A Woman Killed with Kindness

By Thomas Heywood

Book Overview

The most studied of Thomas Heywood's plays, A Woman Killed With Kindness explores the boundaries of marital punishment and the moral weight of mercy. This major new edition of this startling domestic tragedy offers the standard, depth and range associated with all Arden editions. The on-page commentary notes explain the language, references and staging issues posed by the text while the lengthy, illustrated introduction offers a lively overview of the play's historical, performance and critical contexts. This is the ideal edition for study and performance.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1904271588
• ISBN13: 9781904271581
• Release Date: September 2017
• Publisher: Arden Shakespeare
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.1" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Heywood's masterpiece

Heywood was a very prolific contemporary of Shakespeare. This play is one of his best, and is quite often revived for performance over in the British Isles. It is an intriguing story of love, friendship, hate, disloyalty, and treachery. Heywood skillfully walks us through the emotions, and there are few surprises lurking in the text, as not everything happens as we expect, and the price of honor turns out to be high, but not higher then of love. As is the custom of Elizabethean drama we have a main plot, and we also have a subplot, which serves to highlight the main plot. These two are complimentary, and highlight each others failings very nicely. When characters of the main plot make the wrong choices, the sub plot shows us the right choice in a similar situation, and thus the play is doubly effective. Highly recommended to see that there were other great playwrights besides Shakespeare in the Elizabethean drama, and that they are only unknown today, because Shakespeare was such a giant, that he overshadows, even very competent writers, who would have shinned brightly in any other period.