[The Pardoner has entered hell and secured a guide.]
Pardoner. This devil and I walked arm in arm
So far, till he had brought me thither,
Where all the devils of hell together
Stood in array in such apparel
As for that day there meetly fell.
Their horns well-gilt, their claws full clean,
Their tails well-kempt, and, as I ween,
With sothery[48] butter their bodies anointed;
I never saw devils so well appointed.
The master-devil sat in his jacket,
And all the souls were playing at racket.
None other rackets they had in hand,
Save every soul a good firebrand,
Wherewith they played so prettily
That Lucifer laughed merrily,
And all the residue of the fiends
Did laugh thereat full well like friends.
[He interviews Lucifer and asks if he may take away Margery Corson.]
Now, by our honour, said Lucifer,
No devil in hell shall withhold her;
And if thou wouldest have twenty mo,
Wert not for justice, they should go.
For all we devils within this den
Have more to-do with two women
Than with all the charge we have beside;
Wherefore, if thou our friend will be tried,
Apply thy pardons to women so
That unto us there come no mo.
Johan Johan, or, at greater length, The Merry Play between Johan Johan the Husband, Tyb his Wife, and Sir Jhon the Priest (printed 1533), contains only the three characters mentioned, but possesses a theme more nearly deserving the name of plot than do the other two, namely, the contriving and carrying out of a plan by Tyb for exposing her boastful husband's real and absolute subjection to her rule. Yet, even so, it is extremely simple. Johan Johan is first heard alone, declaring how he will beat his wife for not being at home. The tuggings of fear and valour in his heart, however, give his monologue an argumentative form, in which first one motive and then the other gains the upper hand, very similar to the conflict between Launcelot Gobbo's conscience and the Devil. He closes in favour of the beating and then—Tyb comes home. Oh the difference! Johan Johan suspects his wife of undue friendliness with Sir Jhon the Priest, but he dare not say so. Tyb guesses his doubts, and in her turn suspects that he is inclined to rebel. So she makes the yoke heavier. Johan Johan has to invite Sir Jhon to eat a most desirable pie with them; but throughout the meal, with jealousy at his heart and the still greater pangs of unsatisfied hunger a little lower, he is kept busy by his wife, trying to mend a leaky bucket with wax. Surely never did a scene contain more 'asides' than are uttered and explained away by the crushed husband! Finally overtaxed endurance asserts itself, and wife and priest are driven out of doors; but the play closes with a very pronounced note of uncertainty from the victor as to what new game the vanquished may shortly be at if he be not there to see.
The all-important feature to be noticed in Heywood's work is that here we have the drama escaping from its alliance with religion into the region of pure comedy. Here is no well planned moral, no sententious mouthpiece of abstract excellence, no ruin of sinners and crowning of saints. Here, too, is no Vice, no Devil, although they are the chief media for comedy in other Interludes, nor is there any buffoonery; even of its near cousins, scuffling and fighting, only one of the three plays has more than a trace. Hence the earlier remark, that Heywood was before his time. It is not devils in bearskins and wooden-sworded vices that create true comedy; they belong to the realm of farce. Yet they continued to flourish long after Heywood had set another example, and with them the cuffing of ears and drunken gambolling which we may see, in the works of other men, trying to rescue prosy scenes from dullness. In Johan Johan is simple comedy, the comedy of laughter-raising dialogue and 'asides'. We do not say it is perfect comedy, far from it; but it is comedy cleared of its former alloys. It is the comedy which Shakespeare refined for his own use in Twelfth Night and elsewhere.