Dan Breen, Associate Professor in the Department of Literatures in English, has published an article in the University of North Carolina journal of literary criticism, Studies in Philology. The article is titled "Bale, Heywood, and the Politics of Necessity."
The essay offers a reading of two early sixteenth-century plays, John Bale’s Kynge Johan and John Heywood’s Play of the Wether, in terms of their Henrician (and possibly early Elizabethan) political resonances. Unlike most such critical accounts of these plays, which often consider them in terms of their relevance to specific episodes of ecclesiastical or courtly controversy, this study suggests that Bale and Heywood represent a particular political practice in order to stage a more broadly theoretical political intervention. The article argues that the plays’ interest in acts of petitioning—the licit process through which English subjects may seek redress of grievances from the courts, Parliament, or the Crown—serves to legitimate the condition of need as a basis for broad political participation.
The article appears in the fall 2024 issue of the journal, which can be accessed at Ithaca College through JSTOR.