John Heywood

John Heywood (c. 1497 – c. 1580) was an English writer known for his plays, poems, and collection of proverbs. Although he is best known as a playwright, he was also active as a musician and composer, though no musical works survive.

Heywood was born in 1497, probably in Coventry, and moved to London some time in his late teens. He spent time at Broadgate Hall, Oxford, and was active at the royal court by 1520 as a singer. He did not have the education of some of his peers; he was very intelligent, as can be seen by his translation of Johan Johan from the original French La Farce du paste. By 1519, he was being paid 100 shillings four times a year for being a 'synger' in the royal court of Henry VIII. In 1523 Heywood became a member of the Mercers' Company in London. He began receiving a salary as a virginal player in 1527. By 1523, records of London Freemans indicate, John Heywood was married to Elizabeth Rastell, daughter of John Rastell the printer. Through this marriage, Heywood entered into a very dramatic family. Rastell was a composer of interludes and was the first publisher of plays in England. When Rastell built his own house in Finsbury Fields, he built a stage explicitly for the performance of plays, and his wife made costumes. It appears that the whole family, including Thomas More, were involved in these productions. In this private theatre, Heywood found an audience for his early works, and a strong artistic influence in his father-in-law. In the 1520s and 1530s, he was writing and producing interludes for the royal court. He enjoyed the patronage of Edward VI and Mary I, writing plays to present at court. While some of his plays call for music, no songs or texts survive.

Heywood was retained at four subsequent royal courts (Henry, Edward, Mary, Elizabeth), despite the unpopular political views of his family and him. Heywood was a devout Catholic, and there are signs that he was a favourite of King Henry despite his political beliefs (Henry despite his split with Rome was a staunch believer in the Catholic faith). In 1530, he was made the Common Measurer of the Mercer company, though he didn't appear to work with cloth in any way in his career. In 1533, he received a gilt cup from the king. Heywood was in a politically unstable environment during the creation of the Church of England, and he was not timid about letting his political views be known. Greg Walker notes that Heywood wrote a poem in defence of Princess Mary shortly after she was disinherited. In plays like the Four PP (pronounced "pees", plural of the name of the letter P), Heywood takes a page from Chaucer's book in representing a corrupt Pardoner, but at the end of the play the Pedler chastises the Pothecary for "raylynge her openly / At pardons and relyques so leudly" (lines 1199–1200). Heywood's representations in his plays cater to popular tastes but contain an undercurrent of Catholic conservatism. The Palmer ends the play with the blessing "besechynge our lorde to prosper you all / In the fayth of hys churche universall" (line 1234). Walker reads this as an indication of Heywood's desire to persuade the King to avoid creating any sort of schism. Heywood is therefore more conciliatory than his famous uncle-in-law Thomas More, who was executed for his religious beliefs in the face of Henry VIII's changes. Heywood was arrested in a plot in 1543 to arraign Archbishop Cranmer for heresy, and walked to the gallows; a contemporary writer, Sir John Harington, observed that Heywood "escaped hanging with his mirth" (7). Heywood was most successful in Mary's court. Though Heywood had performed for Elizabeth's court, he was forced to flee England because of the Act of Uniformity against Catholics in 1564. He died in Mechelen, in present-day Belgium.

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