HEYWOOD, JOIN (b. 1497), English dramatist, known to his contemporaries as "merry John Heywood," was probably the son of William Heywood, who was coroner of Coventry in 15o5 o6. In 1519 John Heywood was in receipt of a quarterly payment in the king's music book as "player of the virginals," and later he appears as a "singer." In 1528 he was granted a pension of f 1 o a year; from time to time he received emoluments and grants which show that he was in high favour at court under Edward VI. and Mary. As early as 1538 he "played an interlude with his children" before the princess Mary. He may have owed his introduction to her to Sir Thomas More, for he evidently belonged to the More circle; two at any rate of the pieces commonly attributed to him show strong evidence of More's influence. Moreover, his wife, Joan Rastell, was a daughter of the printer, John Rastell, who was More's brother-in-law. He was attached to the old reli gion, and in 1564, when a commission was appointed by Elizabeth to enforce the Act of Uniformity, he left England and took refuge in Belgium at Malines. From there he wrote in 1575 to Lord Burleigh, saying that he was an old man of 78, and asking that his daughter might collect his rents. The date of his death is un known.
Heywood's name was actually attached to four interludes: The Playe called the foure PP; a newe and a very mery interlude of a palmer, a pardoner, a potycary, a pedler (not dated), is a contest in lying, easily won by the palmer, who said he had never known a woman out of patience. The Play of the Wether, a new and a very mery interlude of all maner of W ethers (printed 1533), describes the chaotic results of Jupiter's attempts to suit the weather to the desires of a number of different people. The Play of Love (printed 1533) is an extreme instance of the author's love of wire-drawn argument. The Dialogue of Wit and Folly is more of an academic dispute than a play. But two pieces usually assigned to Heywood, though printed by Rastell without any au thor's name, are The Mery Play between the Pardoner and the Frere, the Curate and Neybour Pratte (printed 1533, but prob ably written much earlier), and the Mery Play betwene Johan Johan the Husbande, Tyb the Wyfe, and $er Jhan the Preest (printed . These two pieces show the strong influence of Sir Thomas More, but there does not seem to be any ground for excluding them from the list of Heywood's plays. Heywood's other works are a collection of proverbs and epigrams, the ear liest united edition of which now extant is dated 1562; ballads, one of them the "Willow Garland," known to Desdemona ; and a long verse allegory of over 7,000 lines entitled The Spider and the Flie (1556), which contains a very energetic statement of the social evils of the time, and especially of the deficiencies of the English law.
The proverbs and epigrams were reprinted by the Spenser Society in 1867 ; there are modern reprints of Johan Johan (1819), The Foure PP (Dodsley's Old Plays, 1825, 1874), and The Pardoner and the Frere (Dodsley's Old Plays, 1874) . The Spider and the Flie was edited by A. W. Ward for the Spenser Society in 1894. For notes and strictures on that edition see J. Haber in Literdrhistorische Forschungen, vol. xv. (1900) . See also A. W. Pollard's introduction to the reprint of the Play of the Wether and Johan Johan in Representative English Comedies (19o3) ; The Dramatic Writengs of John Heywood, edited by John S. Farmer for the Early English Drama Society (19o5) ; and A. W. Reed, Early Tudor Drama (1926) .