Theſe being ſome of the firſt Plays appeared in our Engliſh Language, nothing in Commendation will be expected of them. This Author writ Two or Three Books of Epigrams, Publiſh’d in 4 to. alſo a Book called Monumenta Literaria.
Thomas Heywood.
This Author was both Actor and Poet, liv’d in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, and King James I. He writ, or had aſſiſted in compoſing Two Hundred and Twenty Plays, of which there are but Twenty Five remain entire. Mr. Langbain ſets up for a Vindication of this Author,[1] in the ſame Book that he condemns Mr. Dryden, which indeed is enough to render his Judgment very much ſuſpected, and that the Variety of Plays he had read, either corrupted his Taſte, or elſe that he never had any.
The Golden Age, or The Lives of Jupiter and Saturn, &c. 4 to. 1611. Acted at the Red Bull, by the Queen’s Majeſty’s Servants. See Galtruchius’s Poetical Hiſt., Roß’s Miſtagogus Poeticus; Hollyoak, Littleton, and other Dictionaries.
The Silver Age, a Hiſtory, 4 to. 1613. See Plautus, Ovid’s Metamorph. lib. 3. and other Poetical Hiſt.
Brazen Age, a Hiſtory, 4 to. 1613. See Ovid’s Metamorph. lib. 4, 7, 8, and 9.
Iron Age, Part I. a Hiſtory, 4 to. 1632. For the Plot, &c. ſee Virgil, Homer, Lucian, Ovid, &c.
Iron Age, Part II. 4 to. 1632. For the Plot, conſult the ſame Authors before mentioned.
A Challenge for Beauty, a Tragi-Comedy, 4 to., 1636. Acted at the Black-Fryars, and at the Globe on the Bank Side, by his Majeſty’s Servants.
The Dutcheſs of Suffolk, her Life, a Hiſtory, 4 to. 1631. Acted then with good Applauſe. For the Plot, ſee Fox’s Martyrology, An. Dom. 1558. and Clark’s Martyrology, pag. 521.
Edward the Fourth, Two Parts, a Hiſtory, 4 to. 1600. See the hereof, in the Chronicles of Hollingſhead, Speed, Du Cheſne, &c.
The Engliſh Traveller, a Tragi-Comidy, 4 to. 1633. Acted at the Cock-Pit in Drury-Lane, by her Majeſty’s Servants. Both Plot and Language of Lyonel and Reignald, ſtollen from Plautus’s Moſtellaria. See the Story of Wincote, Geraldine, and Dalavil, in the Hiſtory of Women, by this Author, where he affirms the ſaid Stories at large to be true.
- ↑ Langbain’s Account of the Dram. Poets, p. 258.
