A Woman Killed With Kindness

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.

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.

“Here lies she whom her husband’s kindness killed”

This is the epitaph, in golden letters, Master John Frankford proposes for the tomb of his wife, Anne, who has just starved herself to death. Frankford congratulates himself on the clever means by which he has brought his wife to repentance—and got rid of her.

The marriage is comfortable, if uneventful, until Frankford gives his friend Wendoll the free use of his table and purse. When Wendoll takes even more than was offered, and confesses his desperate love to Anne, a complex and tragic drama ensues.

Praised as Heywood’s best play and as the best “domestic tragedy,” A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603) requires us to consider who and what the household includes and on what conditions. What are the limits of hospitality? What are the relationships between friendship and marriage, intimacy and possession?

This student edition contains a fully annotated version of the playtext in modern spelling. The Introduction includes a detailed discussion of the play’s interpretation and stage history.