Abstract
This article examines two interludes by the Tudor playwright John Heywood in light of the gender politics of the texts. The Four PP is interpreted as a dramatization of a male contest that encourages bonding and good fellowship on the one hand, and degrades the female body on the other. Johan Johan is seen as another male contest, but one set in a farcical, carnivalesque genre which addresses male anxieties by temporarily upsetting the normal sexual hierarchy. The effect of these texts on the audience is to encourage male mockery of women and to coerce female acceptance of these views of women.