made a number of changes with the clear and most persistent intention
of touching upon political questions of his time.

If, for instance, Shakspere's 'King John' is compared with the old play,
'The Troublesome Raigne,' and with the chronicles from which (but more
especially from the former piece) the poet has drawn the plan of
his dramatic action, it will be seen that very definite political
tendencies of what he had before him were suppressed. New ones are
put in their place. Shakspere makes his 'King John' go through two
different, wholly unhistorical struggles: _one against a foe at
home, who contests the King's legitimate right; the other against
Romanists who think it a sacred duty to overthrow the heretic_.
These were not the feuds with which the King John of history had to
contend.

But the daughter from the unhappy marriage of Henry VIII. and the
faithless Anne Boleyn--Queen Elizabeth--had, during her whole lifetime,
to contend against rebels who held Mary Stuart to be the legitimate
successor; and it was Queen Elizabeth who had always to remain armed
against a confederacy of enemies who, encouraged by the Pope, made war
upon the 'heretic' on the throne of England.

Thus, in the Globe Theatre, questions of the State were discussed; and
politics had their distinct place there. Yet who would enforce the rules
of censorship upon such language as this:--

This England never did, and never shall,
Lie at the proud feet of a Conqueror
But when it first did help to wound itself.
... Nought shall make us rue