Greg Walker

In 1942, before their mobilization to Guadalcanal, Major Carl Heinmiller of the 37th Infantry division (the Buckeye division) was stationed in Fiji with the South Pacific Scouts, also known as the Fiji Commandos. Heinmiller learned a great deal from the Scouts while helping with their training, and that experience and the knowledge he gained from them during the war stayed with him long after the war had ended. This book discusses Heinmiller's experiences and the Commando "type" training the Scouts and Heinmiller received.

John Heywood was an important literary and theatrical pioneer in his own right, but he is also a revealing lens through which to view the wider tumultuous history of the sixteenth century. He was, through the period from the mid-1520s to the 1560s, as near to a celebrity as Tudor England possessed, famed for his 'merry' persona and good humour. But his public image concealed a deeper engagement with religious and political history. Enduringly resistant to extremism, he variously entertained, counselled, and cautioned his readers and audiences through four reigns, finding himself, as regimes changed and religious policies shifted, successively celebrated, marginalised, anathematised, condemned to death, recuperated, and celebrated once more before finally retreating into exile on the Continent in 1564. He produced plays at the courts of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, performed and taught keyboard music, wrote lyric poetry and songs, and from the mid-sixteenth century turned to collecting and publishing highly successful volumes of proverbs and epigrams for which he was remembered well into the seventeenth century. Each of these works provides a subtle, often courageously critical engagement with the politics of its moment. To study Heywood's career takes us beyond the clichés of popular history, beyond Shakespeare and the Elizabethan playhouses, beyond the canonical Henrician court poets and the writers of the Elizabethan 'Golden Age', beyond even the experiences of the century's chief ministers, intellectuals, and martyrs, to a theatrical and literary world less visible in the conventional sources. It opens a window on a culture in which the actions of monarchs, their councillors, and their victims were witnessed and reflected upon at one remove from the centres of power. And it allows us to re-examine the significance of an individual who deserves our attention, not only for his considerable artistic achievements, but also for the determination with which, often against the odds, he used his talents in pursuit of wider humanist cultural principles for over half a century.

Oxford Textual Perspectives is a new series of informative and provocative studies focused upon literary texts (conceived of in the broadest sense of that term) and the technologies, cultures and communities that produce, inform, and receive them. It provides fresh interpretations of fundamental works and of the vital and challenging issues emerging in English literary studies. By engaging with the materiality of the literary text, its production, and reception history, and frequently testing and exploring the boundaries of the notion of text itself, the volumes in the series question familiar frameworks and provide innovative interpretations of both canonical and less well-known works. Imagining Spectatorship offers a new discussion of how spectators witnessed early drama in the various spaces and places in which those works were performed. It combines broad historical and theoretical reflection with closely analysed case studies to produce a comprehensive account of the ways in which individuals encountered early drama, how they were cued to respond to it, and how we might think about those issues today. It addresses the practical matters that conditioned spectatorship, principally those concerned with the location and configuration of the spaces in which a performance occurred, but also suggests how these factors intersected with social status, gender, religious commitment and affiliation, degrees of real or felt personal agency, and the operation of the cognitive processes themselves. It considers both real witnesses and those 'imagined' spectators which are seemingly figured by both dramatic and quasi-dramatic works, and whose assumed attitudes play-makers sought to second-guess. It also looks at the spectatorial experience itself as a subject of representation in a number of early texts. Finally, it examines the complex contract entered into by audiences and players for the duration of a performance, looking at how texts cued spectators to respond to specific dramaturgical tropes and gambits and how audience response was itself a cause of potential anxiety for writers. The book resists the conventional divide between 'medieval' and 'early-modern' drama, using its focus on the spectators' experience to point connections and continuities across a diverse range of genres, such as processions and tourneys as well as scripted plays, pageants, and interludes; a variety of different venues, such as city streets, great halls, and playhouses, and a period of about 150 years to the Shakespearean stage of the 1590s and 1600s. It seeks to offer routes by which inferences about early spectatorship can be made despite the relative absence of personal testimony from the period.

