No More Learning



## p. 85 (#103) #############################################

His Point of View as a Playwright 85
the words assuredly will not bear, that this total included all the
plays in which Heywood had acted during the thirty years (or
thereabouts) in question-inasmuch as in most of these plays he
had, no doubt, inserted 'gag,' while many of them had been altered
by him. This, in Fleay's opinion, would warrant the conclusion
that only about two score plays were actually written by Heywood,
who is not known to have been a frequent collaborator with other
playwrights. In 1633, however, Heywood's connection with the
theatre had extended over at least thirty-seven years, and an
average of half-a-dozen plays per annum, in which he was con-
cerned as sole or joint author, or as reviser, is not inconceivable,
if, together with the general character of his dramatic writings,
which will be considered immediately, the spirit in which he com-
posed them and the little care which he took of them, after
their appearance on the stage, be taken into account.
Nothing is more certain than that he gave little or no thought
to the destiny of his plays as 'literature. ' He wrote them, inprimis,
no doubt, for a living, and, also, in obedience to that impulse
towards dramatic production which was never more prevalent than
in the period of his connection with the stage, but which is not
necessarily the same thing as poetic inspiration. Manifestly, he
loved the theatre, which was to him a world in itself', as it is to
many actors and to not a few playwrights whose sense of their
importance in the world outside is too great to allow them to
confess it. But this did not make him anxious to find new ways
and methods for compassing old ends. Like his fellow dramatists,
he was constantly on the look-out for interesting dramatic
subjects, and he took them where he found them, setting to work,
we may rest assured, without loss of time and accomplishing his
task "all of a piece. ' To have finished his play and brought it on
the stage, was enough for him : he was careless about printing,
and, on at least one occasion, had to submit as well as he could to
the appearance of a corrupt copy, taken down by some enterprising
expert in stenography and put in print (scarce one word trew)? . '
Such plays of his as he allowed to be published he sent forth 'with
great modesty and small noise,' and, above all ‘singly,' not 'ex-
posed to the publike view of the world in numerous sheets, and
a large volume'-like Ben Jonson's 'works, or Shakespeare's”.
He that denyes then theaters should be,
He may as well deny a world to me.
• The Author to his Booke' (An Apology for Actors).
? See prologue to If you know not me, etc.
See the address •To the Reader' prefixed to The Fair Maid Of The West (printed
1631).
2
6
6


## p. 86 (#104) #############################################

86
Thomas Heywood
6
But, whether or not his rapidity of production was such as to
expose him, as Fleay conjectures, to contemporary dramatic satire
in the character of Posthaste'-whether or not we are to believe
Kirkman's ingenious statement that he was in the habit of writing
his plays on the back of tavern-bills (which, no doubt, would
satisfactorily account for the loss of many of them)whether or not,
according to the same authority, he, for several years together,
imposed on himself the rule of writing a minimum of a sheet
a day—his rate of productivity cannot be said to be left unexplained.
His pen was facile, because his mind was both fresh and ready, and
because, to use a vigorous German colloquialism, he ‘sang as his
beak had grown. ' Heywood's naïveté is, perhaps, the most delight-
ful element in his genius, although the directness of expression to
which it leads him frequently sins against refinement.
After Heywood had been an actor and a playwright for twelve
years or more
possibly at an earlier date-he bethought himself
of turning his proved ability as a writer, and the studies which he
cannot have allowed to lie fallow since his Cambridge days, to what
the age would deem a more strictly literary account. Beginning
with a translation of Sallust (1608), he produced a long series of
compositions, of which as complete as possible a list will be furnished
elsewhere, but which in no instance, with the exception of the
Apology for Actors, and, perhaps, the historical narrative entitled
England's Elizabeth(to be noticed below in connection with the play
which he based upon it), have any special interest for a generation
not so much addicted to useless learning as was the author's own.
We therefore leave aside his two long poetical productions, Troicus
Britannicus, or Great Britain's Troy, which tells its tale ab ovo
down to the pedigree of king James I, and the didactic Hierarchy
of the Blessed Angels, equal at all events to the ornate promise of
its title-page. On a similar encyclopaedic pattern he composed
Nine Books of Women, reprinted after his death under the still
more ambitious title The General History of Women. Posterity
would probably consent to burn these compilations, if from their
ashes could be produced the Lives of all the Poets, with which
the author had made some progress and which began with the
first before Homer'—and may have ended with Shakespeares.
The Lives and Acts of Nine of the most Worthy Women (three
Jews, three Gentiles and three Christians) savours, it must be
1 In Marston's Histrio-Mastix.
? See bibliography.
3 In The Fayre Mayde of the Exchange, generally attributed to Heywood, Bowdler,
'& humerous gallant,' says: “I never read anything but Venus and Adonis. ' Why,'
replies the Cripple, 'that's the very quintessence of love. '
6


