A Woman Killed with Kindness (Classic Reprint)

Anne and John Frankford begin the play newly married and visibly happy, a country gentleman and his gentle wife in a well-ordered Yorkshire household. Then Frankford takes in Wendoll, a friend of slender means, gives him a place at his table and his trust, and the comfortable house begins to come apart. Thomas Heywood's domestic tragedy, first staged around 1603, turns away from kings and battlefields to look at an ordinary marriage, and at how a husband chooses to answer betrayal.

Alongside it runs a sharp subplot of pride and ruin, set off by a quarrel between two knights over a wager on hawking. The verse is plain and often moving, the moral questions still uncomfortable. It suits anyone curious about the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage beyond Shakespeare, and it lingers long after its quiet, devastating title has made sense.