AUTHORSHIP AND DATE

The Enterlude of the Vertuous and Godly Queene Hester was not printed until 1561, but it is clearly a work of an earlier period. Previous commentators have suggested dates between 1522 and 1527. But, as what follows will demonstrate, it forms a part of the attack upon Cardinal Wolsey at his fall in 1529. A close reading of the text reveals the numerous similarities between it and the political charges laid against Wolsey at this time, which both help to date the play more closely than has hitherto been possible, and illuminate its subject matter in ways unnoticed by earlier critics.

The play has much in common with Magnyfycence in that both plays contain allegorical treatments of contemporary political issues. Moreover, both contain stylistic similarities, which have prompted the suggestion that Skelton may also have been the author of Hester. Yet this seems unlikely. Stylistic similarities there are, but they are only intermittently evident, and the bulk of the play suggests a different hand. It is more likely, given the conclusions reached below concerning the dating and subject matter of the play, that the author was consciously adopting Skelton's style at certain points for satirical effect. This was, not as some early studies have suggested because he was a protegé of the poet, or a member of ‘the political and literary school or party of Skelton’, but because Skelton had, with Collyn Clout and Why Come Ye Nat to Courte?