Heywood, << HAY wud, >> Thomas (1574?-1641), was a popular and productive English playwright of the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages. He claimed he wrote all or part of 220 plays, of which perhaps 23 survive. Heywood’s most enduring drama is A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603). This tragedy is almost unique in Elizabethan drama because the characters in the play are not of high rank, and the central situation is wholly domestic and free from political overtones. The play thus anticipates the direction that serious drama took in the later 1800’s in the domestic plays of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.
Heywood’s other plays include Edward IV (1599), The Fair Maid of the West (1610?), The English Traveller (1627), and adaptations of classical myths. Heywood also produced translations and pamphlets. His most important pamphlet was An Apology for Actors (1612). The pamphlet was a reply to Puritan attacks on the theater. Heywood was born in Lincolnshire. He attended Cambridge University and served as an actor and playwright for many theatrical companies. He died on Aug. 16, 1641.
