SOURCE: “Experiment and Variety in John Heywood's Plays,” in Renaissance Drama, Vol. VII, 1964, pp. 6-11.

In the following essay, Craik discusses The Play of the Weather, The Four PP, and The Pardoner and the Friar as examples of the Heywood's innovative dramatic technique.

John Heywood may be considered as standing in a line of English comedy connecting Chaucer and Shakespeare. Like them, he writes for sophisticated hearers who also appreciate robust humor and occasional coarseness; and, like theirs, his best work has the appearance of evolving naturally—even unexpectedly—and not of being worked out beforehand in every detail. Though his characteristic dramatic method is evidently that of the disputation between opponents, he never seems in any danger of writing the same play twice. This essay is an attempt to show something of Heywood's variety and his experimenting and improvising technique as a dramatist, in The Play of...