Thomas Heywood in the context of "A Woman Killed with Kindness"

The Rose was an Elizabethan playhouse, built by theatre entrepreneur Philip Henslowe in 1587. It was the fifth public playhouse to be built in London, after the Red Lion in Whitechapel (1567), The Theatre (1576) and the Curtain (1577), both in Shoreditch, and the theatre at Newington Butts (c. 1580?) – and the first of several playhouses to be situated in Bankside, Southwark, in a liberty outside the jurisdiction of the City of London's civic authorities. Two of the earliest plays by William Shakespeare – Titus Andronicus and Henry VI, Part 1 – are recorded as having been performed there, as well as plays by dramatists such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene, George Peele, Thomas Dekker, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson and Thomas Heywood. The Rose's archaeological remains were rediscovered in 1989 during the redevelopment of the site to build an office block, and were partially excavated. After a public campaign to preserve the remains, they are now listed by Historic England as a Scheduled Monument at Risk. Subsequently the site has become an exhibition space and theatre venue, known as The Rose Playhouse, administered by The Rose Theatre Trust, a registered charity, which plans to first complete the excavation and preservation of the remains, and then to build a new visitor, education and arts centre there.

History is one of the three main genres in Western theatre alongside tragedy and comedy, although it originated, in its modern form, thousands of years later than the other primary genres. For this reason, it is often treated as a subset of tragedy. A play in this genre is known as a history play and is based on a historical narrative, often set in the medieval or early modern past. History emerged as a distinct genre from tragedy in Renaissance England. The best known examples of the genre are the history plays written by William Shakespeare, whose plays still serve to define the genre. History plays also appear elsewhere in Western literature, such as Thomas Heywood's Edward IV, Schiller's Mary Stuart or the Dutch national poet Joost van den Vondel's play Gijsbrecht van Aemstel.

Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English playwright, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.

Although well known in his own time, Kyd fell into obscurity until 1773 when Thomas Hawkins, an early editor of The Spanish Tragedy, discovered that Thomas Heywood, in his Apologie for Actors (1612), attributed the play to Kyd. A hundred years later, scholars in Germany and England began to shed light on his life and work, including the controversial finding that he may have been the author of a Hamlet play pre-dating Shakespeare's, which is now known as the Ur-Hamlet.

Edward IV, Parts 1 and 2 is a two-part Elizabethan history play centring on the personal life of King Edward IV of England. It was published without an author's name attached, but is often attributed to Thomas Heywood, perhaps writing with collaborators.