Oxford Textual Perspectives is a new series of informative and provocative studies focused upon literary texts (conceived of in the broadest sense of that term) and the technologies, cultures and communities that produce, inform, and receive them. It provides fresh interpretations of fundamental works and of the vital and challenging issues emerging in English literary studies. By engaging with the materiality of the literary text, its production, and reception history, and frequently testing and exploring the boundaries of the notion of text itself, the volumes in the series question familiar frameworks and provide innovative interpretations of both canonical and less well-known works. Imagining Spectatorship offers a new discussion of how spectators witnessed early drama in the various spaces and places in which those works were performed. It combines broad historical and theoretical reflection with closely analysed case studies to produce a comprehensive account of the ways in which individuals encountered early drama, how they were cued to respond to it, and how we might think about those issues today. It addresses the practical matters that conditioned spectatorship, principally those concerned with the location and configuration of the spaces in which a performance occurred, but also suggests how these factors intersected with social status, gender, religious commitment and affiliation, degrees of real or felt personal agency, and the operation of the cognitive processes themselves. It considers both real witnesses and those 'imagined' spectators which are seemingly figured by both dramatic and quasi-dramatic works, and whose assumed attitudes play-makers sought to second-guess. It also looks at the spectatorial experience itself as a subject of representation in a number of early texts. Finally, it examines the complex contract entered into by audiences and players for the duration of a performance, looking at how texts cued spectators to respond to specific dramaturgical tropes and gambits and how audience response was itself a cause of potential anxiety for writers. The book resists the conventional divide between 'medieval' and 'early-modern' drama, using its focus on the spectators' experience to point connections and continuities across a diverse range of genres, such as processions and tourneys as well as scripted plays, pageants, and interludes; a variety of different venues, such as city streets, great halls, and playhouses, and a period of about 150 years to the Shakespearean stage of the 1590s and 1600s. It seeks to offer routes by which inferences about early spectatorship can be made despite the relative absence of personal testimony from the period.

Pioneer of early-modern literary historicism reads Medieval and early Tudor drama and poetry historically. How far should we try to read medieval and early modern texts historically? Does the attempt to uncover how such texts might have been received by their original readers and audiences uncover new, hitherto unexpected contemporary resonances in them? Or does it flatten works of art into mere 'secondary sources' for historical analysis? This book makes the case for the study of literature in context. It demonstrates the value of historical and cultural analysis alongside traditional literary scholarship for enriching our understanding of plays and poems from the medieval and early Tudor past and of the cultures which produced and received them. It equally accepts the risks involved in that kind of study. It makes the case for reading medieval and early Tudor literature historically. It includes case studies of the interaction between literature and politics, from Chaucer to the reign of Henry VIII. It offers detailed analysis of key medieval and Renaissance texts, Chaucer's Miller's Tale, Sir Gawain and Green Knight, Sir David Lyndsay's A Satire of the Three Estates. It turns a spotlight on hitherto neglected texts that reveal the challenges, rewards and potential pitfalls of reading literature historically.

A detailed study of the interaction between drama and politics in the reign of Henry VIII. The subject is addressed both in general terms and through a series of case-studies of individual early Tudor plays. Through its innovative use of dramatic texts as historical source material, the book provides illuminating insights into the political and cultural history of the Henrician period, and into the perceived character of the King himself. It focuses on the troubled religious and political history of the reign, the culture of the Court, and the personality and governmental style of its head. In doing so the book argues for a reassessment of the reign, which places the King once more at the centre of affairs, and acknowledges the determining effect which this egotistical, charismatic but, above all, pragmatic monarch exercised on the artistic culture, as much as on the politics, of the Court. The book also demonstrates the close and specific links between the drama and the politics of the reign, through a detailed study of a number of key works, links which have hitherto been viewed only as general or peripheral.

Writing Under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation spans the boundaries between literary studies and history. It looks at the impact of tyrannical government on the work of poets, playwrights, and prose writers of the early English Renaissance. It shows the profound effects that political oppression had on the literary production of the years from 1528 to 1547, and how English writers in turn strove to mitigate, redirect, and finally resist that oppression. The result was the destruction of a number of forms that had dominated the literary production of late-medieval England, but also the creation of new forms that were to dominate the writing of the following centuries. Paradoxically, the tyranny of Henry VIII gave birth to many modes of writing now seen to be characteristic of the English literary Renaissance.

Greg Walker provides a new account of the relationship between politics and drama in the turbulent period from the accession of Henry VIII to the reign of Elizabeth I. Building upon ideas first developed in Plays of Persuasion (1991), he focuses on political drama in both England and Scotland, exploring the complex relationships between politics, court culture and dramatic composition, performance and publication. Through a detailed analysis of one central dramatic form, the interlude or great hall play, and close study of key texts, Walker examines drama produced and adapted for varying conditions of performance: indoor and outdoor, private and public. He examines what happened when the play script was printed and sold commercially as a literary commodity. This interdisciplinary analysis will find a market among Tudor historians as well as students of medieval and Renaissance drama.

