Life
1495-1563; b. 21 Nov., Cove, nr. Dunwich, Norfolk [var. Suffolk],
ed. Carmelite convent; Jesus Coll., Oxford; converted by preaching of
Lord Wentworth; revoked monastic vows; married a woman called Dorothy
on the Pauline precept (‘He who cannot contain, marry’); called
before archbishop for anti-Roman sermon at Doncaster, 1534; Kynge Johan
(1538), regarded as the earliest historical drama in English; contains
historical characters such as King John, Stephen Langton, Cardinal Pandolphus
and the the Pope [Clement VII]; poss. first acted at St Stephen’s,
Canterbury, and revived at Ipswich, 1561; enjoyed protection of Thomas
Cromwell, Earl of Essex; m. ‘faithful Dorothy’, 1537; fled Cromwell’s
at execution, 1540; resided in Germany, 1540-47, and wrote lives of Protestant
martyrs such as Oldcastle and Anne Askewe, incl. that of William Thorpe
attributed by Foxe to Tyndall, et al.; also The Image of Both Churches
after the most Wonderful and Heavenly Revelation of Sainct Johan (1550),
considered vigorous but immoderate; returned at accession of Edward VI;
rector of Swaffham, Norfolk, 1551; met Edward at Southampton, 1552; appt.
Bishop of Ossory, leaving for Ireland Dec. 1552; consecrated amid controversy
caused by his refusal of the Roman rite at his consecration, demanding
a Bible in place of the crozier, 2 Feb., 1553, Dublin; issued “The
Vocation of John Bale to the Bishopric of Ossory in Ireland” (Harleian
Miscellany, VI; publ. 1808-10); sought to suppress ‘idolatry’
[i.e., Catholicism] in Ireland and caused dissension with ‘slaughter’
in Kilkenny; fled to Dublin at accession of Queen Mary; fled to continent;
captured by Dutch and imprisoned at St Ives; imprisoned at Dover; captured
by Dutch again, pays £300; settles in Basel at accession of Elizabeth,
1558; does not take up position in Kilkenny; d. as prebendary of Canterbury
Cathedral; works include translation of Kirchmayer’s Pamachius,
filled with course and incessant abuse of priests and popery; Bale first
listed as Irish writer by Sir James Ware (De Scriptoribus Hiberniae
Libri Duo [2 vols.] (Dublin 1639; trans. edn., Harris 1739); the plays
were edited by John S. Farmer as The Dramatic Works of John Bale
(Early English Plays Ser. 1907); Bale is the subject of a novel by John
Arden (John Bale, 1988). ODNB OCEL OXTH OCIL
WJM
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Works
Older Editions, Illustrium Majoris Britanniae Scriptorum in
quinque centurias divisum ([Wesel] 1548) [continued 1557-59, indebted
to John Leland’s Collectanea and Commentarii]; King John
[Kynge Johan, 1538] (Camden Society [printed by Collier] 1838); Three Laws of Nature, New Comedy and Interlude Concerning the Three
Laws of Nature, Moises, and Christ, Corrupted by the Sodomites, Pharisees,
and Papists (1538; rep. London 1562); A Tragedy or Interlude Manifesting
the Promises of God unto Man by All Ages in the Old Lawe from the Fall
of Adam to the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ (1538), and Do.,
rep. in Old Plays (London: Robert Dodsley 1744 & edns.; rep.
[ed. W. Carew Hazlitt] 1874-76; facs. rep. NY: Benjamin Blom 1964); Acta
Romanorum Pontificum usque ad tempora Paulo IV (Basel 1538; Frankfurt
1567; Leiden 1615); Yet a Course at the Romish Fox (Zurich
1543); A Mystery of Iniquity, Contained Within the Heretical Genealogy
of Prince Pantolabus is here both Disclosed and Confuted (Geneva 1545);
‘The Vocation of John Bale to the Bishopric of Ossory in Ireland’ [1553],
in The Harleian Miscellany, VI (10 vols., London 1808-10); The
Apology of John [Johan] Bale against a Rank Papist (1555); The Image of Both Churches, after The Most Wonderfull and Heauenly
Reuelation of Sainct Iohn The Euangelist, Contayning a Very Fruitfull
Exposition or Paraphrase vpon the Same [... &c.] [compyled by
Iohn Bale] 3 Pts. (London: Thomas East [1570]) 8o.; The Pageant of
the Popes, Containing the Lives of all the Bishops of Rome from
the Beginning to the Year 1555, Englished by J[ohn] S[tudley] (London
1574); Select Works (London: Parker Society 1849), with pref. biog.
by Rev. H. Christmas.
