t that he was one of the
most prolific writers the world has ever seen. In 1598 he became an
actor, or, as Henslowe, who employed him, phrases it, "came and hired
himself to me as a covenanted servant for two years." The date of his
first published drama is 1601; that of his last published work, a
"General History of Women," is 1657. As early as 1633 he represents
himself as having had an "entire hand, or at least a main finger," in
two hundred and twenty plays, of which only twenty-three were printed.
"True it is," he says, "that my plays are not exposed to the world in
volumes, to bear the title of Works, as others: one reason is, that many
of them, by shifting and change of companies, have been negligently
lost; others of them are still retained in the hands of some actors, who
think it against their peculiar profit to have them come in print; and a
third, that it was never any great ambition in me to be in this kind
voluminously read." It was said of him, by a contemporary, that he "not
only acted every day, but also obliged himself to write a sheet every
day for several years; but many of his plays being composed loosely in
taverns, occasions them to be so mean." Besides his labors as a
playwright, he worked as translator, versifier, and general maker of
books. Late in life he conceived the design of writing the lives of all
the poets of the world, including his contemporaries. Had this project
been carried out, we should have known something about the external life
of Shakespeare; for Heywood must have carried in his brain many of those
facts which we of this age are most curious to know.

Heywood's best plays evince large observation, considerable dramatic
skill, a sweet and humane spirit, and an easy command of language. His
style, indeed, is singularly simple, pure, clear, and straightforward;
but it conveys the impression of a mind so diffused as almost to be
characterless, and incapable of flashing its thoughts through the images
of imaginative passion. He is more prosaic, closer to ordinary life and
character, than his contemporaries. Two of his plays, and the best of
them all, "A Woman killed with Kindness," and "The English Traveller,"
are thoroughly domestic dramas, the first, and not the worst, of their
class. The plot of "The English Traveller" is specially good; and in
reading few works of fiction do we receive a greater shock of surprise
than in Geraldine's discovery of the infidelity of Wincott's wife