## p. 87 (#105) #############################################

87
The Apology for Actors
confessed, more entirely of the bookmaker. In addition, Heywood
was an indefatigable translator and paraphraser, and one of his
lengthiest publications, Pleasant Dialogues and Drammas (of
which the date of publication is 1637), consists, mainly, of versions
of Erasmus, Textor and Lucian in heroic verse, and of Ovid in
blank, together with a long (and disagreeable) dialogue reproduced
a
from the Maechden-Pflicht of Vader Cats (1618). To these pieces
are added a series of prologues and epilogues, with as many
epitaphs, elegies, epigrams, acrostics and anagrams thrown in as
a last search of the author's cupboards can have produced. This
piece of bookmaking has scant interest for the literary student
except in so far as it helps to illustrate the extraordinary influence
of the Colloquies of Erasmus, which continued for more than
a century after their original appearance, and which, as has bee
pointed out by the editor of the Pleasant Dialogues, is distinctly
noticeable in the English drama of the Elizabethan and Jacobean
ages.
It cannot be said that the Apology for Actors (published in
1612) holds a very important place in the controversy between
the stage and its adversaries, which is narrated in a later chapter
of this volume, where Heywood's contribution to the contention is
discussed with the rest? Biographically, it interests us as giving
proof not only of his learning, which is solid and firsthand, as well
as varied and ready for use, but also of a natural moderation and
courtesy which led him to abstain from all personalities. And,
while we find him anxious for the good report of the profession
to which he belonged, and which such men as himself and Alleyn-
not to mention greater names-adorned, he at the same time
shows a modesty harmonising with all that we know of him as
a writer. In the double capacity of actor and playwright-for it
is noticeable that he seems to have no wish to distinguish between
the two functions—he describes himself as 'the youngest and
weakest of the nest wherein he was hatcht,' and liable to the
charge of presumptuousness for venturing to 'soare this pitch
before others of the same brood, more fledge, and of better wing'
than himself? . To his own plays he makes no reference or allusion
1 See the introduction to W. Bang's edition, where Fleay's assumption that any
of the pieces contained in the book had previously formed part of the Five Plays in
One performed in 1597, is rightly rejected as hazardous.
See post, chap. XIV.
3 Heywood's admiration of his chief fellow dramatists, and the kindly way in which
these men spoke of one another, are illustrated by the well known lines in the Hierarchy
of the Blessed Angels, cited in Collier's introduction to his edition of the Apology for
Actors.


## p. 88 (#106) #############################################

88
Thomas Heywood
in the course of his tract, except in the passage where he insists
on the moral purpose of the drama :
The unchaste are by us shewed in their errors in the persons of Phryne,
Lais, Thais, Flora; and amongst us Rosamond and Mistresse Shore.
The most rigid of censors could not set up a more respectable'
standard of morality and regard for authority than that desired by
the author of the Apology; though there is obviously a polemic
meaning in his protest against the practice of putting bitternesse'
and 'liberall invective' into the mouths of children-say of the
chapel-supposing their juniority to be a priviledge for any
railing. '
It has been concluded—though it cannot be proved—that from
1634—5 onwards Heywood ceased to write for the stage. His
Pleasant Dialogues and Drammas, a miscellaneous collection
of essays such as many a modern author has indulged himself by
publishing towards the close of his career, was completed by 1637;
and the last of the seven pageants which he produced, from 1631
onwards, was for the year 1639. These compositions attest his
cordial appreciations of the glories of the city under the auspices
of haberdashers, ironmongers and drapers — the dignity of
Merchants,' he exclaims with conviction, 'who can tell '? He
seems to have still been living in 1641, when a Life of Ambrosius
Merlin, compiled by him, appears to have been printed; indeed,
he is spoken of, as if alive, so late as 1648, in The Satire against
Satirists?
-
6
It seems to agree best with Heywood's method of production
to name his numerous dramatic works in their chronological
sequence, so far as this can be ascertained or, with more or less
probability, surmised, without, however, adhering to it with ab-
solute rigidity. A classification of his plays could be attempted
without much difficulty, if it were worth while ; but he, at least,
would certainly not have thought it so.
Priority of mention may, accordingly, be given to The Foure
Prentises of London. With the Conquest of Jerusalem, though,
possibly, it was preceded on the stage by one or both parts of
Edward IV. In the earliest extant edition, which is dated 1615,
the preface states the play to have been in the fashion 'some
1 See Porta Pietatis.
? Introduction to Apology, p. vi. The passage is quoted in Pearson's reprint,
vol. 1, p. XXV:
So may you come to sleep in fur at last
.
And Heywood sing your acts in lofty verse.


## p. 89 (#107) #############################################

The Foure Prentises of London
89
FLE
2
D.
6
fifteene or sixteene yeares agoe'; but Fleay has shown that there
must have been an earlier edition in, or not long after, 1610, and
that Heywood's play, probably, was the Godfrey of Bulloigne
performed by the Admiral's men as early as July 1594? And,
though Heywood certainly did not take the story of his play
direct from Tasso, it must be considered a curious coincidence
that, in 1594, Richard Carew's translation of five cantos of
Gerusalemme appeared in print? Whatever its immediate source,
this play, which combines the crude compiling method of the
early chronicle history with the violently symmetrical improba-
bilities of the popular romance, is primitive to the last degree.
The four heroes of the piece, whom their sire, the 'olde Earl
of Bulloign' had, under stress of misfortune, apprenticed in
London city, after taking service for the holy wars pass through
divers strange adventures in divers lands till they meet at last
before the ‘high wals of Hierusalem. ' Their sister, whose spirit
equals theirs, follows her star to the same spot, disguised as a
page; and a French lady, in love with one of the brothers, ac-
companies him in similar gear. After the victory has been won
(to the cries of 'A Syon! A Jerusalem ! '), each of the brothers
obtains a crown-Godfrey preferring one of thorns—and the story
ends in an accumulation of happiness. Presenter and dumb-show
have helped on the epic movement of the action, hardly any
attempt being made by the author to soar into poetry, though he
abounds in classical allusions. But the simplicity of Godfrey's
enthusiasm on beholding the
sacred path our Saviour trod
When he came riding to Hierusalem
is impressive; and the whole play must have told irresistibly upon
'the Honest and High-spirited Prentises' to whom it was after-
wards dedicated, and to whom Godfrey's accurate description of his
own and his brother's military functions, which has a strong smack
of the Artillery Garden, must have specially appealed.
In the amusing farce, The Knight of the Burning Pestles, in
which Beaumont and Fletcher ridiculed those very civic tastes
which Heywood's play had sought to gratify, fun is incidentally
made of The Foure Prentises, as well as of the plays which will
be noted next, and of a drama entitled The Bold Beachams
Cf. Fleay, English Drama, vol. 1, p. 282. The difficulties in the way cannot,
however, be ignored; see Greg, W. W. , Henslowe's Diary, vol. II, pp. 166, 284. The
indication noted by Collier that this was the play in which, in 1602, Wentworth Smith
collaborated with Heywood is not convincing.
2 Warton, vol. iv, p. 350.
3 Cf. post, chap. v.
th
het


