The pre-eminent name in early Tudor plays is John Heywood’s. Heywood was part of a leading intellectual family, at a time when London had a wealth of aristocratic scholars, when Renaissance learning was at a fever pitch. Heywood himself was from an obscure family and rose by his own musical talent to be master of the royal choir school. But he married into Sir Thomas More’s family, by means of niece Jane Rastell. Jane’s father John Rastell had a dedicated theater built into his London house; he too wrote plays, while his wife sewed costumes. The entire family seems to have been crazy for the stage, translating French farces and writing original plays.
John Heywood and his family remained Roman Catholic during the early Tudor Reformation years. Sir Thomas More, as Lord Chancellor, was required to follow the King’s lead in rejecting the Roman church, but he refused and was executed. Rastell and Heywood were not apparently under the same pressure. Heywood served four Tudor monarchs, which means he survived the Edward-Mary-Elizabeth transitions. His son Jasper became a Jesuit priest, and a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, while the daughter Elizabeth married John Donne of the Ironmongers guild. Elizabeth’s son John, the poet, became the most famous literary light of the family.
John Heywood, his son Jasper, and eventually grandson John Donne all had to make difficult choices about religion. John Heywood participated in a plot against the Archbishop of Canterbury and barely escaped conviction. When Queen Mary I came to the throne, Heywood’s place was secure again. He remained in the court of Elizabeth I for a short time, but increasing restrictions against Catholics pushed him into exile in Belgium, where he died. His son Jasper, the priest, left England for an academic career in Rome and Germany, and eventually was formally exiled as well. John Donne, in his turn, reluctantly accepted ordination in the Church of England.
In “The Play of the PP,” or as we would say, the “P’s,” four medieval figures beginning with the letter P match wits to determine which of them has the best path in life. There’s no real action here, no duels or intrigues or discoveries. Each presents his case and debates the others, finding the weak points in each argument. The first thing a reader notices, coming straight from the morality and passion plays, is that the elaborate verse schemes are gone. This Interlude rhymes, but in a straight, simple way: it’s in couplets, AA BB CC DD etc. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales had led the way in a narrative verse style that had the charming sound of rhyme but could be much less artificial, and the Tudor comedies followed this model.
The Palmer is a pilgrim extraordinaire; his palm leaf insignia declare that he has been to Jerusalem. He claims to have been to every shrine foreign and domestic, including Noah’s Ark in Armenia. The Pardoner’s trade was to carry relics about and offer to use them as a means of grace for forgiveness of sins, in exchange for a donation. He challenges the Palmer to the claim of most merit, since the pilgrimages were to obtain pardon for sins, which his relics could have provided without all the voyages.
Then the Pothecary enters, and he claims superiority to both of them. It’s about sending souls to heaven, is it? Why how does the soul leave the body without the apothecary’s trade, which can kill them? The Pardoner asks him, “If ye killed a thousand in an hour’s space, when come they to heaven, dying [away] from state of grace?” The Pothecary raps out his answer, “If a thousand pardons about your necks were tied, when come they to heaven if they never died?”
Now enters the Peddler, and he claims that since only his wares can keep women happy, the other three are useless. But if they want a competition, he suggests that all of them need skill in lying, so let’s see who can tell the biggest lies.
The Pardoner starts them off by showing his relics. He claims to have the blessed jawbone of All Hallows, the big toe of the Trinity, the buttock-bone of Pentecost, and a slipper from one of the Seven Sleepers. The Pothecary declares them all smelly and disgusting, saying that the slipper must have stepped in a turd. But wait, there’s more! The eye-tooth of the Great Turk, a box of humble-bees that stung Eve in the garden, and the glass that Adam and Eve drank a toast from at their wedding!
The Pothecary has a pack of wares too, all lies: he has a little box of rhubarb to purge bile, and a lot more things with preposterous made-up names: syrapis de Byzansis, diagalanga, blanka manna, mercury sublime, and alikakabus—this last, to cure your dog of mange. Each one has health claims: take this, and you will be as strong as a cripple! Be pain-free for life! In truth, he says, the cures are as good for him as for his customers, since they make him rich.
But the play then moves to story-telling. Which of them can tell the biggest whopper? The Pothecary claims that he once cured a young lady of epilepsy by putting an explosive plug into her anus and firing it off: it flew ten miles and blew up a castle, and cured the young lady too! The Pardoner takes up the challenge: once, to help a dead friend, he sought her soul in Purgatory, and even in Hell! When Lucifer heard it was a woman he sought, he gave him carte blanche to take her back. Margery Coorson (rhymes with “whoreson”) is in Hell’s kitchen, turning a spit, and when the Pardoner leads her out, the demons all cheer to see the last of her. Lucifer begs him: please, please send all the women to heaven! One woman is more trouble than ten men!
The Palmer’s lie is short and simple: in all the lands he’s traveled, never once has he seen a woman in a bad temper. The Peddler, in judging this whopper to be the biggest, challenges them to line up women:
Three of the youngest and three of the oldest,
Three of the hottest and three of the coldest,
Three of the wisest and three of the shrewdest,
Three of the chastest and three of the lewdest,
Three of the lowest and three of the highest,
Three of the farthest and three of the nighest,
Three of the fairest and three of the maddest,
Three of the foulest [foul-mouthed] and three of the saddest [most serious],
And when all these threes be had asunder,
Of each three, two, justly by number,
Shall be found shrews: except this fall
That ye hap to find them shrews all!
I give you his entire patter not for the misogyny, but for the music of the words. It’s not the music of the earlier alliterative verses, it’s a newer sound. Not new to modern ears, but quite different from the speeches of Noah and Joseph. The meter falls into the jog-trot of anapests: THREE of the HOTtest and THREE of the COLDest. We know that the future of narrative verse was in iambs, and we’re not there yet, not quite. But getting closer, for example, “shall BE found SHREWS: exCEPT this FALL” does fall into four iambic feet.
The play closes with the Peddler’s sudden awareness that they’ve been talking in large and loose ways, and it’s time to come back to earth. In fact, he says, the Palmer and Pardoner are both on the right path: pardon for sins is a good thing. Let us try to be virtuous. The Pothecary disclaims any virtuous merit, but the Peddler won’t hear it. He, too, can try to follow the example: and so may we all. In fact, he closes with an apology to the audience:
Then to our reason God give us His grace
That we may follow with faith so firmly
His commandments that we may purchase
His love, and so consequently
To believe his Church fast and faithfully;
So that we may, by his promise,
Be kept out of error in any wise.
And all that hath ‘scaped us here by negligence,
We clearly revoke and forsake it.
To pass the time without offense
Was the cause why the maker did make it;
And so we humbly beseech you to take it:
Beseeching Our Lord to prosper you all
In the faith of his Church Universal!
Note: I followed here the text as edited and modernized in spelling by John Gasner, in Medieval and Tudor Drama (New York: Applause Theater Books, 1963).