Although, as F.P. Wilson has clearly pointed out, “[he] was not the father of English comedy,” John Heywood (1497-c.1578) led the way of the possibility of Elizabethan vital drama in an advance towards the development of the portrayal of and spectator perspective on individual personalities. In this paper, I focus on the usage of the narrations and the asides in Heywood’s dramatic works, taking the standpoint that the reformation of the spectators’ position and the dramatic convention of speech after the 1500s came to be capable of revealing the development of the representation of the inwardness of the characters.     Firstly, Heywood tried to divide the dramatic world from reality, which came to separate the actors and the spectators. In English medieval drama, both in the mystery cycles and moralities, the demarcations between the public and the private, the realities and the illusions, along with inwardness and outwardness, were blurred. That is, as seen in “The Killing of Abel” and “The Second Shepherd’s Play” in the Towneley cycle, spectators and actors shared the same world while the performance lasted. On the other hand, the narrations and the long speeches in Heywood’s plays are used to clear the line dividing the spectators from the performers in order to establish spectatorship in the theatre. For instance, speakers mention their own “private lives” out of the storyline, which should be perceived as the reflection of the reality that contributes to the establishment of the idea of a self-sufficient dramatic world and the character’s individuality.     Secondly, Heywood uses many asides to lead the spectators to be conscious that they are peering into the inner world of the characters. In Renaissance England, the properties of hidden interior became accessible to the people in accordance with the interest in the scientific anatomizations, which expanded and came to encourage the popular desire to see through to the character’s hidden intention. In this background, dramatic asides in Heywood’s Johan Johan made it possible for the spectators to fulfill that desire. His asides, however, are different from other forms of monologue such as soliloquies in the sense that they had not come to maturity as a dramatic convention. They are similar to dialogue in ordinary life in that they have verbal quality: Johan delivers those speeches in the story line, even though they are audible only to the spectators. In fact, the counter speeches by his wife such as “What say you?” indicate that the speeches remain within the boundary of reality. Thus, those asides are in the middle between the mature dramatic convention of mental monologue and ordinary conversation.     Consequently, Heywood dramatic challenge is to develop spectatorship and the description of inwardness in the early modern stages even if “not from this soil did Shakespearian comedy spring.” His position in the British theatre history should be revaluated for his genius as a reformer of the dramatic convention, not for his direct influence on the Elizabethan dramatists.