The anonymous author of that amusing children's play, _Thersites_, was indeed a kindred spirit, but there is at least a possibility that this play should be credited to Heywood himself, and on the subsequent development of comedy his influence was certainly of the smallest. But to have shown that comedy was entitled to a separate existence, apart from didactics, was no small achievement, and to the credit of this demonstration Heywood is entitled. In guessing how Heywood came to make this discovery it seems not unreasonable to lay some stress on the fact that, according to a tradition which there is no reason to doubt, he was a friend of Sir Thomas More, while we know that four of his plays were printed by William Rastell, the son of More's brother-in-law, John Rastell. More's interest in the drama is attested by the story of his stepping, on more than one occasion, among the players, when they were performing before Cardinal Morton, and taking an improvised share in the dialogue. In the play of _Sir Thomas More_, written towards the close of the century, this improvisation is transferred to an interlude performed during an entertainment at More's own house, and the introduction of this interlude into the piece, and the ready welcome which the Chancellor is represented as giving the players, certainly argue a tradition of a keen interest in the drama on his part. John Rastell, again, has been credited with the authorship of at least one of the interludes which he printed, and quite recently some interesting documents have been discovered, which show him organizing a performance for which a wooden stage was erected in his own garden at Finsbury, setting Mrs. Rastell to help a tailor to make some very gorgeous dresses, and apparently engaging as players the craftsmen (a certain George Birch, currier, and his friends), who up to this date were still the customary performers, as distinct from a separate class of trained actors. Rastell, at this time, and More, throughout his life, held those views as to church-policy to which we know that Heywood himself consistently clung. The attitude of firm belief, with an absolute readiness to satirize abuses, which we find in Heywood's plays, was exactly characteristic of More, and it does not seem fanciful to believe that it was partly to the author of the _Utopia_, and to the circle of which he was the centre, that Heywood owed his dramatic development.