Heywood Thomas - A Woman Killed with Kindness and Other Domestic Plays

OXFORD ENGLISH DRAMAGeneral Editor. MICHAEL CORDNER Associate General Editors: PETER HOLLAND MARTIN WIGGINS A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS AND OTHER DOMESTIC PLAYS IN about 1590, an unknown dramatist had the idea of writing a tragedy about the lives of ordinary people, instead of the genres usual complement of kings and queens and politicians. His play, Arden of Faversham, inaugurated a new genre of domestic drama, set in near-contemporary England and concerned with issues of marriage, crime, and property rather than war and power. Some of the plays, such as The Witch of Edmonton, dramatized notorious capital cases, while others, including A Woman Killed with Kindness and The English Traveller, dealt with the consequences of adultery for society, the household, and the tragic individual. MARTIN WIGGINS is a Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute and Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Drama of His Time (Oxford Shakespeare Topics, 2000), and editor of Edward II (New Mermaids, 1997), Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies (Oxford English Drama, 1998), and Tis Pity Shes a Whore (New Mermaids, 2003).

He is completing a descriptive catalogue of the entire corpus of drama written by English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish authors between 1533 and 1642. MICHAEL CORDNER is Ken Dixon Professor of Drama at the University of York. He has edited George Farquhars The Beaux Stratagem, the Complete Plays of Sir George Etherege, and, for Oxford English Drama, Four Restoration Marriage Plays and Sheridans The School for Scandal and Other Plays. PETER HOLLAND is McMeel Family Professor in Shakespeare Studies at the University of Notre Dame. OXFORD ENGLISH DRAMA J. M.

Barrie
Peter Pan and Other Plays Aphra Behn
The Rover and Other Plays John Ford
Tis Pity Shes a Whore and Other Plays Ben Jonson
The Alchemist and Other Plays Ben Jonson
The Devil is an Ass and Other Plays Christopher Marlowe
Doctor Faustus and Other Plays John Marston
The Malcontent and Other Plays Thomas Middleton
Women Beware Women and Other PlaysA Mad World, My Masters, and Other Plays Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The School for Scandal and Other Plays J. M. Synge
The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays John Vanbrugh
The Relapse and Other Plays John Webster
The Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays William Wycherley
The Country Wife and Other PlaysCourt Masques
ed. David Lindley Eighteenth-Century Women Dramatists
ed. Melinda Finberg Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies
ed. Martin Wiggins Four Restoration Marriage Plays
ed.

Michael Cordner Four Revenge Tragedies
ed. Katharine Maus London Assurance and Other Victorian Comedies
ed. Klaus Stierstorfer The Roaring Girl and Other City Comedies
ed. James Knowles and Eugene Giddens She Stoops to Conquer and Other Comedies
ed. Nigel Wood A Woman Killed with Kindness and Other Domestic Plays
ed. Martin Wiggins OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICSFor over 100 years Oxford Worlds Classics have brought readers closer to the worlds great literature.

Now with over 700 titlesfrom the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth centurys greatest novelsthe series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing.The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy, and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers.Refer to the to navigate through the material in this Oxford Worlds Classics ebook. Use the asterisks (*) throughout the text to access the hyperlinked Explanatory Notes.OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

The Tragedy of Master Arden of FavershamTHOMAS HEYWOOD
A Woman Killed with KindnessTHOMAS DEKKER, WILLIAM ROWLEY, and JOHN FORD
The Witch of EdmontonTHOMAS HEYWOOD
The English TravellerEdited with an Introduction and Notes by
MARTIN WIGGINS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A woman killed with kindness and other domestic plays / edited with an
introduction and notes by Martin Wiggins.
p. cm. (Oxford worlds classics)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 9780192829504 1. Domestic drama, English. 2.

Heywood, Thomas, d. 1641Criticism
and interpretation. 3. Dekker, Thomas, ca. 15721632. Witch of Edmonton.
4.

English dramaEarly modern and Elizabethan, 15001600History
and criticism. 5. English drama17th centuryHistory and criticism.
I. Wiggins, Martin.
PR658.D65W66 2008
822.3080355dc22
2007040606 Typeset by Cepha Imaging Private Ltd., Bangalore, India
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd., St Ives plc. ISBN 9780192829504 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Five days before I was expecting to submit this edition to Judith Luna, my wonderful, patient, and supportive editor at Oxford Worlds Classics, a disc drive failed and all the files were lost. Worse, those files were then found not to have backed up correctly, leaving me like John Frankford inNext page