## p. 90 (#108) #############################################

90
Thomas Heywood
(Beauchamps), which, without good authority, has been attributed
to Heywood
In the two plays, each of them in two parts, which next come
under consideration, Heywood worked on the model of the old
chronicle history pure and simple. Though doubt has been thrown
on Heywood's authorship of the earlier of these plays, King
Edward IV, on the ground of its superiority to the rest of the
dramatist's earlier work, it may confidently be accepted as his,
in view of the general unevenness in the relative merits of his
plays, and of the fact that, in its sentimental as well as its
humorous scenes, the piece is in a vein thoroughly his own.
Edward IV, which, after the full titlehad been entered in the
Stationers' register in 1599, was printed in the following year,
makes no attempt at dramatic unity-for it can hardly be said to
derive this from the personality of the city's favourite king,
Edward of the 'gadding eye. ' As has been pointed out by Schelling*,
the two parts of the play contain ‘not less than five stories in-
differently connected together by personages that fill roles in two
or more '—viz. the story of the bastard Falconbridge's siege of
London, in which were possibly incorporated reminiscences of
The Siege of London, a play revived by the Admiral's men in
December 1594, and in which the gallant flat-caps are not for-
gotten, while we meet with an original humorous figure in the
person of the well-meaning but unintelligible Maister Josselin ;
the diverting episode of Hobs the tanner of Tamworth, a figure
borrowed from an old ballad, who accurately represents the in-
difference of the populace towards the question at issue in the
wars of the Roses; the futile expedition of king Edward to
France (in which Louis XI makes his first appearance on the
English stage); the murder of the little princes in the Tower, a
tragic tale told with homely pathos; and, lastly, the story of Jane
Shore, which alone stretches from the first into the second part
of the play. The long-lived popularity of this story, which, also,
was taken from an old ballad, and which found its way again
and again into English dramatic and epic literature, needs no
1 See Fleay, u. 8. , vol. 1, p. 287.
? By Fleay, who, I think, is successfully controverted by Greg, Henslowe's Diary,
vol. II, p. 173.
3 See bibliography.
- vol. I, pp. 282–3.
5 As to Churchyard's Shore's Wife in A Mirror for Magistrates, cf. vol. I,
pp. 182 and 198. It is open to question whether Chettle and Day's play of Shore
(“wherein Shore's wife is written'), acted in 1602, was an independent piece of work;
in Rowe's Jane Shore (1714), which, at a recent date, was still to be seen on the
stage, no trace of a connection with Heywood's play is apparent.


## p. 91 (#109) #############################################

If
you
know not me
91
explanation. Heywood's treatment of the figure of the erring
wife, whose goodness of heart is attested by her openness to
melting charity, and by her sorrow for her sin, as well as that of
the high-minded and forgiving husband, is full of fine feeling ;
and it is to be regretted that, near its close, the episode should
be marred by the unnecessary fool's play of Jockie and Jeffrey,
with which the dramatist thought it his duty to gratify his
patrons. The minor character of Mistress Blague, Jane Shore's
sunshine friend, is admirably drawn. As for the death of husband
and wife, it is sentimental drama of the purest water, but none
the less in its place for that.
As it stands, Heywood's other chronicle play, If you know not
me, You know no bodiel: Or, The troubles of Queene Elizabeth,
surreptitiously printed from a stenographic eopy in 1605, and
revived in 1631, near the time of the publication of the author's
England : Elizabeth, is, so far as Part I is concerned, little
better than a jumble of misprinted fragments. It is clear, at
the same time, that this portion of the work must, at best, have
been a crude ad captandum treatment of Elizabeth's experiences
before her accession, following its text-book, Heywood's own mono-
graph Englands Elizabeth, in depicting the martyr-like rectitude
of the Protestant princess, who suffered tanquam ovis in adversity,
and who, after her fortune had turned, received from the hands of
the lord mayor her prize and palladium-an English Bible. What
availed the doubledyed animosity of the ruthless Gardiner against
a fortitude so innocent that even king Philip was loth to be
unkind? Repeated dumb-shows and some very unsophisticated
clownery helps on the action. Part II, which is much better
preserved, was not better worth preserving. After a long and
tedious treatment of the magnificence of Sir Thomas Gresham,
and the reckless prodigality of his nephew Jack, we have, as a
sudden episode, the attempt against the queen's life by William
Parry (which was plotted in 1583—4)*; whereupon, a chorus, pro-
fessing to bridge the interval between 1558 and 1588, brings us to
1 The phrase, which the instincts of the publisher may be supposed to have suggested
as a title, seems to have been used proverbially; in Part I of Edward IV, Hobs the
tanner applies it to himself.
Queen Elizabeth also figures as the last of the three Women Worthies among
the Christians' in Heywood's Nine Most Worthy Women of the World. Englands
Elizabeth was not published till 1609, a date that may account for the freedom with
which certain actions of Henry VIII are narrated, though not, perhaps, for the
contrast drawn (s. a. 1547) between the sweet lady' Elizabeth's determination to
remain unmarried, and what may be said of women in general. '
* This episode is also treated by Dekker in The Whore of Babylon.
9
.
6


