This domestic tragedy, written in 1603, has two women at its centre. Through them, the play addresses issues of property and marriage, adultery and revenge, both women being wronged by different men - one as a result of her adulterous actions; the other as a result of her moral purity.
This domestic tragedy, written in 1603, has two women at its centre. Through them, the play addresses issues of property and marriage, adultery and revenge, both women being wronged by different men - one as a result of her adulterous actions; the other as a result of her moral purity.
Thomas Heywood's masterpiece, A Woman Killed With Kindness, is a domestic tragedy, which combines two plots and has two women at its centre. One woman is almost prostituted by her brother in order to pay off his creditor. The other woman begins an affair with her husband's friend and house-guest, only to be discovered by her husband and sent away from their home. This supposed act of 'kindness' by her husband, who spares his wife the fate of being killed outright, ends in disaster, and this is a morality tale that Heywood wanted his audience to learn from.
In this edition students will find a wealth of information to support their studies: an extended introduction exploring theatrical and historical context, critical reactions, background on the author and stage history as well as the latest research on Heywood. The play itself contains numerous notes and explanations throughout to aid students' understanding.
Muu info
A play about adultery, guilt and forgiveness. It concerns an act of sexual betrayal that precipitates, not only the collapse of a marriage, but a series of moral struggles in which every character is caught up, and which result in the suicide of the adulterous wife.
| Acknowledgements |
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vi | |
| Introduction |
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vii | |
| The Author |
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vii | |
| Overview |
|
viii | |
| Domestic Tragedy |
|
x | |
| Household Structure and Dramatic Form |
|
x | |
| Hospitality |
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xiii | |
| Adultery |
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xiv | |
| Suicide |
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xx | |
| Getting the Last Word |
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xxii | |
| Original Staging |
|
xxv | |
| Recent Performance History |
|
xxvii | |
| Note on the Text |
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xxxii | |
| Further Reading |
|
xxxviii | |
| Abbreviations |
|
xlii | |
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A Woman Killed With Kindness |
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1 | |
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3 | (2) |
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5 | |
Frances E. Dolan is an expert on the literature and culture of England from 1500-1700 and an award-winning teacher. Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, she has also taught at Miami University, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University. Her textbook, The Taming of the Shrew: Texts and Contexts (1996), continues to be taught widely, as do the five plays she has edited. In addition, Dolan is the author of four scholarly books, most recently True Relations: Reading, Literature, and Evidence in Seventeenth-Century England (2013), as well as numerous articles in journals and collections. A former president of the Shakespeare Association of America, she has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (at the Newberry and Folger libraries), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and, most recently, the Huntington Library, where she was a Fletcher Jones Distinguished Fellow.
