John Heywood - Jester, poet and playwright.

I'm looking at the work of John Heywood - the play The Spider and the Fly. It's a massive poem/play which needs a level of concentration and patience that would have tested Job. He was/is an important author, so it's a good idea to check him out. Some of the quotes below have been erroneously attributed to Shakespeare. 

JOHN HEYWOOD, English dramatist and epigrammatist, is generally said to have been a native of North Mimms, near St. Albans, Hertfordshire, though Bale says he was born in London. A letter from a John Heywood, who may fairly be identified with him, is dated from Malines in 1575, when he called himself an old man of seventy-eight, which would fix his birth in 1497. He was a chorister of the Chapel Royal, and is said to have been educated at Broadgates Hall (Pembroke College), Oxford. From 1521 onwards his name appears in the king's accounts as the recipient of an annuity of ten marks as player of the virginals, and in 1538 he received forty shillings for "playing an interlude with his children" before the Princess Mary.

John Heywood is important in the history of English drama as the first writer to turn the abstract characters of the morality plays into real persons. His interludes link the morality plays to the modern drama, and were very popular in their day. They represent ludicrous incidents of a homely kind in the style of the broadest farce, and approximate to the French dramatic renderings of the subjects of the fabliaux. The fun in them still survives in spite of the long arguments between characters and what one of their editors calls his "humour of filth." 

JOHN HEYWOOD QUOTES

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs A hard beginning maketh a good ending. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, As sages of all times assert; The happy man's without a shirt. JOHN HEYWOOD, Be Merry Friends Death makes equal the high and low. JOHN HEYWOOD, Be Merry Friends Haste maketh waste. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs Look ere ye leap. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs When the iron is hot, strike. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs Two heads are better than one. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs Better late than never. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs Beggars should be no choosers. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs Every cock is proud on his own dunghill. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs One good turn asketh another. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs A friend is never known till a man have need. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs Many hands make light work. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs One swallow maketh not summer. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs Wedding is destiny, and hanging likewise. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs God never sendeth the mouth but he sendeth meat. JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs