ABSTRACT
The changes Skelton made, in the second decade of the sixteenth century, to the use of transgressive language in drama were prompted by his concern with cultural change. The religious tensions of the 1530s were a far more dangerous topic for a playwright to address. This danger appears to govern the changes and innovations John Heywood made to transgressive language, and his use of fragmented allegory, in his Play of the Wether. Heywood's extension of the conventions associated with transgressive language provides lively entertainment. The innovations serve the didactic purpose of the play, and emphasize the significance of the episodes in which they are used, but limit those episodes, and reassert the ludic context. Heywood uses the tempter's conventional delight in word-play to introduce and characterize Mery Report, but more obvious transgressive language soon reveals an evil aspect to the entertaining characterization. Heywood introduces bawdy language into the speech of female characters together with scatological references.
