Thomas Heywood

Thomas Heywood was Shakespeare's overlooked rival, a playwright prolific enough to claim a hand in 220 plays. This collection gathers his finest work, anchored by 'A Woman Killed with Kindness,' a domestic tragedy of startling modern resonance. When a newlywed wife falls into betrayal, her husband's response is neither violence nor rage, he simply withdraws his love entirely, banishing her with the unbearable gift of continued kindness. The result is a quiet, devastating destruction that feels almost unbearably contemporary. Alongside 'The Fair Maid of the West' and other works, these plays explore love, betrayal, and morality through a domestic lens that predates the form's supposed invention. Heywood wrote about marriage and infidelity with psychological precision that his contemporaries rarely matched. For readers curious about early modern theatre beyond the usual canon, this collection offers something rare: plays that feel ancient and startlingly new at once.