SOURCE: Johnson, Marilyn L. “Heywood's Favorite Types: The Good Wife.” In Images of Women in the Work of Thomas Heywood, edited by Dr. James Hogg, pp. 103-35. Salzburg, Austria: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1974.

In the following excerpt, Johnson discusses Heywood's representations of ideal wives in How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad and other plays.

But if heaven will that I a           Consort have, O grant mee one that's pious,           wise, and grave. 

(Curtaine Lecture, p. 78)

Scattered comments about marriage and stories of wives in Heywood's prose works clearly indicate that in his view wives should be chaste, loyal, patient, and obedient. He gives a character of a good wife “according to Theophrastus” in A Curtaine Lecture. She

must bee grave abroad, gentle at home, constant to love, patient to suffer, obsequious to her neighbors, obedient to her husband. For silence...