HEYWOOD, TDOMAS. This author was an actor as as well as a writer, and flourished in the reigns of Elizabeth, Lanes I. and Charles 1. The date of his birth and death, (we might almost add, the whole history of his life,) is unknown, except his profession and character as a writer. In the latter capacity he is distinguished as one of the most prolific that ever existed ; for, besides his prose compositions of The English Traveller, Apology for Actors, &c. &c. he tells us, that the plays in which he had either a principal share, or wrote entirely, amounted to two hun dred and twenty. Of this number, it is true, that but a few comparatively remain. Different reasons have been as signed for the loss of so many of them. It has been alleg ed, that they were lost from the desultory manner in which he wrote them, on the backs of play-bills and tavern bills, as he was a great frequenter of taverns; but the true rea son seems to have been, that the managers, in those days, purchased the sole property of the copies of plays, and it was not their interest to let them be published till the pub lic had been completely satiated with them; of course, when plays ceased to be attractive, the memory of them would perish, and the actors would not much trouble themselves about compositions, which, if they had been printed, might not have repaid the cost.
Of 23 of his plays that remain to us, there is one that ought especially to redeem his name from oblivion. This is, The Woman killed with Kindness. The interest of it is founded, like of that Kotzebue's Stranger, on a story of do mestic infidelity, and the repentance that ensues ; but it terminates more tragically, and with a severer moral les son. Mrs. Frankland, the penitent, though forgiven by her husband, cannot forgive herself, and dies broken-heart ed. In this, and in several other pieces, Heywood, though not highly fanciful nor poetical, and though he seems to have hardly possessed the common ambition of a poet—to be thought such,—is nevertheless exceedingly natural and touching. The last scene between Frankland and his wife is very touching. It concludes thus: