CRITICISM

Introduction to King Johan. Elizabethan History Plays, edited by William A. Armstrong, pp. vii-xv. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Includes a concise passage on Bale's King Johan. Mentions William Tyndale's influence on Bale and calls King Johan a “highly original play in the nascent history play tradition.”

Introduction to The Complete Plays of John Bale, edited by Peter Happé Bury St. Edmonds, Suffolk, Great Britain: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1985, pp. 1-25.

Provides an overview of Bale's works, including sections on versification, music and staging.

Mager, Donald N. “John Bale and Early Tudor Sodomy Discourse.” In Queering the Renaissance, edited by Jonathan Goldberg, pp. 141-161. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994.

Explores Bale's views on marriage and papal sexual improprieties.

Morey, James H. “The Death of King John in Shakespeare and Bale.” Shakespeare Quarterly 45, No. 3 (Fall 1994): 327-31.

Asserts Shakespeare drew on the death scene in Bale's King Johan for his King John.

Pineas, Rainer. “William Tyndale's Influence on John Bale's Polemical Use of History.” Archiv Für Reformationsgeschichte 53 (1962): 79-96.

Explores whether Bale based King Johan on William Tyndale's The obedience of a Christen man (1528).

Additional coverage of Bale's life and career is contained in the following source published by the Gale Group: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 132.