We may notice how careless, in common with many of his contemporaries, Heywood was concerning the fate of his dramatic writings. Plays, and comedies in particular, were written, not to be read and studied, but to be acted. This we should never forget while passing judgment upon the unequal work of the Elizabethan playwrights. In the Address to the Reader, prefixed to the _English Traveller_, Heywood complains that this tragi-comedy had been published without his consent, and apologises for coming forward to father it before the world, adding, not without a sly poke at Jonson and his school:-- “True it is that my plays are not exposed unto the world in volumes, to bear the title of works (as others); one reason is, that many of them by shifting and change of companies had been negligently lost; others of them are still retained in the hands of some actors, who think it against their peculiar profit to have them come in print; and a third that it never was any great ambition in me to be in this kind voluminously read.” In the preface to the _Rape of Lucrece_ he repeats his complaints against the clandestine and unauthorised publication of his plays, with this declaration of his own habit of dealing with them:-- “It hath been no custom in me of all other men (courteous readers) to commit my plays to the press; the reason, though some may attribute to my own insufficiency, I had rather subscribe, in that, to their severe censure, than, by seeking to avoid the imputation of weakness, to incur greater suspicion of honesty; for though some have used a double sale of their labours, first to the stage, and after to the press; for my own part I here proclaim myself ever faithful to the first, and never guilty of the last.” He then proceeds to show that the pirated editions of his plays in mangled copies have forced him to right himself before the public by superintending the issue of a certain number of his works. In the prologue to _If you Know not Me, you Know Nobody_, the same apology is reiterated in terms which throw a curious light upon the short-hand reporters of plays for the press, employed by piratical booksellers to the prejudice of authors and theatre managers:-- “Some by stenography drew The plot; put it in print (scarce one word true): And in that lameness it hath limped so long, The author now to vindicate that wrong Hath took the pains, upright upon its feet To teach it walk, so please you sit, and see’t.”