Discordant Voices

This chapter looks at Heywood’s most abrasive and experimental interlude, which sets a corrupt Pardoner against an enigmatic, elusive Friar in violent dispute over which of them merits alms from the audience. Rather than being merely a disorienting theatrical tour de force, in which both speakers are instructed to preach ‘even at the same time’, the chapter argues that the interlude was prompted by a specific act of bloody sacrilege committed by two priests in 1532. It suggests both the dramaturgical daring and subtlety of the interlude, and its capacity to reflect, powerfully, on the shocking implications of the priests’ violence, and the wider confessional rancour between the clergy and their critics in London in the period.