## p. 92 (#110) #############################################

92
Thomas Heywood
the year of the Armada But nothing follows except a rather
bald account of this climax of Elizabethan glories, finishing with a
succession of 'posts,' recalling with a difference, the äryyelor of the
Persae. No doubt the whole of this production was brought out
hurriedly soon after the death of the great queen, having to serve
its purpose tant bien que mal; and, though it is not without
details of interest and contains at least one passage of real poetic
feeling? , it bears the fatal mark of haste.
A third dramatic composition of the same class which has been
ascribed to Heywood is the play entitled No-Body, and Some-
Body. With the true Chronicle Historie of Elydure, which was
entered in the Stationers' register in 1606, and must have been
performed before 1604. But, though Heywood's authorship seemed
unquestionable to Fleay, stronger evidence than that which satisfied
him seems requisite before we burden the dramatist's reputation
with this ascription. The main plot, taken from Geoffrey of Mon-
mouth, of king Elidure's threefold accession to the British throne,
is of the antique cast of The True Chronicle History of King Leir;
the by-plot which gives its name to the play is an elaborate
development of the grim old jest of Ouris, which savours of the
personifications familiar to the moralities and, like them, has a
satirico-didactic aim .
To the same early period in his career in which Heywood pro-
duced examples of a species soon to become all but obsolete belongs
a series of plays from his hand which in subject seem to associate
themselves with the tastes of more learned audiences than those
for which he had thus early shown himself ready to cater. But,
in the preface to The Iron Age—the last of The Four Ages in
which he dramatised a long series of classical myths from Saturn
and Jupiter down to Ulysses, who, alone among the Greek kings
banded against Troy, survives to speak the epilogue—he expressly
tells us that these plays were
often (and not with the least applause) Publickely Acted by two Companies
appon one Stage at once, and have at sundry times thronged three severall
Theaters, with numerous and mighty Auditories.
There is every reason for believing that Parts I and II of Hercules,
* See Tawny-coat's apostrophe to the earth, out of which his spade is to procure
his sustenance, beginning
Hard world, when men dig living out of stones. (Para II. )
? Viz. the spelling ey for ay or I, which he had observed to be peculiar to Hey.
wood. It may be added that the references to games of cards (11. 1528 7. ) recall a
scene in A Woman Kilde with Kindnesse, and that the author of No-Body, and some-Kody
was evidently familiar with London.
3 See the bibliography as to this play.


## p. 93 (#111) #############################################

The Four Ages
93
performed by the Admiral's men as new plays from May 1595, are,
respectively, The Silver Age and The Brazen Age of Heywood's
series? ; but Fleay's daring identification of Selio and Olimpio
(Caelo et Olympo? ), performed by the same company in 1594,
with The Golden Age, and his conjecture that Troye, performed
by them in 1596, is Part 1, or an earlier and shorter edition of
both parts, of The Iron Age, must remain questionable. In any
case, these plays are more invertebrate than the most loosely
constructed of chronicle histories; and not only is the number of
characters very great, but it might seem as if, to any audience far
away from Cam or Isis, even the indefatigable exertions of old
Homer' as presenter and chorus, aided by occasional dumb-shows,
would have proved inadequate. There is, no doubt, a good deal of
life and stir in the action—the amorous scenes, indeed, are often
very highly coloured-quite apart from the stimulus of occasional
unexpected parallels and a large amount of clowning. But
it is incontestable that these plays offer a significant measure of
the imaginative powers on which an Elizabethan dramatist could
reckon in his audience. Homer might safely venture, in Hey-
wood's phrase, to unlock the casket of which the learned kept the
key; and there is something contagious in the opening boast of
the poet-magician, that he had 'raised out of the earth'the gods
who served the playwright as his puppets.
Proceeding in chronological sequence, we now arrive, among
Heywood's extant undoubted plays, at a group in which the
earliest in date is his acknowledged masterpiece, A Woman Kilde
with Kindnesse. It should, however, be noted that, on the strength
of the occurrence of some Latin ribaldry, both in The Wise-woman
Of Hogsdon, which is probably Heywood's, and in the popular
How a man may chuse a good Wife from a bad (published anony-
mously in 1602), Fleay confidently asserts that the two plays must
be by the same author. Some further indications of Heywood's
authorship of the second of the pair might be sought in its general
tendency and tone, and in at least one touch of true human kind-
ness in his best manner", as well as in the humour of Pipkin, which
See Greg's Henslowe, vol. 11, p. 175, and of. ibid. pp. 180 and 284.
2 Not only do Tytan and Saturn, in The Golden Age, irresistibly recall Esau and
Jacob; but, in The Silver age, the audience is apprised that the prolongation of
night, which favours Jupiter on his visit to Alcmena, also serves Joshua in his battle
against the Canaanites. In The Golden Age, the clown informs Jupiter (when in
search of a father) that the parish' ought not to be troubled with him.
* The courtesan's sense of shame in taking the wronged wife's place at table
(act 10, sc. 3). This play, which could not have been written without a knowledge of
the tomb scene in Romeo and Juliet, is printed in vol. ix of Hazlitt's Dodsley.


