King Johna s evil reputation has outlasted and proved more enduring than that of Richard III, whose notoriety seemed ensured thanks to Shakespearea s portrayal of him. The paradox is even greater when we realize that this portrait of John endures despite Shakespearea s portrait of him in the play King John, where he hardly comes off as a villain at all. Here Igor Djordjevic argues that the story of Johna s transformation in cultural memory has never been told completely, perhaps because the crucial moment in Johna s change back to villainy is a literary one: it occurs at the point when the...