A leading playwright and polemical writer of the English Reformation, John Bale was one of the most effective proponents of the Protestant cause in sixteenth-century England. He authored polemical prose, numerous plays, and religious history during a period of critical importance for both the development of English theater and Reformation theology.

In John Bale, a comprehensive study of Bale's life and works, Happe brings together three areas of current scholarship - literary and theater criticism, theology and history, and bibliography - into one volume. Covering Bale's polemical writings, his literary history and bibliography, and his five extant plays, including his celebrated historical drama King Johan, Happe argues that Bale was as much a political writer as a religious one.

Happe's comprehensive analysis of Bale's works reveals that Bale religious morality plays as well as his prose dealing with religious history and scriptural exegesis, were encoded subversive political statements intended to change public opinion.