HEYWOOD, THOMAS (d. c. 1650), English dramatist and miscellaneous author, was a native of Lincolnshire, born about 1575, and said to have been educated at Cambridge and to have become a fellow of Peterhouse. Heywood is mentioned by Philip Henslowe as having written a book or play for the Lord Admiral's company of actors in October 1596; and in 1598 he was regularly engaged as a player in the company, in which he presumably had a share, as no wages are mentioned. He was also a member of other companies, of Lord Southampton's, of the earl of Derby's and of the earl of Worcester's players, afterwards known as the Queen's Servants. In his preface to the _English Traveller_ (1633) he describes himself as having had "an entire hand or at least a main finger in two hundred and twenty plays." Of this number, probably considerably increased before the close of his dramatic career, only twenty-three survive. He wrote for the stage, not for the press, and protested against the printing of his works, which he said he had no time to revise. He was, said Tieck, the "model of a light and rapid talent," and his plays, as might be expected from his rate of production, bear little trace of artistic elaboration. Charles Lamb called him a "prose Shakespeare"; Professor Ward, one of Heywood's most sympathetic editors, points out that this epigrammatic statement can only be accepted with reservations. Heywood had a keen eye for dramatic situations and great constructive skill, but his powers of characterization were not on a par with his stagecraft. He delighted in what he called "merry accidents," that is, in coarse, broad farce; his fancy and invention were inexhaustible. It was in the domestic drama of sentiment that he won his most distinctive success. For this he was especially fitted by his genuine tenderness and his freedom from affectation, by the sweetness and gentleness for which Lamb praised him. His masterpiece, _A Woman kilde with kindnesse_ (acted 1603; printed 1607), is a type of the _comedie larmoyante_, and _The English Traveller_ (1633) is a domestic tragedy scarcely inferior to it in pathos and in the elevation of its moral tone. His first play was probably _The Foure Prentises of London: With the Conquest of Jerusalem_ (printed 1615, but acted some fifteen years earlier). This may have been intended as a burlesque of the old romances, but it is more likely that it was meant seriously to attract the apprentice public to whom it was dedicated, and its popularity was no doubt aimed at in Beaumont and Fletcher's travesty of the City taste in drama in their _Knight of the Burning Pestle_. The two parts of _King Edward the Fourth_ (printed 1600), and of _If you know not me, you know no bodie; Or, The Troubles of Queene Elizabeth_ (1605 and 1606) are chronicle histories. His other comedies include: _The Royall King, and the Loyall subject_ (acted c. 1600; printed 1637); the two parts of _The Fair Maid of the West; Or, A