and a long verse allegory of over 7000 lines entitled _The Spider and the Flie_ (1556). A contemporary writer in Holinshed's _Chronicle_ said that neither its author nor any one else could "reach unto the meaning thereof." But the flies are generally taken to represent the Roman Catholics and the spiders the Protestants, while Queen Mary is represented by the housemaid who with her broom (the sword) executes the commands of her master (Christ) and her mistress (the church). Dr A. W. Ward speaks of its "general lucidity and relative variety of treatment." Heywood says that he laid it aside for twenty years before he finished it, and, whatever may be the final interpretation put upon it, it contains a very energetic statement of the social evils of the time, and especially of the deficiencies of English law. The proverbs and epigrams were reprinted by the Spenser Society in 1867, the _Dialogue on Wit and Folly_ by the Percy Society from an MS. in the British Museum in 1846, with an account of Heywood by F. W. Fairholt, and there are modern reprints of _Johan Johan_ (Chiswick Press, 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 _Litterarhistorische 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_ (1903), and _The Dramatic Writings of John Heywood_, edited by John S. Farmer for the Early English Drama Society (1905).