The Mermaid series: the best plays of the old dramatists. [v. 6]

Thomas Heywood

If I were to be consulted as to a reprint of our old English dramatists, says Charles Lamb, I should advise to begin with the collected plays of Heywood. He was a fellow actor and fellow dramatist with Shakespeare. He possessed not the imagination of the latter, but in all those qualities which gained for Shakespeare the attribute of gentle, he was not inferior to himgenerosity, courtesy, temperance in the depths of passion; sweetness, in a word, and gentleness; Christianism, and true hearty Anglicism of feelings, shaping that Christianism, shine throughout his beautiful writings in a manner more conspicuous than in those of Shakespeare; but only more conspicuous, inasmuch as in Heywood these qualities are primary, in the other subordinate to poetry. In another note Lamb calls Heywood a prose Shakespeare. Allowing for the exaggeration with which an enthusiastic love for our then neglected minor dramatists charged the criticism of Charles Lamb, this verdict is in many points a just one. Heywood, while he lacks the poetry, philosophy, deep insight into nature, and consummate art of Shakespearethose qualities, in a word, which render Shakespeare supreme among dramatic poetshas a sincerity, a tenderness of pathos, and an instinctive perception of nobility, that distinguish him among the playwrights of the seventeenth century. Like Dekker, he wins our confidence and love. We keep a place in our affection for his favourite characters; they speak to us across two centuries with the voices of friends; while the far more brilliant masterpieces of many contemporary dramatists stir only our aesthetic admiration.[3] ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 67267
Author: Heywood, Thomas
Release Date: Jan 28, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publication Date: 1888
Publisher Country: UK

Contributors

Editor: Verity, A. W. (Arthur Wilson), 1863-1937