=Plays assigned to him: Authorship, Dramatic Development, Literary Estimate.=--There is the more reason for insisting on Heywood's place as one of a little circle, interested in playwriting and play-acting, in that the evidence for his authorship of two of the best of the six interludes commonly assigned to him is extremely vague. It is, indeed, very unfortunate that the six plays divide themselves into a group of four and a group of two, and that whereas the four plays of the first group are all positively assigned to him in one case in a contemporary manuscript, said to be in his own writing, in the others in contemporary printed editions, the two plays of the second group were both published anonymously, although, like _The Play of Love_ and _The Play of the Wether_, they were issued by William Rastell, and appeared within a few months of these plays to which Heywood's name is duly attached. In the case of publications of our own day we should certainly be justified in thinking that the assertion of his authorship in two cases and the failure to assert it in two others were intentional and significant. But in the first half of the sixteenth century there was still much carelessness in these matters, while the difference is fairly well accounted for by the fact that in _The Play of Love_ and _Play of the Wether_ Rastell printed the title and _dramatis personæ_ on a separate leaf, whereas in _The Pardoner and the Frere_ and _Johan Johan_ there is only a head title. However this may be, we are bound in the first instance to consider by themselves the four plays of which Heywood's authorship is beyond dispute.