John Heywood Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Peter Happé

Critical Essay by Peter Happé

SOURCE: “Dramatic Images of Kingship in Heywood and Bale,” in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 39, No. 2, Spring 1999, pp. 239-53.

In the following essay, Happé connects The Play of the Weather with the political events of the period in which it was written, particularly linking the play's depiction of Jupiter with Henry VIII.

This realm of England is an Empire … governed by one supreme head and king, having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same.

These words in the Act in Restraint of Appeals of 1553 underlie the dramatic treatment of Henry VIII in John Heywood's The Play of the Wether and John Bale's King Johan.¹ That the plays were written within a few years of one another may give some political insights for the period, but I am primarily concerned with the way these impersonations arise in a literary and...
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