Playing with Books in John Bale's Three Laws

Abstract

It has become something of a critical commonplace to talk about John Bale's deep ambivalence about drama as a representational practice. Using drama against itself, Bale, in the words of recent criticism, seeks to expose the theatricality of the Roman Church in which he, a former Carmelite, had been formed. Turning to his plays as books, as both artefacts and as literature, the purpose of this article is not to sidestep or overlook the problem of Bale's paradoxical antitheatricalism. Instead, by reappraising his plays as texts to be bought and read it suggests new ways of thinking about his attitude towards drama as an art form. Focusing on Three Laws, which was printed twice in Bale's lifetime, in c. 1547 in Wesel by Derick van der Straten and in London in 1562 by Thomas Colwell, this article is interested in both the book as subject in the play, and the subject of the play's history as a book, and suggests that Bale's attitude towards books reveals clues about the way he intended the play to be used and read.