{\b Thomas Heywood}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: c.1574 (exact date uncertain)

{\b Date of Death}.: 16 August 1641

{\b Works}.

English playwright and poet. In his own words, he had 'either an entire hand, 
or at least a main finger' in 220 plays - an extraordinary volume of work, 
even by the standards of the time. It included masques, tales of adventure, 
history cycles and a mythological series based on Homer's Odyssey. He excelled 
at writing domestic tragedies, such as The English Traveller (1633) and his 
masterpiece, A Woman Killed With Kindness (1603). He also wrote some poetry, 
including his Pack, Clouds, Away, and Welcome Day (1620) as well as various 
books and pamphlets. His most important prose work was An Apology for Actors 
(1612), which discusses the actor's position in society since classical times.

{\b Featured Works}.

'Pack, Clouds, Away, and Welcome Day'.

{\b General Comment}.

Little is known of Heywood's early life, except that his father was a 
Lincolnshire preacher, and he attended Cambridge University. By 1596 he was in 
London, writing for Philip Henslowe's acting company, the Admiral's Men. He 
stayed in the city, writing and acting in plays, for the rest of his life.

Heywood's rate of production, as well as the plays themselves, shows that he 
clearly relished the life of a busy city playwright. His drama is frequently 
sentimental, but the setting is usually realistic, and is full of detail about 
everyday life in seventeenth-century London. He wrote seven Lord Mayor's 
pageants during the 1630s. His plays were popular both in the public theatres 
and at court; some of them were performed in two theatres at the same time, in 
order to satisfy demand, and Charles I is said to have seen one of his 
masques, Love's Mistress (1636) three times in a single week.

Much of Heywood's vast output has not stood the test of time, but A Woman 
Killed With Kindness stands out as probably the best middle-class tragedy 
written in an age of outstanding dramatic achievement. His Apology for Actors 
is also a valuable work, which provides a fascinating insight into Jacobean 
attitudes to drama.