## p. 94 (#112) #############################################

94
Thomas Heywood
is very like that of Heywood's clowns and especially like Roger's in
The English Traveller; but such resemblances, and perhaps one
or two others which might be pointed out, are not evidence, and
there is more tirade in this piece than is usual with Heywood ;
for the rest, it is deftly constructed and contains a good deal of
humour,
In any case, when, in 1603 or earlier, Heywood produced A
Woman Kilde with Kindnesse, which was first printed in 1607, he
was not moving on untrodden ground! The germs of the species
which we call domestic drama, and to whose growth in English
dramatic literature incidental reference has already been made in
this volume and in its predecessor, are discernible in the realistic
scenes introduced into the mysteries as novelties by way of
relief, and in those interludes in which, as in the case of Inge-
lend's Disobedient Child, a serious treatment of a realistic situa-
tion or plot was essayed. In due course, however, the choice of
actions localised in English everyday life fell more or less into
disuse, as the regular drama developed itself, and as themes
derived from national history, on the one hand, or from classical
and Italian sources, on the other, found favour with an age
filled with high aspirations and eager for the glittering con-
tents of the newly opened treasurehouse. But a reaction was
not long in coming; as Heywood repeatedly hints, new subjects
were a necessity for the stage; and, soon after the beginning of
the last decade of the sixteenth century, and for several years in
the seventeenth, there was a constant flow of plays dealing with
actions taken from ordinary life, and coming home to men's
business and bosoms with a directness alien both to tragoedia
cothurnata and to half allegorical, half satirical comedy.
Nor was it a mere change of preference which accounts for
the impetus given to the dramatisation of experiences, sorrows and
consolations familiar to the country squires and town merchants
and their wives and children in contemporary England. In a
period of the national history when the middle classes were begin-
ning to assert themselves in the social system of the country,
a movement which it would be a mistake to regard as altogether
identical with the striving of puritanism for ascendancy-it could
1 On the subject of the domestic drama, compare the excellent chapter on the
subject, passim, in Schelling, vol. I, and Creizenach, vol. iv, part 1, pp. 237 fi.
See, also, Greg's Henslowe, vol. II, pp. 204 ff. , and Fleay, passim; and cf. a very striking
dissertation by Singer, H. W. , Das bürgerliche Trauerspiel in England, Leipzig, 1891,
and the opening remarks in Eloesser, A. , Das bürgerliche Drama, Berlin, 1898.
2 Cf. vol. v, chap. v,


## p. 95 (#113) #############################################

Elizabethan
Domestic Drama
95
hardly be but that room should have been found in the drama for
exposition of the middle class point of view, middle class morality
and middle class humanity, as distinct from the historic pretensions
of kings and nobles and prelates, from the easier social codes of
palaces and castles and, again, from the violent impulses and freer
ways of life habitual to an uninstructed populace. Shakespeare,
whose muse was at home on the throne of kings, in the strife
of battlefields, or in communion with nature in her moods of
elemental agitation or of woodland calm, and who (save in so
exceptional an excursion into a new field as The Merry Wives)
looked upon civic life in a satirical humour, was not responsive to
this movement, and, indeed, appears to have been very imperfectly
aware of it.
When domestic troubles are his dramatic theme,
they are conflicts in heroic minds or tempests of romantic passion? .
Jonson, and his school—including Middleton-on the other hand,
treat such griefs and their agents or victims from the point of
view of critical superiority. The large majority of Elizabethan
plays which may be classed as domestic drama proper are anony-
mous; and, with the exception of Dekker, who produced powerful
work of the kind in The Honest Whore (assuredly his in the main)
and in many scenes ascribable to him in plays of joint authorship,
Heywood, in many ways specially attracted and suited to this
genre, is the only Elizabethan dramatist of note who attained to
eminence in it.
The currents which united in the flow of Elizabethan domestic
drama were of various origin: perhaps the largest in volume was
that which set in earliest, and which cannot be more succinctly
described than as that of the murder plays. The earliest of these
and the most effective
inasmuch as in no other Elizabethan
drama has realism of treatment so completely matched the terrors
of incident and situation—was Arden of Feversham, published in
1592, but probably brought on the stage some six or seven years
earlier? ; one of the latest of the series was A Yorkshire Tragedy,
acted and printed in 1608, and founded on a ballad commemorating
a murder committed in 1604. This is also, in its way, a remarkably
powerful piece; but, unlike Arden, it is tinged with the sentiment-
ality which had become almost inseparable from domestic drama.
1 The very accessories of the dramatic catastrophe, as Singer aptly remarks, are
lifted into an uncommon atmosphere, and Desdemona's handkerchief has a mysterious
history of its own,
dyed in mummy which the skilful
Conserved of maidens' hearts. .
See vol. v, chap. a.
3 See ibid.