Modern Reprints, The Collected Plays of John Bale [facs. rep. of John S. Farmered., Select Plays, 1907] (Guildford: Charles W. Traylen 1966), 347pp., containing “A comedy concerning the Three Laws of Nature, Moses, and Christ”; “Tragedy or Interlude [of] the Chief Promises of God unto Man”; “John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness”; “The Temptation of Our Lord”; “John, King of England”; “A Note on the Tragedy of David and Absolom” [British Library, Stowe MS 957]; also Notebook and Word List, with engraved port. and facs. title of “The Lawes [... &c]” ANNO DOMINI M.D.XXXVIII [1538].
Bibliography, Charles Henry Cooper Athenae Cambrigenses (1858-61), Vol. I, pp.23-30, listing 90 titles, many anonymous; also Thomas Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica; sive de scriptoribus qui in Anglia, Scotia et Hiberniae (London 1748).
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Criticism
George Saintsbury, A Short History of English Literature. (London:
Macmillan & Co.; NY: St. Martin’s Press 1963), p.227 [infra];
Paul Hadfield, [on Bale’s Irish Vocacyon], in Brendan Bradshaw,
Hadfield & Willie Maley, eds., Representing Ireland: Literature
and the Origins of Conflict, 1534-1600 (Cambridge: UP 1994); Peter
Happe, John Bale (NY: Simon & Schuster 1996), 174pp.; John
McCafferty, ‘St Patrick for the Church of Ireland: James Ussher’s Discourse’,
in Irish Studies Review (April 1998), p.89.
See also Eamon Duffy, The Stripping Of The Altars: Traditional Religion In England 1400-1580 (Yale UP 1992) [infra]; John McCafferty, ‘St Patrick for the Church of Ireland: James Ussher’s Discourse’, in Irish Studies Review, April 1998) [infra]; Katherine Walsh [on Bishop Bale] in Vincent Carey & Ute Lotz-Heumann, eds., Taking Sides? Colonial and Confessional Mentalités in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2003) [q.pp.], and Andrew Hadfield, Shakespeare, Spenser and the Matter of Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2005) [chapter on Bale’s Vocacyon].
There is a fictional account of Bale’s time in Ireland in John Arden, John Bale (London: Methuen 1988), “I Am of Ireland”, pp.398-449 [infra].
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Commentary
George Saintsbury (Short
History of English Literature, Macmillan & Co. 1963), credits
Bale with the first historical play, and remarks that his his polemical
intention was ‘to advance the cause of the Reformation by exhibiting the
patriotic objection to the power of the Pope [though without] much dramatic
grasp’; Further: ‘his treatment of personifications [viz., Stephen Langton,
Cardinal Pandulph, Pope; Wealth; Power Dissimulation) is a thing which,
whether definitely intended or not, is of the widest reach and suggestion.’
In a note, below, Saintsbury adds a potted biography, and calls him ‘a
not very bright example of a Reformer in all ways, [who] wrote a good
deal, incl. a bibliogrpahy of English literature and no less than twenty-two
plays [...]’ (Saintsbury, p.227.)
Eamon Duffy (The Stripping Of The Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580, Yale 1992), remarks that Bale saw the Reformation as a providential and widely welcomed escape from the usurping despotism of the medieval papacy, in The Image Of Both Churches [ … &c] (cited by reviewer.)
