SOURCE: “Formation of the Christian Self in The Four P.P.,” in Early Drama to 1600, edited by Albert H. Tricomi, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1987, pp. 143-52.

In the following essay, Finkelstein argues that The Four PP owes much to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, although Heywood's play subtly modifies many of Chaucer's anti-feminist themes.

In the The Four P.P. John Heywood amplifies the schematic débat plots of Witty and Witless and The Pardoner and the Friar to present a four-way competition for authority and power. Whereas The Play of the Weather mixes the débat with a morality-play structure, the well-matched opponents of our play owe more to non-dramatic sources, generally to the fabliau, but particularly to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, from which Heywood quotes.¹ The Four P.P. also exploits medieval anti-feminist portraits, as Chaucer did in creating the Wife of Bath. Nevertheless, Heywood shapes...