A Woman Killed with Kindness
It heralds the future of happiness, felicity in the happy ending, optimistic romance as the subplot. When Susan realizes that her brother has been freed she can hardly believe it (p55 l 57/61). Heywood here plays on the words “amazed”, “maze” in the polyptoton. Certainly Susan is used by her brother (the woman as object, as in the main plot) as a ploy to catch Acton (p76 l96/7). So, from the dangerous maze where one may lose one's references and even one's identity, we move to the notion of surprise and even admiration (negative--> positive), a word which is repeated l 102. Acton sees in Charles bringing his sister to him by the hand a miracle (p76 l 100/101). Then Susan (p78 l 147/8). The miraculous reversal of hatred into love is expressed in the antithesis, thus gliding from a notion of happy satisfaction to the sense of the maze which was already introduced in the major plot but bearing reversed positive overtones of hope and happiness in the minor plot.
b) Heywood' s art of characterization
The image of the labyrinth is associated to moral, if not religious, condemnation. But it is also a transposition of the characters' situation. Within the moral frame of his play, Heywood includes an artistic treatment although he individualizes his characters, he punctually keeps them in an allegorical Christian dimension which enables the playwright to use (quotation 10) a network of religious metaphors and images. See quote. The characters themselves are sometimes presented in an allegorical way; we remember for instance that Anne at the beginning before she starts speaking was depicted as an allegory of beauty, which prepares her being paralleled with an angel later on. Conversely, Wendoll, as a tempter, is associated to the image of the poisonous serpent of Genesis. P 29 l 80/1. he is an incarnation of evil. When Nick refers to him he identifies him by means of an antonomasia, a trick consisting in using proper names describing a quality or a characteristic,
b) Heywood' s art of characterization
The image of the labyrinth is associated to moral, if not religious, condemnation. But it is also a transposition of the characters' situation. Within the moral frame of his play, Heywood includes an artistic treatment although he individualizes his characters, he punctually keeps them in an allegorical Christian dimension which enables the playwright to use (quotation 10) a network of religious metaphors and images. See quote. The characters themselves are sometimes presented in an allegorical way; we remember for instance that Anne at the beginning before she starts speaking was depicted as an allegory of beauty, which prepares her being paralleled with an angel later on. Conversely, Wendoll, as a tempter, is associated to the image of the poisonous serpent of Genesis. P 29 l 80/1. he is an incarnation of evil. When Nick refers to him he identifies him by means of an antonomasia, a trick consisting in using proper names describing a quality or a characteristic,