John Heywood

John Heywood: Comedy and Survival in Tudor England offers the first comprehensive study of the long and varied career of the Tudor playwright, poet, musician, performer, humourist, and collector of epigrams, John Heywood (c.1497–1578). It roots his life and work in the context of the profound and often violent religious, political, and cultural changes of the Tudor century that variously provoked, enabled, and restricted the scope of his creativity, and makes the case for Heywood as both one of the sixteenth century’s most fascinating dramatic and literary figures and a revealing lens through which to view the cultural history of the period. It goes beyond the clichés of popular history, beyond Shakespeare and the purpose-built playhouses, beyond the canonical Henrician court poets and writers of the Elizabethan ‘Golden Age’, beyond even the experiences of the century’s chief ministers, intellectuals, and martyrs, to a theatrical and literary world less visible in the conventional sources. It opens a window on a culture in which the actions of monarchs, their councillors, and their victims were witnessed and reflected upon at one remove, but subjected to vigorous, witty, and often audacious criticism and comment.

When all that is to Was ys brought: John Heywood’s ‘rythme declaringe his own life and nature’

This essay provides the first edition and discussion of the ballad When all that is to Was ys brought, copied sometime between 1561 and 1585 into a draft account book relating to the will of Dr William Bill, dean of Westminster (Durham Cathedral Add. MS 243, fol. 93r-v). Its last line, ‘Amen Quoth Iohn heywood’, indicates that its author was the court entertainer John Heywood (b. 1496/7–d. in or after 1578) and internal evidence suggests that it was written shortly before he went into exile on account of his Catholic faith in 1564. The ballad includes references to Heywood’s family and allusions to several works of Thomas More, especially A Dialogue of Comfort, suggesting that it is Heywood’s personal reflection on his spiritual life under four English monarchs. Its subject matter makes it likely that it is also the poem described as ‘a rythme declaringe his own life and nature’, which Heywood sent to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and Queen Elizabeth via John Wilson in 1574 to support his petition to be allowed to remain in the Spanish Netherlands.

Folly

According to the chronicler Edward Hall, the execution of Sir Thomas More, who was sentenced to die on the gallows for refusing to acknowledge the Royal Supremacy, was characterized by a characteristically frivolous lack of decorum on the part of More himself, most notably on the scaffold itself. Both More’s evangelical opponents and his catholic allies noted his merry disposition. This article examines how the ideas of mirth and folly are woven through both More’s public career and the life of his close contemporary and nephew, the Catholic writer and playwright John Heywood. It considers the two men’s adoption and adaptation of classical and medieval notions of foolishness and comedy for their own ends in the dangerous years of Henry VIII’s Reformation. To understand More’s alleged lapse in judgment during his own execution and what this might suggest about the uses of mirth in pre-modern culture more generally, the article analyzes it in the context of his attitude towards theater and hisUtopiaas a satire for and of humanists.