The English playwright Thomas Heywood (ca.1573-1641) worked successfully in a wide range of dramatic forms. A competent craftsman, he lacked the brilliance of the greater Elizabethan and Jacobean dram...
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Thomas Heywood's life and work were judiciously described about a quarter of a century ago by A. M. Clark. Born in Rothwell or Ashby, Lincolnshire, to the Reverend Robert and Elizabeth Heywood in 1573...
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In the following essay, Symonds provides an overview of Heywood's literary career.
“If I were to be consulted as to a reprint of our old English dramatists,” says Charles Lamb,...
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In the following essay, Rowland considers The English Traveller as a response to Philip Massinger's play The Roman Actor.
At the Blackfriars theatre in 1626 the King's Men gave severa...
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In the following essay, Jankowski explores the role of Heywood's texts in validating the relationship between mercantile interests and the English monarchy in the development of industry and tr...
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In the following essay, Davies discusses Heywood's play as a response to ambiguities in the marriage laws that left women in a vulnerable, but also potentially transgressive, position.
Thoma...
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In the following excerpt, Courtland examines Heywood's play within the context of Elizabethan colonialism.
Scholars have long recognized Thomas Heywood's exotic fantasy, The Fair Maid...
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In the following excerpt, Johnson discusses Heywood's representations of ideal wives in How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad and other plays.
But if heaven will that I a �...
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In the following essay, Prager maintains that Heywood's play has been underestimated by critics because of the difficulty of dealing with the the subject of slavery issue in dramatic form.
S...
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In the following essay, Waith discusses Heywood's transformation of the aristocratic “exemplary lives” genre into biographies intended to inspire the general reading public.
A ...
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In the following essay, Shady contends that in Love's Mistress Heywood created a hybrid dramatic genre that incorporates features of both plays and masques.
For one dizzy week in mid-Novembe...
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In the following essay, Henderson explains the importance of home in Heywood's most famous play.
“Domestic tragedy” has been defined in a myriad of ways, particularly often in ...
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In the following essay, Bergeron contends that in Heywood's time, the support of dramatists through patronage had not yet been replaced by support from theater audiences.
Werner Gundersheime...
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In the following essay, Gutierrez contends that Heywood's play is not a tragedy but a melodrama with an open-ended conclusion that provides no solution to the problem of adultery.
Since genr...
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In the following essay, Bonahue discusses the role of Heywood's play in providing a forum for debate on the more controversial aspects of the changing culture of the city in early modern Englan...
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Thomas Heywood
Thomas Heywood
Critical Essay by John Addington Symonds
