Thomas Heywood
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Thomas Heywood (early 1570s – 16 August 1641) was an
Early years
Few details of Heywood's life have been documented with certainty. Most references indicate that the county of his birth was most likely Lincolnshire, while the year has been variously given as 1570, 1573, 1574 and 1575. It has been speculated that his father was a country parson and that he was related to the half-century-earlier dramatist John Heywood, whose death year is, again, uncertain, but indicated as having occurred not earlier than 1575 and not later than 1589.
Heywood is said to have been educated at the University of Cambridge, though his college is a matter of dispute. The persistent tradition that he was a Fellow of Peterhouse was discussed and dismissed by a Master of that college.[2] Alternatively, there is evidence[3] that Heywood was a member of Emmanuel. Subsequently, however, he moved to London, where the first mention of his dramatic career is a note in the diary of theatre entrepreneur Philip Henslowe recording that he was paid for a play that was performed by the Admiral's Men, an acting company, in October 1596. By 1598, he was regularly engaged as a player in the company; since no wages are mentioned, he was presumably a sharer in the company, as was normal for important company members. He was later a member of other companies, including Lord Southampton's, Lord Strange's Men and Worcester's Men (who subsequently became known as Queen Anne's Men). During this time, Heywood was extremely prolific; in his preface to The English Traveller (1633) he describes himself as having had "an entire hand or at least a maine finger in two hundred and twenty plays". However, only twenty three plays and eight masques have survived that are accepted by historians as wholly or partially authored by him.
Creative activity
Heywood's first play may have been
He wrote for the stage, and (perhaps disingenuously) protested against the printing of his works, saying he had no time to revise them.
Heywood's best known plays are his domestic tragedies and comedies (plays set among the English middle classes); his masterpiece is generally considered to be A Woman Killed with Kindness (acted 1603; printed 1607), a domestic tragedy about an adulterous wife, and a widely admired Plautine farce The English Traveller (acted approximately 1627; printed 15 July 1633), which is also known for its informative "Preface", giving Heywood an opportunity to inform the reader about his prolific creative output. His citizen comedies are noteworthy because of their physicality and energy. They provide a psycho-geography of the sights, smells, and sounds of London's wharfs, markets, shops, and streets which contrasts with the more conventional generalisations about the sites of commerce, which are satirised in city comedies.
Heywood wrote numerous prose works, mostly pamphlets about contemporary subjects, of interest now primarily to historians studying the period. His best known long essay is An Apology for Actors, a moderately-toned and reasonable reply to
Final two decades
Between 1619 and 1624, Heywood seems to have inexplicably ceased all activity as an actor, but from 1624, until his death seventeen years later, his name frequently appears in contemporary accounts. In this period, Heywood was associated with Christopher Beeston's company at The Phoenix theatre, Queen Henrietta's Men or Lady Elizabeth's Men. At The Phoenix, Heywood produced new plays such as The Captives, The English Traveller, and A Maidenhead Well Lost as well as revivals of old plays. Numerous volumes of his prose and poetry were published, including two lengthy poetic works, Gynaikeion (1624), described as "nine books of various history concerning women" and, eleven years later, The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels. As a measure of Heywood's popular standing in the final years of his life, Love's Mistress or the Queen's Masque, a play published in 1636, but performed since 1634, was reported to have been seen by King Charles I and his queen three times in eight days.
According to writings of the period, Thomas Heywood had been living in
Works
Plays
Tragedies
- A Woman Killed with Kindness (c. 1603), a domestic tragedy
- The Rape of Lucrece (1608)
Comedies
- How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad (1602)
- The Wise Woman of Hoxton (performed c. 1604; printed 1634)
- The Captives (licensed 1624)
- A Maidenhead Well Lost (performed and published 1634)
- The Late Lancashire Witches (1634), written in collaboration with Richard Brome
Romances
- The Four Prentices of London (performed c. 1592; published 1615), a romantic drama
- The Royal King and Loyal Subject (performed c. 1615–18; printed 1637)
- The Fair Maid of the West Parts One and Two (both printed 1631), a romantic drama
- A Challenge for Beauty
- The English Traveler(performed c. 1627; printed 1633)
- Fortune by Land and Sea (printed 1655), written in collaboration with William Rowley
Chronicle plays
- If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody Parts One and Two
- Edward IV Parts One and Two
- The Golden Age (1611)
- The Silver Age (1613)
- The Brazen Age (1613)
- The Iron Age, Part One and Part Two (1632)
Attributed to Heywood
- The Fair Maid of the Exchange (printed anonymously in 1607), domestic drama doubtfully attributed to Heywood
- Dick of Devonshire
- A Cure for a Cuckold
- A New Wonder, a Woman Never Vexed
- Appius and Virginia
- Swetnam the Woman-Hater
- The Thracian Wonder
Masques and pageants
- Love's Mistress or The Queens Masque (printed 1636), the story of Cupid and Psyche as told by Apuleius
- A series of pageants, most of them devised for the City of London, or its guilds, by Heywood, printed in 1637
Poetry
- Troia Britannica, or Great Britain's Troy (1609), a poem in seventeen cantos "intermixed with many pleasant poetical tales" and "concluding with an universal chronicle from the creation until the present time"
- The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels (1635), a didacticpoem in nine books;
- Pleasant Dialogue, and Dramas Selected Out of Lucian, etc. (1637)
- The Conspiracie of Cateline [sic] and Warre of Jugurth [sic], translations of Sallust (1608).
Prose
- An Apology for Actors, Containing Three Brief Treatises (1612), edited for the Shakespeare Society in 1841
- Gynaikeion or Nine Books of Various History Concerning Women (1624)
- England's Elizabeth, Her Life and Troubles During Her Minority from Time Cradle to the Crown (1631)
- The Life of Merlin, surnamed Ambrosius; his Prophecies and Predictions Interpreted, and their Truth Made Good by our English Annals: Being a Chronographical History of all the Kings and Memorable Passages of this Kingdom, from Brute to the reign of King Charles (1641)
Notes
- ^ Gurr (1992, 243), Massai (2002, xi), McLuskie (1994, 91), and Thomson (1998, 486). The play was first printed in 1607.
- ^ Ward, Sir A W (1910). "His life: London and Court associations". The Cambridge History of English Literature, Volume VI (1950 ed.). p. 83..
- ^ Emmanuel College Magazine. Emmanuel College. July 1986. pp. 24–25.
References
- ISBN 0-521-42240-X.
- Halliday, F. E. 1964. A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Baltimore: Penguin.
- Massai, Sonia. 2002. "Editor's Introduction" in The Wise Woman of Hoxton. By Thomas Heywood. Globe Quartos ser. London: Nick Hern. ISBN 1-854-59707-8. xi-xiv.
- McLuskie, Kathleen E. 1994. Dekker & Heywood: Professional Dramatists. English Dramatists ser. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-46237-8.
- Sullivan, Ceri. 2002. 'If You Know Not Me (2) and Commercial Revue', The Rhetoric of Credit: Merchants in Early Modern Writing. Madison. ch. 5.
- Thomson, Peter. 1998. "Heywood, Thomas" In The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Ed. Martin Banham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43437-8. p. 486.
- Velte, F. Mowbray. 1924 The Bourgeois Elements in the Dramas of Thomas Heywood. Mysore: Wesleyan Mission Press, 1924; reprint ed. New York: Haskell House, 1966
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Heywood, Thomas". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 439–440. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
External links
- Works by or about Thomas Heywood at Internet Archive
- Works by Thomas Heywood at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- An Apology for Actors in Three Books