HEYWOOD, THOMAS. - English dramatist and polygrapher, b. in Lincolnshire of a well-to-do family; he lived between 1573 and Aug. 1641. He studied at Cambridge and soon entered the theatrical world, as author and actor.
He wrote, alone and in collaboration, about 220 plays (only 24 survive), but also tried his hand at every literary genre, publishing translations, adaptations, poems, works of scholarship in prose and verse, and pamphlets of various kinds. From 1631 he was annually commissioned to write the pageants for the Lord Mayor’s procession in London. H. was a theatrical professional, endowed with modesty and a simple faith in the Christian virtues of kindness, piety, and forgiveness: he understood his audience and catered to its bourgeois taste.