John McCafferty (‘St Patrick for the Church of Ireland: James Ussher’s Discourse’, in Irish Studies Review, April 1998), remarks of that, ‘sometime bishop of Ossory’ that he ‘honed the Protestant scheme of history developed on the Continent, according to which the Church of Christ has progressively degenerated, and by John Foxe in his massively popular and influential Acts and Monuments’. (McCafferty, p.89.)
John Arden, “I Am of Ireland”, in John Bale [Chap. VI]: ‘Bale wrote his own account of his time in Kilkenny. He published it from his place of second exile, when Catholic Mary was Queen. He called it The Vocation of John Bale to the Bishopric of Ossory, &c.., and shaped it like a sermon, full of comparisons between himself and Saint Paul, and many justifications of all that he did and hoped for, with analogous scriptural texts to prove him right. / He had a frontispiece engraved. This picture, made exactly to his orders, showed the “English Christian” confronted, very dangerously, by the threatening “Irish Papists”. It was like a scene from the sort of stage-play he had witnessed, indeed written and acted, so many times. … The “English Christian” is shown with a pious sorrowful face, head devoutly on one side, hands meekly folded in pacifistic supplication. A gentle little lamb rubbing itself softly against his leg, confidant of protection. On his head is a soft bonnet. The “Irish Papist”, on the other hand, comes striding forward drawing a falchion, his face tilted angrily upwards, aggressive moustachios, a fierce banditto hat; and at this command a savage dog hungering to tear the tripes of both the lamb and its kind guardian. / The drawing give little hope that the Englishman will be able to save himself, short of a miracle. [… &c.] (p.399.). Further: ‘Did he hate the Irish primarily because of their religion, or because they were not English? Probably in his own mind the distinction was not unclear. Catholic Irish were an enemy. Protestant Irish (had there been any) would likewise have been an enemy, their religion would have been hypocritical and would only have made them worse. For that was the way he found Ireland, the short time he lived amongst its people: and he never looked beyond it.’ (Ibid., p.399.) For the remainder, Bale entrusts the Irish narrative to Anthony Munday, who masqueraded in Rome and ‘Mr. Oaktree’, and conversed with Proinsias Dubh Ó Dálaigh, a member of the Irish poet family from Co. Clare, who gives him an account of Bale which is translated into ‘a mixture of Latin and ungainly English’ by one Brother Declan [Deaglán]. When Ó Bale suggests that if Dálaigh were not ‘shut up in [his] dark language’, he might read the Scriptures, Ó Dálaigh responds: “Are Christ and the Saints so fuck-stupid they never laid hold on the Gaelic? By God, if not them fuck-stupid, then you!” (p.406). In this narrative, Ó Dálaigh offers the view that the ‘new guise’ of Protestantism might indeed save Ireland from its dissensions. There is also play upon Bale’s name:’For we called him Balla, which, tell him, Brother, is the Irish word for a wall: hard, blind, unyielding, to keep men out, to keep men in … Seánán an Balla … oh, Johnny the Wall.’ (p.412) - not overlooking the fact that Bale means ‘harm’ in English (idem.) Further, supplies Sir Francis Walsingham’s reflections on the narrative of Bale as supplied to Anthony by Prionsias Dubh Ó Dálaigh [chars.]: ‘Duke] of N[orthumberland]’s plots on Monday were never his scheme for Tuesday, and by Wednesday he’d reconstitute the full admixture all over again. But poor J. B., scapegoat every good day of the week. No less of a dandled doll than J. Gray herself. I’d have thought Black F. [for Prionsais/Francis] might ha’seen it? But Irish subtlety only sees a selection of English ditto. In the end, I think, our treachery must always o’ermaster theirs. Why? because we are masters. All they can ever do is aspire. As is proven. (p.445.) Arden’s closes with account of the massacre of Smerick, in which he holds the Prionsias Ó Dálaigh was killed along with the others: ‘Monday thought it not probable he would have been rare, in the frenzy of the massacre, how two English poets were immediately responsible for it - Edmund Spenser, the Lord Deputy’s secretary, who drafted the orders; and Captain Walter Ralegh, in charge of the execution-squad. Nor were they likely to know who Ó Dálaigh was. had they known, they would no doubt have segregated him with the garrison’s papist priests for torture as well as death. Irish poets were held to be worse than the Queen’s worst enemies, because of their skill in firing-up courage. / The atrocity in itself only escalated the rebellion’ (p.446). The chapter ends with a recitation of ‘The Long-legged Queen’ by Prionsias himself at Wapping, and its memorisation in English by Munday’s mistress, from whom he is soon to part. (p.398-449.) In an earlier section (Book II), Arden gives an account of the Fitzgerald Rebellion of Silken Thomas, in which an English prelate is murdered in Dublin; ‘Wentworth said the King had hoped for that prelate to introduce the new ecclesiastical legislation [...] but now all was spoiled. … Papal excommunication of the King of England was rumoured: if it took place, an international crusade could theoretically be levied - and Irish rebels would include themselves in it./Which meant the Butlers as well as the Fitzgeralds, the native Ersemen as well as the Butlers; and a Franco-German-Spanish-Italian army could set foot on the beaches of Cork.’ (p.184.)
