The Complete King John: An Annotated Edition of the Shakespeare Play

King John is quite problematic. As the ending is not a satisfying resolution, the audience is left without a sense of completion. It appears everything is left up in the air, unlike the satisfying endings of Lear, Macbeth, or even Hamlet in all of which it is clear that the world will go on despite the tragic events which transpired before. “The ending rushes not to closure, as some have suggested, but to another threshold, thus reinforcing the play’s overall fluid, mutable temper” (Curren-Aquino, 266).