Rising out of obscurity around 1547 and sinking back just as rapidly, Luke Shepherd's works spring from quite disparate motives and display a variety of styles. They range from a single-sheet folio poem (a precursor of the broadside ballad) to pious meditations on death. His verse is often compared with that of John Skelton for its skewed meter and macaronic Latin parodies. Shepherd's decidedly anti-Catholic works display a certain virtuosity in combining personal invective against conservative priests and their theological positions with various fictional and recognizably Protestant literary devices. His satiric verse lies at the core of the Tudor ballad tradition-works written with an eye on literary form while adhering to an explicitly partisan political or theological agenda. With the exception of A Godly and Wholesome Preservative against Desperation (1548"), they are voices in a chorus of protest during the Reformation using native English literary styles for political ends and...