SOURCE: “Lucian's Satire of Philosophers in Heywood's Play of the Wether,” in Medieval English Theatre, Vol. 18, 1996, pp. 142-60.

In the following essay, Forest-Hill argues that in The Play of the Weather Heywood borrows a satire of ancient philosophers by the classical writer Lucian to make contentious political statements.

Critics have long recognised that John Heywood used the petitions for weather from Lucian's Dialogue Icaromenippus as the source for his Play of the Wether,¹ but they have not observed that the satire of philosophers from the same source is also used in the play. Indeed in the 1991 edition of Heywood's plays Richard Axton remarks that ‘two important features of Icaromenippus do not figure in Wether, although Heywood could easily have made use of them: the satire of philosophers and the banquet’.² In this paper I will argue that Heywood does, in fact, use the satire of philosophers, that because...