Shakespeare’s plays, like most plays written for the public theatres, avoid making direct references or clear allusions to the King’s writings. Yet these writings were part of the culture in which Shakespeare worked and he seems to have been acutely aware of the complex issues of control, agency, perception, interpretation, and trust that they raise. This chapter explores the interaction between Shakespeare’s plays, James’s writings, and the critical traditions their supposed relationship has generated. Focusing in particular on Measure for Measure and Macbeth, it argues that Shakespeare uses James’s writings not as sources but as prompts for imaginatively interrogating the relationship between rulers and subjects. These two plays, the chapter proposes, enact a kind of resistance to the King’s attempts to control the speech and thought of his subjects through his writings. The discussion also considers how Middleton’s apparent revision of Measure for Measure and Macbeth leaves us with texts reshaped by the political and cultural concerns of the later Jacobean period. Finally, the chapter asks how the King himself responded to Shakespeare’s plays. These plays and their subsequent reception highlight the difficulties James faced in attempting to use his books to determine how he was perceived and remembered.