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Quotations
Promise, ‘If profit may grow, most Christian
audience/By knowledge of things which are not transistor/And here for
a time, of much more congruence/Advantage might spring by a search of
causes heavenly/As these matters are that the Gospels specify’. (The play
begins with an account of Creation by Pater Coelistis: ‘In me and my Son
sempereternal ...’.)
The Temptation of Our Lord, ‘Follow Christ alone, for he is the true shepherd;/The voice of strangers do never more regard.’/ [Final lines.]
The Vocacyon of Johan Bale (1553), ‘Anon after ther harvestes are ended there/the Ke[r]nes, the Gallowglasses;and the other brecheless souldiers’/with horses and their horsegromes/sumtimes. iij. waitinge upon one iade enter into the villages with much crueltie and fearenesse/they continue there in great rauine and spoyle/and whan they go thens/they leave nothing else behinde them for payment/but lice lecherye/and intolerable penurie for all the year after.’ (Vocacyon, f. 46v.) [cited in R. Gottfried, Spenser’s Prose Works, Variorum Edn., Baltimore 1945, Vol. 10, where Gottfried remarks that Bale’s description of soldiers serves to represent many similar passages in Elizabethan writers.]
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References
W. Carew Hazlitt, in his 1874-76 edn. of Robert
Dodsley’s Old Plays [1744], used a copy from the library of David
Garrick with a torn title-page affording no date. A biographical note
in this edition has it that at Kilkenny Bale ‘underwent a variety of persecutions
from the Popish party in Ireland which at length compelled him to leave
his diocese and conceal himself in Dublin’. A full account of his trials
among the English and the Dutch follows. The edition cites as principal
works his Scriptorum illustrium majoris Brutaniae quam nun Angliam
et Scotiam vocant Catalogus, a Japheto per 3618 annos usque annum hunc
domini 1557, prev. printed imperfectly at Wesel as Illustrium Majoris
Britaniae [sic] Scriptorum hoc est Angliae, Cambraise, et Scotiae,
Summarium (Wesel 1549), and republished with final additions as Illustrium [… &c] (Basel: Oporinus 1559). See W. Carew Hazlitt, ed., Dodsley’s Old Plays [1744] (4th edn. 1874-76; facs. rep. NY: Benjamin
Blom 1964).
Oxford Companion to English Literature (ed. Margaret Drabble), calls King John the first English history play bridging between the morality and the history-play proper. See also John Arden’s novel, The Book of Bale (1988), a study of rabid anti-Catholicism. [Short ODNB, bishop of Ossory, &c.; religious plays, history of English [sic] writers, and controversial works of great bitterness.]
Dictionary of National Biography cites Bale as being Bishop of Ossory, &c.; author of religious plays, history of English [sic] writers, and controversial works of great bitterness.
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Notes
Robert Bale (d.1503), a Carmelite friar of
Norfolk and possibly a kinsman of John Bale wrote Annales Ordinis Carmelitarum.
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