Wager Lewis (d. 1562)
Wager Lewis (d. 1562) OFM. English Franciscan friar and later Anglican/Protestant playwright. Active in the London friary by the early 1520s. He is known to have become a subdeacon on 21 July 1521. When the situation for the friars became problematical, Wager Lewis gradually took his leave from the order. On 24 March 1536 he received permisison from the bishop to wear his Franciscan habit beneath the robes of a secular priest. Several years later, he was a married Protestant vicar. He might even be the father of the English clergyman and playwright William Wager (1537/8?–1591). He survived the Mary Tudor interlude, and in April 1560 he became parish priest of St James Garlickhythe, in London. He died over two years later, leaving behind his widow Elenore. During his Protestant years, Wager Lewis wrote A new enterlude … of the life and repentaunce of Marie Magdalene, not onlie godlie, learned and fruitefull, but also well furnished with pleasaunt myrth and pastime, very delectable for those which shall hear or reade the same . This work was printed by John Charlewood in 1566/1567. The play combined later medieval theatrical influences with John Calvin’s Institutes . The surviving fragment of yet another play, entitled The Cruel Debtor , might be his work as well, although the work is also ascribed to William Wager, who is considered to be Wager Lewis’s son.
Works
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The Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalene, by Lewis Wager. A Morality Play reprinted from the Original Edition of 1566-67 , ed. Frederic Ives Carpenter, Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago, Second Series, I (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1902). Apparently available via https://archive.org. See also the review in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 5:2 (December 1903), 225-238. A new edition has been provided in Paul Whitfield White, Reformation biblical drama in England: The Life and Repentaunce of Mary Magdalene, The History of Iacob and Esau (New York: Garland, 1992).
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