SOURCE: “Life and Works,” and “The Plays,” in The Plays of John Heywood, edited by Richard Axton and Peter Happé, D. S. Brewer, 1991, pp. 1-10, 11-31.

In the following excerpts from the introduction to their edition of Heywood's plays, Axton and Happé discuss details from the author's life and survey the plots, themes, and staging of his interludes.

Life and Works

Art thou Heywood that hath made many plaies? Ye many plaies, fewe good woorkes in all my daies. 

(Epigram 100, Fifth Hundred of Epigrans)

Heywood's long life (c.1497-1578) spans five reigns of doctrinal and social upheaval. As a loyal Catholic, related by marriage to the Rastells and the Mores, and by his daughter's marriage, to the Donnes, he narrowly escaped hanging in middle age. The last fourteen years of his old age were spent in exile, parted from a comfortable fortune. Yet his brilliance as an entertainer...