John Bale's King Johan

by John Bale

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Hardcover

Published January 1, 1969

About the author

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Reviews

[Yorgos · Rating 1 out of 5]

Notable as the first English play to represent historical personages on the stage, but otherwise absolute doggerel. Dramatic representation is still very new at this point (1530s), so this is mostly homiletic. Ironically Bale's poetic imagination is only stirred up by the Catholicism he spends so much time lampooning, but even in these passages he's only as good as Skelton at his worst. (I do think the inclusion of "a bone of the Trinity" in the mock list of relics is funny though). So needless to say this sucks. Random Play June #6--Greece Intermission #1, BUMMING it, very bad days.

On an unrelated note I was carrying this [Elizabethan Five History Plays] around in the National Gallery and writing notes in the back, when a gallery attendant came up to inform me that writing was prohibited in the gallery, but photography is allowed, and I was allowed to keep the pencil that was ostensibly a hazard, which was kind of surreal and funny so there's that.

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I though the edition would be better but actually it kind of sucks? The glossary in the back is both overinclusive (Carmelites) and underinclusive (Peter's Pence) and the modernization is really haphazard.

[Jackie]

so funny to log this lol but i'm doing it. poison that guy