Complaining about the Weather

Abstract This chapter sets Heywood’s Play of the Weather in the context of the remarkable opening session of the Reformation Parliament. It reads the play’s opening lines in the context of More’s savage speech describing Wolsey as a ‘great wether’ (castrated ram), and the call for redress of ‘enormities’. It looks at More’s speech, showing for the first time how the sources differ over what More said, and suggesting that More intended at least part of what he said as implied criticism of the king’s position rather than celebration of it. It suggests Heywood, inspired and provoked by the terms of the speech, offered the court a play that also gently ironized Henry VIII’s self-serving claims, and shows how Heywood may have revised the play in 1533, adding material that gently satirized the king’s secret marriage to Anne Boleyn and his claims to be Supreme Head of the Church.