John Bale was an extraordinarily forceful and prolific Protestant propagandist during the early stages of the Reformation in England. His emergence as a Protestant polemicist represented a complete turnabout from his earlier life as a cleric because his education and religious outlook were quite orthodox until well into his maturity. In the course of a career as a cleric, antiquarian, dramatist, historian, and publisher, he mastered a diverse array of genres including the Protestant mystery play, allegorical history play, prose tract, beast fable, Protestant saint's life, biblical commentary, polemical history, bibliography, dialogue, and autobiography. His editions and translations include goliardic verse, devotional meditation, and a variety of propagandistic forms. Although his writings had a great impact upon mid-Tudor and Elizabethan Protestant authors including Robert Crowley, John Foxe, Edmund Spenser, and the editors of the Geneva Bible (1560), his reputation has suffered from the late-Elizabethan reaction against the conventions and...