## p. 96 (#114) #############################################

96
Thomas Heywood
The intervening murder plays include, with A warning for Faire
Women(printed in 1599) —a notable play of its kind, in which Shake-
speare has been confidently, but on no satisfactory grounds, held to
have had at least a finger'-a number of pieces which have perished,
and in which, among other dramatists, Chettle, Day, Haughton,
Dekker, Jonson and Samuel Rowley were in various combinations
concerned? To these should be added, as rather later in date
than the above-mentioned group, the extremely interesting Witch
of Edmonton (printed in 1658, but probably acted in 1621 or soon
afterwards), which was at first attributed to ‘Dekker, Ford, Rowley,
etc. ,' and in which the hands of the first two of the authors named
can almost certainly be recognised? All these murder plays are,
? .
in their surroundings, confined to English middle class life; but
this fact, of course, does not exclude the influence either of the
Italian domestic tragedies of real life which have been described
as 'more horrible than anything in Ford or Webster,' or of
Italian and other foreign fiction.
In occasional combination with the realistic appeal to the senti-
ment of terror which gives much direct force to the murder plays,
the Elizabethan and early Jacobean domestic drama also occupies
itself with other motives, the operation of which powerfully affects
the course of human life and is most clearly perceptible when
its conditions are least complicated and unusual. The faithful
observance of the marriage tie and the shameful neglect of it,
parental love and the pangs inflicted by filial ingratitude such
are the themes which frequently recur in the dramatic literature
of this period. The faithful wife appears in How a man may
chuse a good Wife from a bad, mentioned above, from which
The Faire Maide of Bristow, possibly by Day, printed in 1602, is
imitated, though the story of the latter play is thrown back into
1 Rptd in The School of Shakspere, ed. Simpson, R. , vol. 11, 1878.
? Chettle and Day wrote Black Bateman of the North (1598); Day and Haughton,
Cox of Collumpton (for date, cf. Greg, Henslowe's Diary, vol. II, p. 207) and Thomas
Merry, or Beech's I'ragedy (1599? ). This seems to have been combined with an Italian
version of the story of the Babes in the Wood (which, apparently, had been dramatised
by Chettle and Day as The Italian Tragedy, printed 1605, and thought by Greg (u. 8.
p. 210) to have possibly been identical with The Orphans' Tragedy) into a play printed
in 1601 under the title of Two Lamentable Tragedies, as by an unknown, and possibly
fictitious, Robert Yarington (rptd in Old Plays, ed. Bullen, A. H. , vol. iv, 1882).
Dekker and Jonson wrote Page of Plymouth (1599), as to the subject of which cf.
* Dramaticus' in Shakespeare Society Papers, vol. 11 (S. S. Publ. 1845); and Samuel
Rowley The Bristow Tragedy (1602), the identification of which with the comedy The
Faire Maide of Bristow is more than doubtful.
3 See below, chap. vill.
* Cf. Smith, P. L. , Life of Sir Henry Wottun (1907), vol. I, p. 22.


## p. 97 (#115) #############################################

A A Woman Kilde with Kindnesse
97
the reign of Richard Il. The Miseries of Inforet Mariage, by
George Wilkins, printed in 1607, in a measure varies the theme ;
but the pathos of the first two acts loses itself in a picture of
reckless despair which is neither probable nor pleasing, and, though
the sentimental element reappears, it is effectually submerged by
the most imbecile of 'happy endings? ' The graceless son plays
his part in The London Prodigall, noticed above among the plays
attributed to Shakespeares, where the figure of the faithful wife
also recurs in the person of Luce, one of the many reproductions
in the English drama of the Patient Grissel type, which Chettle,
Dekker and Haughton brought on the stage by their treatment of
the famous romantic theme. It seems unnecessary to pursue
further in this place the development of English domestic drama,
though, among the abnormally conceived and artificially con-
structed plays of the early Stewart period, there are not a few in
which the directness distinctive of the entire species asserts itself
either in the main action of the play or in particular scenes, even
when overspread by some rank exotic intrigue or driven into the
corner by the intrusion of some supernatural fancy.
A Woman Kilde with Kindnesse, which deservedly holds a
foremost rank among the classics of domestic drama, derived its
title, like several other of its author's plays, from a proverb or
proverbial phrase. The expression 'to kill a wife with kindness'
occurs in The Taming of the Shrews, which must have been pro-
duced on the stage some six or seven years before the performance,
by Worcester's men, early in 1603 (N. S. ), of Heywood's play? . It
was first printed, without having been entered in the register,
· Edited by Quin, A. H. (? ), Philadelphia, 1902. See Brereton, J. Le Gay, in The
Modern Language Review, vol. III, p. 74 (cf. ).
? Rptd in vol. IX of Hazlitt's Dodsley (1874).
3 See vol. v, chap. x.
* Cf. ante, chap. II. As to the “Griseldis-Motiv'in English drama, cf. Gothein, M. ,
"Die Frau im engl. Drama vor Shakespeare,' in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, vol. XL (1904),
PP. 40 ir.
5 Cf. Schelling, u. s. pp. 349 ff.
6 Act iv, 8o. 1, 192.
? See the entry in Henslowe's diary ap. Greg, vol. 11, p. 234. Later uses of the phrase
'to kill with kindness' are noted in the present writer's edition of Heywood's play in
the Temple Dramatists Series (1897). Other proverbial titles of plays by Heywood
are, besides If you know not me, etc. , those of the non-extant The Blind eats many a
Fly; Christmas comes but once a year; Joan and my Lady. The following are some of
the proverbs or proverbial phrases to be found in the dialogue of his extant dramas:
in A Woman Kilde, etc. "comparisons are odious'; in The Royall King, etc. 'thou canst
have no more of the cat but his skin'; in The Fair Maid Of The West Base is the
man that paies'; in The Golden Age . cast your old cloak about ye'; in The Wise-
woman Of Hogsdon 'a cat may look at a king'; in The English Traveller ‘January
and May. '
E. L. VI. CH. IV.
7
>
>
2
9


