On the whole, a second-rate play, with one or two first-rate scenes and
passages to which Lamb has done perhaps no more than justice by the
characteristic and eloquent cordiality of his commendations. Its date
may be probably determined as early among the earliest of its author's
by the occurrence in mid-dialogue of a sestet in the popular metre of
"Venus and Adonis," with archaic inequality in the lengths of the second
and fourth rhyming words: a notable note of metrical or immetrical
antiquity in style. The self-willed if high-minded Phyllis Flower has
something in her of Heywood's later heroines, Bess Bridges of Plymouth
and Luce the goldsmith's daughter, but is hardly as interesting or
attractive as either.
Much less than this can be said for the heroines, if heroines they can
in any sense be called, of the two plays by which Heywood is best known
as a tragic and a comic painter of contemporary life among his
countrymen. It is certainly not owing to any exceptional power of
painting or happiness in handling feminine character that the first
place among his surviving works has been generally and rationally
assigned to "A Woman Killed with Kindness.
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