FROM two entries in Henslowe’s Diary the date when A Woman Killed with Kindness was written can be fixed with remarkable certainty. One entry runs:—“Paid, at the appointment of the Company, the 6th of March, 1603, unto Thomas Heywood, in full payment for his play, called A Woman Killed with Kindness, the sum of ... £3;” and the other—“Paid, at the appointment of Thomas Blackwood, the 7th of March, 1603, unto the tailor which made the black satin suit for the Woman Killed with Kindness the sum of ... 10s.” The earliest printed notice of the piece occurs in Middleton’s The Blacke Booke, 1604, where it is coupled with the Merry Devil of Edmonton:—“And being set out of the shop, ... she, by thy instructions, shall turn the honest simple fellow off at the next turning, and give him leave to see the Merry Devil of Edmonton, or A Woman Killed with Kindness, when his mistress is going herself to the same murder.” In 1607 the play was published, and a third edition appeared in 1617. It may be worth while to note that the title of the piece was a proverbial expression: compare, for instance, The Taming of the Shrew (to which Professor Dowden assigns the date 1597), iv. 1. 221:—
“This is a way to kill a wife with kindness.”
Professor Ward (English Dramatic Literature, ii. 114) refers also to Fletcher’s The Woman’s Prize, iii. 4:—
“Some few,
For those are rarest, they are said to kill,
With kindness and fair usage.”
An interesting point in the history of this drama is the fact that it was quite recently revived by the Society of Dramatic Students, and revived, I believe, with signal success. Perhaps the only weak element in the five acts is the readiness with which the wife falls. I may add that the division of the play into acts and scenes is here attempted for the first time, at least in any edition of the piece.