The Fair Maid of the West

by Thomas Heywood, Robert K. Turner (Editor)

Thomas Heywood (1574?-1641), a professional English actor and one of the most prolific playwrights of the seventeenth century, is most famous for his plays written about contemporary English life. The Fair Maid of the West recalls typical Elizabethan bourgeois literature, but its primary relationship is with all adventure narratives regardless of their era. This romantic comedy features vivid pictures of English seaport life and travel to exotic locales by English sea captains. The plot is filled with pirate battles, a shipwreck, courageous adventures, and devoted love. If boredom is the perennial disability of men, adventure stories are the perennial therapy, operating as a restorative by encouraging an intermission in the ordinary powers and interests of the mind.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Classics, Grad School, Fiction

213 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Thomas Heywood (early 1570s – 16 August 1641) was an English playwright, actor, and author. His main contributions were to late Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatre. He is best known for his masterpiece A Woman Killed with Kindness, a domestic tragedy, which was first performed in 1603 at the Rose Theatre by the Worcester's Men company.
He was a prolific writer, claiming to have had "an entire hand or at least a maine finger in two hundred and twenty plays", although only a fraction of his work has survived.

Reviews

[Garry Walton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a terrific edition of a pair of early modern plays worth knowing. Though Thomas Heywood claimed in 1633 to have had "an entire hand, or at the least a maine finger" in 220 plays, only a fraction (perhaps 15%) remain. This title exists as two plays separated by decades but featuring some of the same main characters: the beautiful, chaste barmaid turned pirate Bess Bridges, her beloved Odyssean Spencer, and the succession of wooers who vie in vain for her affection or her body. The cast are all stock characters, their exaggerated trials and whirlwind transformations reminiscent of Fletcherian tragicomedy, their world abounding with racist, sexist, xenophobic assumptions. There is a great part for a young clown, Clem.

It seems impossible that a modern production could be mounted without massive rewriting or gender-switching, both of which the RSC does in its current reinterpretation of the first play, starring Amber James as the titular heroine and Richard Katz as a ghostly presence haunting her life and her bar. Pop music, oversized characterizations, and moments of deeply heartfelt pathos make this the show to see this winter in Stratford's small Swan theater. To read Heywood's original beforehand will inform you to a degree, but mostly amaze and inspire you with what author/director Isabel McArthur has done to recast the tale for a contemporary audience.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Talk about the ideal woman - so fair a virgin, and so chaste a wife... while also an inn-keeper, sea-captain, pirate, royal consort. Wonder woman, look and learn. For poor Bess' sake, I really hope Spencer can perform between the sheets!

[bella gaia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part One fascinating - genuinely lively (Bess is a fantastic character) but Part Two quite dry - all that made Pt 1 so good (Bess' independence, her fantastic moments of dialogue and explosive action) is absent and she becomes a figure of passivity - all in all very interesting though

[Sarah Anderle · Rating 2 out of 5]

(just part one but it's a whole play on its own so it counts)

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part 2 is noticeably different from part 1. Overall, pretty decent. Does some interesting things with privateering/piracy.

[Susanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

This edition of this play IS NOT TRUE TO THE ORIGINAL. It's been cleaned-up and dumbed down to make it palatable to some mid-90's British playgoers.

It's by a contemporary of Shakespeare who wrote popular plays. Unless you're in to this particular time period, you probably wouldn't be interested in it. If you are, though, don't get this version. It sucks.

[Kristiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great play!
Some of the themes are less than wonderful when analyzing the text, but if you aren't reading too deeply into it, then its easy to simply love sailing along with Bess on her journey as a bad ass woman existing in a liminal social state, empowering her to do things many women couldn't have done.