King John has the distinction of being the only play I've ever seen the RSC do at Stratford. It was some time ago now, and being from the other side of the world King John was the play that was playing when I visited Stratford, so King John was the play that I saw. I enjoyed it then and I enjoy it now, just having read it for the first time. I've heard it referred to as one of the worst Shakespeare plays, but frankly whenever I hear that assessment being made I can only conclude the lucky assessor has never been faced with the interminable bore that is The Comedy of Errors. Give me King John any day over that piece of idiocy.

To be honest, I don't recall a lot about seeing the play other than Constance, and the kid on top of the wall. Reading it, I'm far more aware of the politics and shifting allegiances, and I'm far more struck and amused by the wrangling of the citizen of Angiers, as he tries to get these two pain in the arse armies off the front lawn of his poor city.

I will say, however, that the extraneous matter in this edition (the introductory essay, the ending textual analysis and so forth) have done their absolute level best to suck all the pleasure from the text, so it is to the credit of the play itself that it kept my interest despite being fair suffocated by useless detail. Well, perhaps it's not useless, if you've got a burning desire to wade at length, in tiny type, through the different performance practices of every single bloody actor in history to ever take on one of the major roles in this play. Suffice to say, if this is the presentation typical of the New Cambridge Shakespeare I shall be doing my utmost to avoid their editions in future.