Rehabilitation and Reformation

This chapter looks at Heywood’s remarkable rehabilitation after his abjuration in 1543, and examines in detail his turn to a new literary form with A Dialogue of Proverbs. It offers a new reading of this little-discussed text, setting it in the context of the humanist taste for Adagia, and showing how Heywood parodies the form in a dialogue that cites ‘all the proverbs in the English tongue’ to no final effect. It then looks closely at the subsequent editions of ‘Hundreds’ of Epigrams upon proverbs that the playwright published in subsequent decades, drawing out how they both crafted a new persona for him as purveyor of comic wisdom for ‘the middling sort’ in London, and provided a vehicle for his gradual return to commentary upon social, economic, and religious issues.

The Accession of Mary Tudor

When Edward VI died, Mary Tudor’s chances of merely retaining her freedom, let alone of succeeding her brother on the throne, seemed slim. Her survival and eventual triumph over her enemies must have seemed to her supporters, as it later seemed to Cardinal Reginald Pole preaching to the Lords and Commons in Westminster, clearly providential. Heywood’s response to the accession of his former patron Mary Tudor is the subject of this chapter, which examines accounts of his oration at her coronation and the ballad he wrote to celebrate her marriage to Prince Philip of Spain, the future king Philip I. It suggests the web of delicate irony that the playwright spins in the ballad to place Philip as distinctly ‘second’ to Mary in status and significance, thus supporting the queen’s attempts to counter fears that she would be political subservient to her powerful foreign spouse.

In Kent and Christendom?

This chapter looks in detail at the evidence for Heywood’s involvement in the so called Prebendaries Plot against Thomas Cranmer in the diocese of Kent. It explores the religious divisions that provoked the complaints against Cranmer, and the interrogatories put to those interviewed over their involvement. It offers the first detailed analysis of the charges against Heywood, concluding that the playwright was not involved in any conspiracy against Cranmer, and indeed that describing the events in Kent as a ‘Plot’ is itself potentially misleading. Rather, when finally confronted with the demand that he affirm the Royal Supremacy, Heywood initially refused, and so became a traitor under the terms of the Treason Act of 1534. The chapter describes Heywood’s dramatic appearance on the scaffold with his co-accused, largely fellow members of the More circle, and his subsequent abject public abjuration.

Discord, Dissent, and Division

Even if we cannot follow Heywood’s engagement with the fine details of political events in his work in these years in quite the way that we could through his earlier interludes, it is nonetheless possible, and important, to track his path against the wider picture of English Reformation politics, the advance of royal policy and the reactions it provoked, in order to see how the twists and turns of Fortune’s favour affected him, his family, and influential patrons such as Mary Tudor, and how and why Heywood was brought to his own crisis of conscience in the winter of 1543. This chapter examines Heywood’s fortunes in the years following More’s death against the curious contortions of Henry VIII’s religious policy, describing the evolution of Henry’s Erasmian ‘middle way’ in religion, and the tensions that it permitted and exacerbated, setting the scene for Heywood’s condemnation for treason for denying the Royal Supremacy in 1542.

New Forms, New Challenges

Heywood’s songs have generally been seen by literary scholars as essentially harmless evocations of joie de vivre. This chapter looks afresh at their insistent evocation of good-will and harmony, and their rejection of malice, reading them in the light of the repressive legislation of 1533–34, which defined all opposition to the Royal Supremacy or Henry VIII’s second marriage as malicious acts of treason. It also examines the interrogation and trial of Thomas More, and More’s use of good-will as a specific defence against the charge of ‘malicious’ treason. In this context, Heywood’s songs become more pointed and political, an attempt to present himself, and the group of Catholic singing men around St Paul’s cathedral, as innocent of treason, part of a community bound together by values of loyalty, conviviality, and traditional good works of charity and hospitality in the face of increasing pressure on such things from outside.

Conscience and Satire in A Play of Love

This chapter argues that the fall of Wolsey and the promotion of More to the chancellorship also inform Heywood’s next major dramatic work, A Play of Love. Evidently designed for performance either at Lincoln’s Inn or on Rastell’s household stage, the play offers a parodic legal moot on the question of happiness and unhappiness in love. But it also offers sharp satire of the judicial methods allegedly characteristic of Wolsey’s conduct in the courts of Chancery and Star Chamber, and offers sober counsel to More as he prepared to take on the responsibility of presiding over the ‘courts of conscience’ in Wolsey’s stead.

Cynicism and Hope

This chapter offers a new reading of this powerful humanist interlude. It argues for Heywood’s authorship in collaboration with his father-in-law John Rastell, who also printed the play. It reads the play in the context of humanist debates about the injustices of contemporary society, and demonstrates that the epilogue effectively reverses the pessimism about the prospects of enacting thoroughgoing reform that characterizes the latter parts of the play. Setting the play in the context of the fall of Wolsey, the summoning of the Reformation Parliament, and the elevation of More to the chancellorship, it argues that the play was written and revised over the autumn of 1529, reflecting the newfound optimism about social reform generated in those months.

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.

Origins and Early Years

This chapter sketches what is known of Heywood’s early life and career, taking him from Coventry in the early 1500s to the royal household in the 1520s, setting out both what is known about these early years and what is not. It offers close readings of two short interludes which it is suggested were produced for performance within the humanist circle around John Rastell and Thomas More, possibly on Rastell’s newly built domestic stage at his house in Finsbury Fields. It identifies elements of these early plays that would become characteristic of Heywood’s later dramaturgy, with its subtle, innovative approach to audience engagement.

‘His own life and nature’

The conclusion addresses the themes of Erasmianism, identity, comedy, and survival that have run through the book as a whole, suggesting both the achievements and the limitations of Heywood’s life-long attempt to use drama, music, and poetry to address issues of Church and State and to remain true to the idea that writing should always be for the benefit of the commonweal. It offers a summation of the argument of the book as a whole, and makes the case again for the significance of Heywood as a writer, performer, and creative artists, and as a valuable witness to the turbulent history of the Tudor century.