Abstract
Writing to Sir William Paget shortly after the death of Henry VIII, Bishop Gardiner of Winchester complained
Tomorrow the parishioners of this parish and I have agreed to have solemn dirge for our late sovereign lord and master in earnest as becomes us and tomorrow certain players of my lord of Oxford’s, as they say, intend on the other side within this borough of Southwark to have a solemn play to try who shall have most resort, they in game or I in earnest.1
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Bibliography
The historical context and conditions of drama and literature is an expanding field with wide scope for further development. New studies have been published focusing on print culture which will have a tremendous impact on the way in which we approach this interdisciplinary field. Essential methodological concerns are discussed in Louis Montrose’s ‘Renaissance Literary Studies and the Subject of History’ and Jean Howard’s ‘The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies’, both found in English Literary Renaissance, 16 (1986) 5–43.
Also important are Robert Hume’s ‘Texts within Contexts: Notes Toward a Historical Method’, Philological Quarterly, 71 (1992) 69–100
and Linda Woodbridge’s ‘Patchwork: Piecing the Early Modern Mind in England’s First Century of Print Culture’, English Literary Renaissance, 23 (1993) 5–45.
At present, scholarly literature on the early Tudor press and stage is generally divided along two lines: sources and analyses. The sources are clearly crucial, and having critically reliable texts is essential when facsimiles or filmed originals are unavailable. Chief among the collections of dramatic sources for this period is the ongoing Records of Early English Drama series from Toronto University Press, which publishes archival records dealing with drama and performance. Also important is Ian Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records: A Chronological Topography to 1558 (Toronto: Toronto UP, 1984) which includes a comprehensive bibliography. The best editions of the works of individual authors are found in the ‘Tudor Interludes’ series published by Brewer. Volumes to date include Three Rastell Plays, ed. R. Axton; The Plays of Henry Medwall, ed. A. Nelson; Three Tudor Classical Interludes, ed. M. Axton; The Complete Plays of John Bale, ed. P. Happé; and The Plays of John Heywood, ed. R. Axton and P. Happ é.
For dramatic analysis of the period as a whole, see Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages 1300–1660 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia UP; 3 vols, 1959–81: vol. 1, 2nd edn, 1980).
Sydney Anglo’s essential Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969)
documents the political use of Tudor display, while Gail Gibson, The Theatre of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago and London: Chicago UP, 1989)
and Marianne Briscoe and John Coldeway (eds), Contents for Early English Drama (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989)
offer illuminating background material on specific aspects of late-medieval popular drama. The political uses of the stage during Henry VIII’s reign have been recently addressed by Paul White’s Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage and Playing in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993)
and Greg Walker, Plays of Persuasion: Drama and Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991).
Sources for literary texts of the period are too numerous to mention individually. Major authors like More, Wyatt and Skelton have their modern editors while the Early English Text Society and the Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies series issue editions of important early English printed or MS texts. The vast majority of popular titles during the period remain unedited.
For analytical studies of individual authors or themes, the student is more amply provided for. Useful introductions to the humanist literature in the reign of Henry VIII are David Carlson, English Humanist Books: Writers and Patrons, Manuscript and Print, 1475–1525 (Toronto and London: Toronto UP, 1993)
and Alistair Fox, Politics and Literature in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989)
and Alistair Fox and John Guy, Reassessing the Henrican Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform 1500–1550 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).
Protestant literature is treated in John King’s English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1982).
For traditional pious literature, see Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1992)
chs 2, 6, 7 and Helen White, The Tudor Books of Private Devotion (Madison, WI: Wisconsin UP, 1951).
For More’s polemical works, see the indispensable introductions to the individual volumes in the Yale series, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1964-). Increasing attention is being paid to so-called popular culture and its role in the politics of Henry VIII’s reign. For the prophecies, see Sharon Jansen, Political Protest and Prophecy under Henry VIII (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1991).
The standard summary of Cromwell’s efforts as censor and propagandist is still G.R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1972; paperback, 1985) but Elton’s forté was political rather than literary analysis. For Cromwell’s stable of writers, see Edward Riegler, ‘Printing, Protestantism and Politics; Thomas Cromwell and Religious Reform’, unpublished PhD dissertation, UCLA, 1978.
The most important new area to open in the study of literature in the early modern period concerns what is being called print culture. Essential general reading in this field is Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450–1800 (trans. D. Gerard, London: Verso, 1984)
and Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2 vols, 1979; reissued in one volume paperback, 1980).
That such concerns are profoundly political has been amply demonstrated by recent studies; Tessa Watt’s Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991)
and R.W. Scribner’s For the Sake of Simple Folk (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981).
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House, S.B. (1995). Literature, Drama and Politics. In: MacCulloch, D. (eds) The Reign of Henry VIII. Problems in Focus Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24214-6_9
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