A Woman Killed with Kindness

Heywood was a very prolific contemporary of Shakespeare. This play is one of his best, and is quite often revived for performance over in the British Isles. It is an intriguing story of love, friendship, hate, disloyalty, and treachery. Heywood skillfully walks us through the emotions, and there are few surprises lurking in the text, as not everything happens as we expect, and the price of honor turns out to be high, but not higher then of love. As is the custom of Elizabethean drama we have a main plot, and we also have a subplot, which serves to highlight the main plot. These two are complimentary, and highlight each others failings very nicely. When characters of the main plot make the wrong choices, the sub plot shows us the right choice in a similar situation, and thus the play is doubly effective. Highly recommended to see that there were other great playwrights besides Shakespeare in the Elizabethean drama, and that they are only unknown today, because Shakespeare was such a giant, that he overshadows, even very competent writers, who would have shinned brightly in any other period.