We have five surviving plays written by John Bale. Three short Biblical dramas designed to replace earlier plays of the same nature; his sort-of history/morality play King John… And Three Laws. Which is… quite a thing. John Bale was an evangelical Christian, utterly uninterested in compromise. Many of his plays were supported by Thomas Cromwell, and thereafter Bale kept the work going even in exile. Most of the plays we know he wrote, or know he claimed to have written, have not survived; it seems likely that his Biblical plays were designed to replace the medieval tradition, and explicitly challenged the old order of thought. This did not make him a terribly popular man.

We’re currently working on a slow burn complete works, with preparatory work completed on all five plays, and plans to produce fuller scale versions of them all over the coming years.

A video playlist can be found here, and there is an audio playlist of all the material from the podcast below.

God’s Promises by John Bale – God talks to his prophets, from Adam to John the Baptist, both sides arguing for a way forward. Humanity and God pushing each other, and – arguably – we see humanity changing God’s mind (though that’s probably not what Bale intended). Each Act ends with a song, and the quality of the music will make or break a production. We’ve recorded a (very) rough plain text version of the complete text in short episodes, mixed into an omnibus version below, plus various exploring sessions online. We are planning a top down revisit in the future.

John Baptist’s Preaching by John Bale – we’ve exploring sessions on this play, which asks some really hard questions about the nature of Baptism, forgiveness of sins (and crimes), and plays the dramatic situation in quite a different way to earlier versions of the story. It follows on neatly from God’s Promises, acting as the middle part of a trilogy, and was performed as such by Bale. The play was staged by Dr Jeff S Dailey in 2017. A podcast session is below, and a playlist of exploring sessions is available here.

The Temptation by John Bale – Acting as the final part of a trilogy, following on from John Baptist’s Preaching, we has a very different interpretation of the Temptation story to medieval equivalents. It is, perhaps, Bale’s masterpiece – unlike the generally acknowledged King John, it is a short and powerful play that manages not to be (too) hectoring or (too) offensive to modern ears. The play was staged by Dr Jeff S Dailey in 2017. A podcast session is below, and a playlist of exploring sessions is available here. This was slated for a full production by Beyond in 2020, but the outbreak of plague forced us to pause. We finally staged this play as part of our Entertaining Henry season on 21st June 2025.

Three Laws by John Bale – This is a difficult play to love. It’s political theatre at an extreme, bordering on hate speech. And yet… Bale still manages to write compellingly, the bastard. Effectively dealing with the same theology as his three mystery plays, it retells the progression from Old to New Testament theology using morality play logic. It is deeply homophobic, and (of course for Bale) anti-Catholic. Exploring session available.

King John by John Bale – Much has been written on this early form of history play – though you could argue that all Biblical drama was a form of history play anyway, so what’s the fuss about. Telling the story of King John via the medium of morality play, it deals energetically with bad counsel, a parallel break with Rome, and Bale’s paranoia about being poisoned. Exploring session available.

General discussion / other materials: We’ve so far only produced one follow up discussion of modern productions of Bale’s Biblical plays.

We’ve also looked at a short dialogue, featuring his two sons.