“What Citadels, what turrets, and what towers”: Mapping the Tower of London in Thomas Heywood’s Lord Mayors’ Shows

Research reveals that Thomas Heywood, a prominent playwright of the early modern era, challenged the dominant 'royal ideology' surrounding the Tower of London by portraying it as a symbol of opposition to monarchical power. Analyzing 24 extant English history plays from 1579 to ca. 1634—all depicting the Tower in ways that contradicted Crown authority—Heywood's four plays stood out quantitatively and qualitatively, comprising one-sixth of the corpus and surpassing all but Shakespeare in frequency. His works dramatized scenarios such as prisoners escaping, monarchs being imprisoned, and the Tower itself personified resistance to royal injustice. The study also highlights Heywood's broader discourse, including prose works like Englands Elizabeth (1631) and his reissue of A Discourse of the Felicitie of Man, which further criticized royal misuse of the Tower. This research underscores Heywood's pivotal role in shaping oppositional narratives during a critical period of political and social upheaval.

Deiter, K. (2013). “What Citadels, what turrets, and what towers”: Mapping the Tower of London in Thomas Heywood’s Lord Mayors’ Shows. Comparative Drama, 47(4), 473–503. https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2013.0051