the Church can actually inspire armies to rise up against John, and then presto, he's got a military problem on his hands.
One of the lessons of the play seems to be that power comes in many forms, and a king must constantly be on his toes in order to maintain it.¹⁴
Family
Family relationships are always messy in Shakespeare's plays, especially when royal families are involved. And by "messy," we don't just mean complicated; we mean they're bloody, too. In King John, an uncle wants to snuff out his nephew, mothers are accused of giving birth to "bastard" children, and two brothers squabble over land. Dang. Why all the family drama?
Basically, it boils down to the issue of family inheritance, or who gets what when a father dies. In Shakespeare's day, a man's titles, wealth, and land passed down to his oldest son. That means daughters, younger sons, and illegitimate kids got shafted.
But what happens if a man's oldest son is dead? What happens if a man's oldest son turns out to be the biological child of another man? These kinds of inheritance problems were a huge concern for Shakespeare. In King John, the issue gets played out in two story lines: 1) King John and Arthur fight over the crown because nobody can agree about which one of King Henry II's descendants should have inherited the throne; and 2) the Falconbridge brothers get into an ugly legal battle over who should inherit their dead dad's land.
Betrayal
From beginning to end, King John is rife with all manner of political double-crosses. Actually, they're usually more like triple-crosses, or even more. For example, King Philip betrays Constance and Arthur when he thinks he can secure a good deal for his son Louis; but then he betrays his new alliance with King John when Cardinal Pandolf brings the pressure of the Church to bear on him.
Even more complicated are the betrayals in the second half of the play. The English noblemen betray King John because they think he has murdered Arthur; but after joining forces with Louis the Dauphin and making war on King John, they learn from Count Melun (who is betraying Louis by revealing this information) that Louis plans to betray them by executing them after the war's over; so then they betray Louis and join back up with King John.
Warfare
The picture of war we get from Shakespeare's King John isn't all that different from what we find in a lot of other works of literature. We hear a lot about the horror of war (especially in Act 2, Scene 1). But interestingly enough, even though the characters in the play all seem aware of the horrors of war, many of them seem eager to rush into war at the slightest opportunity.
For example, Austria and King Philip almost destroy Angers without waiting for Châtillon to report back from King John; it's only when Constance wisely reminds them that it would be a senseless act of violence for them to do this that they give it up. It's sort of as if none of these characters really understands the horrors of war until they hit close to home—like when the Bastard reflects on the civil war that is tearing England apart in Act IV. It's easy to be all gung-ho about war when it's happening to other people far away.
Moral issues aside, King John also shows us that chance plays a huge role in the outcome of warfare. This makes it impossible for any single commander to take full responsibility for how things turn out because the events that determine winners and losers are so random.¹⁵