John Heywood
Comedy and Survival in Tudor England
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:29th Apr '20
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
John Heywood was an important literary and theatrical pioneer in his own right, but he is also a revealing lens through which to view the wider tumultuous history of the sixteenth century. He was, through the period from the mid-1520s to the 1560s, as near to a celebrity as Tudor England possessed, famed for his 'merry' persona and good humour. But his public image concealed a deeper engagement with religious and political history. Enduringly resistant to extremism, he variously entertained, counselled, and cautioned his readers and audiences through four reigns, finding himself, as regimes changed and religious policies shifted, successively celebrated, marginalised, anathematised, condemned to death, recuperated, and celebrated once more before finally retreating into exile on the Continent in 1564. He produced plays at the courts of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, performed and taught keyboard music, wrote lyric poetry and songs, and from the mid-sixteenth century turned to collecting and publishing highly successful volumes of proverbs and epigrams for which he was remembered well into the seventeenth century. Each of these works provides a subtle, often courageously critical engagement with the politics of its moment. To study Heywood's career takes us beyond the clichés of popular history, beyond Shakespeare and the Elizabethan playhouses, beyond the canonical Henrician court poets and the 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 from the centres of power. And it allows us to re-examine the significance of an individual who deserves our attention, not only for his considerable artistic achievements, but also for the determination with which, often against the odds, he used his talents in pursuit of wider humanist cultural principles for over half a century.
As readers of Greg Walker's other books might expect, John Heywood...is a highly readable blend of political history and literary scholarship; an additional pleasure comes from the deep sense of sympathetic engagement with his subject that Walker's biographical project has clearly inspired...The book is a history of a writer and his times...If, as Walker compellingly argues, [Heywood's] wit was not only a strategy for survival, but also offered resistance to oppression and demonstrated humanist faith in reason, his merry Heywood is a worthy subject of study and admiration in our time * Review of English Studies *
...includes some of the most thorough and contextually rich analyses of any Tudor texts. The intricate and convincing connections drawn between these texts and major events in early Reformation England are models of historical scholarship. * NABMSA Reviews *
With a style lucid, engaging, and approachable, Walker weaves a remarkable, sophisticated narrative of Heywood's life, time, and creative work alongside...matters of Church and State. The result is a sensitive and deep engagement of the playwright that brings to life a figure exceptional for his discursive breadth, length of career, and humane, "merry" spirit. * Seventeenth-Century News *
not just a study of this...crucially important playwright, but also a detailed, elegantly written examination of Tudor England in these years. * Suzannah Lipscomb, Not Just The Tudors podcast *
Greg Walker's study of John Heywood, known as a Tudor dramatist, against the backdrop of English Reformation politics, magisterially reveals the inadequacy of that common soubriquet...This absorbing, detailed and witty tour de force even has an apt dust jacket... * Journal of Ecclesiastical History *
...this book is inviting and likable. It is also comprehensive and well documented with 66 pages of endnotes ranging from Tudor to current resources. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * J. S. Carducci, Winona State University, CHOICE *
The volume is a highly valuable contribution to Heywood studies that will surely inspire literary scholarship for years to come. * Sarah K. Scott, Seventeenth-Century News *
ISBN: 9780198851516
Dimensions: 240mm x 165mm x 35mm
Weight: 850g
494 pages