## p. 98 (#116) #############################################

98
Thomas Heywood
in 1607; the third edition of the play, 'as it hath been oftentimes
acted by the Queen's' men, appeared in 1617. This popularity
was due to no adventitious attractions; and the author was
perfectly conscious of the simplicity of the means by which the
desired dramatic effect had been achieved; in the words of his
prologue it was
a barren subject, a bare scene
which he presented—nothing more than a sad experience of
everyday life, redeemed from the dreariness of its melancholy
only, so far as the erring wife is concerned, by the pity of it, and
by the nobility of soul which, in the very depth of his grief, the
wronged husband proves capable of revealing. In the strength of
its sentiment and the directness of its appeal to a more than
fleeting sympathy lie the main causes of the effect which this
play produces ; but the skill with which its action is constructed
and the chief situations are devised should not be overlooked.
While the seducer falters long on the threshold of his crime, but,
when he has once crossed it, drags on his victim relentlessly from
transgression to transgression, she is caught in the toils half un-
awares, and, with an 'O Master Wendoll 01,' is lost-to awake to
Sbitter remorse even before the hour of discovery has come. The
nocturnal return of the betrayed husband to his closed door is
(presented with admirable theatrical effect—it might, as has been
said, almost be described as a 'prose' reproduction of some of
the terrors of Macbeth. The magnanimity of the husband--pre-
figured by that of Master Shore in the chronicle play-might,
conceivably, have failed to come home to an Elizabethan audience,
but for the picture of the broken-hearted and penitent woman in
the last act, which wins over all hearts to an acknowledgment of
her husband's kindness, and of the Power which overrules both
human sorrow and human sin. The scene of the play is laid in
the midst of English country life, characteristic features of which
-fresh air and hawking in the morning, and a game at cards o
nights are reproduced without an effort, but with a realistic
effect which materially helps to bring home the story of the
tragedy enacted thus amidst familiar surroundings.
1 Compare with this electrical touch another, almost equal to it-Mistress Frank-
ford to her lute: "We both are out of tune, out of tune' (act iv, sc. 3).
? Heywood must be pardoned the allusive ingenuity of the card playing scene,
which probably pleased the taste of his patrons. Cf. the repeated allusions to the
game of Maw in Dekker's Match mee in London, which Fleay thought identifiable with
The Set at Maw, acted in 1594.


## p. 99 (#117) #############################################

Doubtful Plays
99
While a criticism of certain details in the main action of A
Woman Kilde with Kindnesse seems unnecessary here, it cannot
be ignored that, in this as in several other of his plays, Heywood
should have felt himself obliged to contrive a by-plot which,
instead of relieving tension, offends judgment. In the present
instance, though we would not willingly lose the hawking scene
out of which the subsidiary plot arises, we have to accept a
pedestrian version of the story of Measure for Measure, with a
solution such as might, possibly, have commended itself to the
author of Pamela'.
If Heywood wrote The Wise-woman Of Hogsdon, a comedy
which, though not printed, with his name, till 1638, cannot have
been produced at a date much later than 1604%, no more striking
instance is to be found of his versatility. It is true that this play
opens with a gambling scene as true to life as the hawking scene
in A Woman Kilde with Kindnesse, and that, later, it suddenly
changes its manner into that of domestic drama-of the comédie
larmoyante variety—so as to make the reckless young libertine
who is the hero of the action exclaim :
Here's such wetting of Handkerchers, hee weepes to thinke of his Wife,
shee weepes to see her Father cry. Peace foole, wee shall else bave thee
claime kindred of the Woman Kill'd with Kindnesse.
But Heywood is hardly likely to have introduced this half sarcastic
allusion into a play of his own, and the general character of this
comedy of manners is such as to make his authorship doubtful,
notwithstanding the mention in it, noted above, of his Cambridge
college. The Wise-woman Of Hogsdon is, at the same time, a
play full of life and spirit, with a plot very well managed in spite
of its complications, between the two Luces and a third young
lady and the gay Young Chartley who flutters round the trio,
depending on the services of the evil old intermediary, the avowed
rival of Mother Bombie, Mother Phillips of Bankside, and half
a dozen other wise women and procuresses.
Much fuller of
humorously grotesque characters than any known play of Hey-
wood's, this play, at the same time, exaggerates all the blemishes
which elsewhere he shows no similar eagerness to parade—a pro-
fusion of doggerel, of bad puns and equivoques and of unequivocal
obscenity.
The case is different with The Fayre Mayde of the Exchange.
1 As to Heywood's indebtedness to the queen of Navarre and Bandello for the
double plot of this play, see Creizenach, vol. 19, part 1, p. 264.
• See Fleay, vol. 1, p. 291,
7-2


## p. 100 (#118) ############################################

Іоо
Thomas Heywood
With The pleasaunt Humours of the Cripple of Fanchurch,
which, though printed anonymously in 1607 and later, has been
usually attributed to Heywood, and upon which, treating it as his,
Charles Lamb bestowed high praise. The present writer, without
accepting Fleay's conjecture that the play was written by Machin,
cannot persuade himself that Heywood was its author. Though
the comedy offers a very lively picture of the Royal Exchange
(from a shop front point of view), there is little else to convey
the sense of freshness and originality which few of Heywood's
dramatic productions fail, in some respect, to leave upon the
reader. The heroine Phillis fails to charm, and her repartees
exhibit her as a very secondrate Beatrice, while her passion for
the 'noble’ Cripple, who is magnanimous enough to reject it, is
not so much unpleasing as unconvincing. Apart from the Cripple's
loyalty to the city and the virtue of its shopwomen (a touch of
characteristic directness) there is little to suggest Heywood; the
wittiness of some of the passages of the play, and the cleverly
symmetrical construction of its plot', are merits not common in
his dramas.
In The Royall King, and The Loyall Subject, which, though not
printed till 1637, was, undoubtedly, of a relatively early date', we
have an indisputable piece of Heywood's workmanship. His muse
took a lofty flight on this occasion, seeking renown in romantic
drama. Like Fletcher's similarly named play, from which it
altogether differs in treatment, Heywood's is founded on a novel by
Bandello3; but the dramatist is clearly anxious that his localisation
of the story in England should be express and explicit ; so that it
is difficult—though useless—not to speculate on the possibility of
some personal application being intended. Yet the story of the
play is wildly improbable, and before the long-suffering fidelity of
the Marshal and his family even Patient Grissel's pales ; in short,
an impression of artificiality mars the total effect. Moreover, the
action, as it were, begins over again, after it had seemed to have
reached its height. In a word, though the diction, in the case of
1 In the actual close of the play, which leaves the arrest of Phillis's father for
felony without explanation or sequence, there must have been something wrong in
the stenography.
2 See the references to versification and costume in the epilogue. Fleay (vol. 1, p. 300)
insists that this play was an altered version of Marshal Osric, by Heywood and Went-
worth Smith (performed by Worcester's men in 1602), brought out, in consequence
of the success of Fletcher's Loyal Subject, soon after that play, probably at Christmas
1633.
3 Cf. Koeppel, E. , Quellenstudien zu den Dramen Ben Jonsons (1895), appendix,
pp. 133-5.