Writing Under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation spans the boundaries between literary studies and history. It looks at the impact of tyrannical government on the work of poets, playwrights, and prose writers of the early English Renaissance. It shows the profound effects that political oppression had on the literary production of the years from 1528 to 1547, and how English writers in turn strove to mitigate, redirect, and finally resist that oppression. The result was the destruction of a number of forms that had dominated the literary production of late-medieval England, but also the creation of new forms that were to dominate the writing of the following centuries. Paradoxically, the tyranny of Henry VIII gave birth to many modes of writing now seen to be characteristic of the English literary Renaissance.

The series of satirical poems and invectives written against Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey, the chief minister of Henry VIII, by the poet John Skelton has long been used by scholars as evidence of the sins and follies of Wolsey’s regime. Yet the poems have never undergone serious political analysis. At the heart of this book is a detailed examination of these texts which aims to rectify that omission. For the first time they are subjected to a close reading which both elucidates their major themes and purpose, and sets them firmly in their political context. The book questions the orthodoxies of previous scholarship and challenges received opinions concerning the poet’s status at the court of Henry VIII, his employment by the noble house of Howard, and his motives for launching the satirical assault upon Wolsey. From this analysis emerges a very different Skelton to that provided by earlier accounts.

This comprehensive anthology brings together a diverse collection of dramatic writing from the late fourteenth century to the onset of the Renaissance. The volume presents for the first time the key plays of the period in their entirety, alongside more unusual selections, covering religious narrative, religion and conscience, and politics and morality. The first section focuses on Biblical plays, including coherent sequences of the narrative Cycle plays from York and N-Town and supporting pageants from Chester and Wakefield. This approach allows a clear narrative line to develop, and permits the comparison of the treatment of key stories between the Cycles. The selected material demonstrates how the drama of the towns and cities of East Anglia and the North of England mediated religious culture to a heterodox urban audience, and explored biblical events in an intensely contemporary setting. In the second and third sections, the attention turns to secular drama, and the Moral Plays and Interludes. The featured texts illustrate the range of themes and issues covered, from the salvation of the individual human soul to the renovation of the political nation, and the variety of settings and audiences for which the plays were designed. The flexibility of the Interlude form is explored, as are the ways in which it was utilised by playwrights and their patrons to address issues of direct political and social concern to them and their audiences. Medieval Drama: An Anthology is an indispensable guide to the breadth and depth of dramatic activity in medieval Britain.

This comprehensive anthology brings together a diverse collection of dramatic writing from the late fourteenth century to the onset of the Renaissance. The volume presents for the first time the key plays of the period in their entirety, alongside more unusual selections, covering religious narrative, religion and conscience, and politics and morality. The first section focuses on Biblical plays, including coherent sequences of the narrative Cycle plays from York and N-Town and supporting pageants from Chester and Wakefield. This approach allows a clear narrative line to develop, and permits the comparison of the treatment of key stories between the Cycles. The selected material demonstrates how the drama of the towns and cities of East Anglia and the North of England mediated religious culture to a heterodox urban audience, and explored biblical events in an intensely contemporary setting. In the second and third sections, the attention turns to secular drama, and the Moral Plays and Interludes. The featured texts illustrate the range of themes and issues covered, from the salvation of the individual human soul to the renovation of the political nation, and the variety of settings and audiences for which the plays were designed. The flexibility of the Interlude form is explored, as are the ways in which it was utilised by playwrights and their patrons to address issues of direct political and social concern to them and their audiences. Medieval Drama: An Anthology is an indispensable guide to the breadth and depth of dramatic activity in medieval Britain.

Greg Walker provides a new account of the relationship between politics and drama in the turbulent period from the accession of Henry VIII to the reign of Elizabeth I. Building upon ideas first developed in Plays of Persuasion (1991), he focuses on political drama in both England and Scotland, exploring the complex relationships between politics, court culture and dramatic composition, performance and publication. Through a detailed analysis of one central dramatic form, the interlude or great hall play, and close study of key texts, Walker examines drama produced and adapted for varying conditions of performance: indoor and outdoor, private and public. He examines what happened when the play script was printed and sold commercially as a literary commodity. This interdisciplinary analysis will find a market among Tudor historians as well as students of Medieval and Renaissance drama.

Alexander Korda's masterpiece "The Private Life of Henry VIII" was arguably the most important British film of the pre-war period and a phenomenal, critical and box-office success. Greg Walker's accessible and thoroughly researched book examines the film itself, its makers and its place in the cinematic and cultural history of the period. He examines Korda's subtle treatment of national and "international" identity, his representation of British history, use of modern stereotypes, and discusses the representation of gender and sexuality in the film, including that of Henry's wives and Laughton's award-winning central performance.