f
mention his dramatic work on the subject, while complacently enumerating
his certainly less valuable and memorable other tributes to the great
queen's fame as follows: "To write largely of her troubles, being a
princesse, or of her rare and remarkable Reigne after she was Queen, I
should but feast you with dyet twice drest: Having my selfe published a
discourse of the first: from her cradle to her crowne; and in another
bearing Title of the nine worthy Women: she being the last of the rest
in time and place; though equall to any of the former both in religious
vertue, and all masculine magnanimity." This surely looks but too much
as though the dramatist and poet thought more of the chronicler and
compiler than of the truer Heywood whose name is embalmed in the
affection and admiration of his readers even to this day; as though the
author of "A Challenge for Beauty," "The Fair Maid of the West," and
"A Woman Killed with Kindness," must have hoped and expected to be
remembered rather as the author of "Troja Britannica," "Gynaikeion,"
"The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels," and even this "Life of Merlin,
sirnamed Ambrosius. His Prophesies, and Predictions Interpreted; and
their truth made good by our English Annalls": undoubtedly, we may
believe, "a Subject never published in this kind before, and deserves"
(_sic_) "to be knowne and observed by all men." Here follows the motto:
"Quotque aderant Vates, rebar adesse Deos." The biographer and
chronographer would apparently have been less flattered than surprised
to hear that he would be remembered rather as the creator of Frankford,
Mountferrers, and Geraldine, than as the chronicler of King Brute, Queen
Elizabeth, and King James.

The singular series of plays which covers much the same ground as
Caxton's immortal and delightful chronicle of the "Histories" of Troy
may of course have been partially inspired by that most enchanting
"recuyell": but Heywood, as will appear on collation or confrontation
of the dramatist with the historian, must have found elsewhere the
suggestion of some of his most effective episodes. The excellent
simplicity and vivacity of style, the archaic abruptness of action and
presentation, are equally noticeable throughout all the twenty-five acts
which lead us from the opening of the Golden to the close of the Iron
Age; but there is a no less perceptible advance or increase of dramatic
and poetic invention in the ten acts devoted to the tale of Troy