## p. 101 (#119) ############################################

The Fair Maid Of The West
IOI
a
the principal plot, maintains a level unusual with Heywood, the
conception is superior to its execution, and the by-plot, which
essays to illustrate the commonplace saying that clothes make the
man, is, as not unfrequently with Heywood, extravagant and in part
offensive. This play, which, very possibly, was earlier than A Woman
Kilde with Kindnesse, cannot claim to be ranked beside it.
The Rape of Lucrece, printed in 1609, but first produced
soon after the accession of James I', is, again, in a different style, if
style of any sort can be ascribed to this odd medley of tragedy and
vaudeville. As to the serious action, all that need be said is that
the dramatist has contrived to provoke a strange thrill of mixed
pity and terror by the picture of the house of Collatinus when the
morning dawns on Tarquin's crime. It is here that he introduces
the one exquisite lyric known to have come from his pen. The
other songs—a budget of what at the present day would be called
music hall ditties interspersed in the action of this 'true Roman
tragedy' by Valerius, 'the merry Lord among the Roman peers'-
are, in part, of antiquarian interest (such as the list of London
taverns, and that of the street cries of Rome); they reach the nadir
of shameless inappropriateness in the catch with which the merry
lord, Horatius Cocles and the clown 'follow on,' when the tragic
action is suspended at its height.
In The Fair Maid Of The West, printed in 1631, which is
undoubtedly and unmistakably Heywood's, we have another
romantic comedy, but one in which the patriotic note sounds
clearly and the salt breeze of the sea blows to and from our island
shores. Part I of this dramatic Odyssey (which must have been
founded on some popular tale unknown to us) begins with a
delightfully vivid picture of English seaport life, localised at
Plymouth and dated by a dumb-show as at the time of the ex-
pedition of Essex to the Azores. On the Hoe, the gallant Spencer
parts from the lovely Besse Bridges, the pride of the Castle inn-
he to sail for 'Fiall,' she to keep her faith and fortune for him at
Foy. Soon afterwards, we are transported into the land of eastern
romance, and, after divers marvellous adventures-all redounding
to the honour and glory of Elizabethan England and her sailors-
we leave the lovers reunited as the honoured guests of king
Mullisheg of Fesse. Part II completes the story in three stirring
acts, brimful of lust, courage, sensitive honour and royal magna-
nimity, enough in their combination to furnish forth an entire
i See Fleay, vol. I, p. 292.
'Packe cloudes away, and welcome day,' eto.


## p. 102 (#120) ############################################

102
Thomas Heywood
6
drama. But, as in The Royall King, the author cannot leave well
alone, and, in acts iv-v, adds a further series of adventures in
Italy, beginning with a shipwreck, which must have gone near to
surfeit even an Elizabethan audience. But the English 'spirit and
fire 1,' and kindly clowning of Clem, Besse's faithful ‘drawer'
and constant follower in east and west, hold out to the end.
The English Traveller, printed in 1633, was probably acted in
or about 1627 ; but the evidence on the subject is slight. The
story of Geraldine is told by Heywood in his History of Women?
as having 'lately happened within' his 'own knowledge’; but the
attempts which have been made to identify the hero remain
mere conjectures : The main plot with which the young
traveller is concerned turns on the idea which lies at the root of
Heywood's finest dramatic designs—that, if to err is human, to
forgive is what raises humanity beyond the earth. There is genius
in the twofold capacity for thinking nobly and beyond the range
of common minds, and for bringing home such thoughts to their
comprehension and sympathy. The by-plot of this drama is
derived from Plautus.
A few words will suffice as to the remaining extant plays of
which Heywood was sole author. Among these, The Captives, or
The Lost Recovered, which was not known to exist in print till
1883, when Mr Bullen found a copy of it in the British Museum, is,
by external evidence as well as by that of style and manner,
proved to be that entered as ‘by Hayward' in Sir Henry Herbert's
office book under the date 1634. This romantic comedy exhibits
the writer's patriotic spirit, as well as his love of the sea and its
ways. The main story is taken from the Rudens of Plautus,
several passages in which are translated in the play, but it seems
to have reached the author through the Italian hand of Masuccio
Salernitano. The underplot, which is derived from an old French
fabliau, translated into an English jest-book and retold by
1
These bold Englishmen
I think are all compos'd of spirit and fire,
The element of earth hath no part in them.
Part 11, act iv, ad fin,
2 Book iv, A Moderne History of an Adulteresse.
3 See Fleay's endeavour (vol. I, p. 297) to find the original of the young Levantine
traveller in George Sandys; and cf. the suggestion hazarded by Bang (Materialien,
etc. , vol. II, p. 376) that Young Geraldine was meant for Sir Peter Pindar, whom in
a distich (ibid. p. 266) Heywood couples with St Paul— both travel'd.