John Ford and the Caroline Theatre By the same author Thomas Middleton and the Drama of Realism John Ford and the Caroline Theatre Dorothy M. Farr © Dorothy M. Farr 1979 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1979 978-0-333-26460-7 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1979 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Baszngstoke Assoc·iated companies in Delhi Dublin Hong Kong johannesburg Lagos Melbourne New York Singapore Tokyo Typeset by Preface Ltd., Salisbury, Wiltshire British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Farr, Dorothy Mary John Ford and the Caroline theatre I. Ford, John, b.ca 1.~86 - Criticism and interpretation !.Title 822'.4 PR2.527 ISBN 978-1-349-04650-8 ISBN 978-1-349-04648-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-04648-5 This book is sold subjed to the standard conditions of the Net Book Agreement For Catherine Contents Notes on the Text Vlll Acknowledgements lX 6 Poet-dramatist in the Caroline Theatre 6 2 The Lover's Melancholy: a play for Blackfriars 16 3 The Revenge Motive in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore: a play for the Phoenix Theatre 36 4 Reassessment of the Othello theme at the Phoenix in Love's Sacrifice 58 5 Return to Blackfriars and the Classical Tragic Pattern in The Broken Heart 79 6 Revival of Chronicle History at the Phoenix in Perkin Warbeck 105 7 Return to Domestic Tragi-comedy at the Phoenix in The Lady's Trial and The Fancies Chaste and Noble 125 8 The Challenge of the Caroline Theatre 150 Appendix The Queen or The Excellency of her Sex 161 Notes 167 Select Bibliography 178 Index 181 Notes on the Text Quotations from Ford's plays are as follows: From john Ford, H. Havelock Ellis, Mermaid edition ( 1888) The Lover's Melancholy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore Love's Sacrifice The Broken Heart Perkin Warbeck From The Dramatic Works of john Ford, ed. William Gifford, ( 1827) The Fancies Chaste and Noble The Lady's Trial From W. Bang, Materia/en (Louvain, 1906) The Queen VIII Acknowledgements I wish to express my gratitude to the Head of the Language and Literature Department of the Birmingham Central Library, and her staff, and also to the Librarian and staff of the Stourbridge District Library, for unfailing help over a period of reading and investigation which eventually led to the writing of this book. I should also like to thank Dr Stanley Dixon for kindly aiding me in the reading of the proofs. IX 1 Poet-dramatist in the Caroline Theatre John Ford stands between two worlds in the theatre of his time. His uniqueness, which has stimulated so much commentary over the past fifty years, lies primarily in his response as an artist to that situation. In date, in manner and attitude, to some extent in the content of his surviving independent plays, he is clearly of the Caroline theatre, but his habit of presenting Caroline conceptions within a Jacobean pattern, his obvious attachment to a drama which most of his contemporaries would regard as outworn, have placed him to the modern view as 'in every way a conclusion' ,1- in effectthe last of the Jacobean poet-dramatists. Ford's reputation is muddied with contradictory assumptions; Lamb's admiration and the fair assessments of Joan Sargeaunt2 and Una Ellis-Fermor3 have been countered by the opinions, often curiously prejudiced, of those who dismiss his work as part of the decadence,4 nor is the general impression of Ford as a dramatist any clearer for those who find in him an exponent either of Burtonian psychology5 or of the traditional moral order.6 A recent tendency to approach Ford's plays as a matter for the study rather than the stage is an easy and totally misleading evasion of the problem. The cumulative effect has been to lend an air of elderliness and remoteness to one of the most enterprising and individual dramatists of the early seventeenth century theatre. A partial explanation is that except in name nothing is known of Ford's independent plays before he reached the age of forty. But another, and more important, is a general lack of interest in the nature and use of the Caroline stage. Most students of drama know a good deal about the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatres; they know far less about those which functioned during the reign of Charles I. With our hindsight of what was to come we tend to regard both the stage and the drama of that period as a dead end, an appendage to the Jacobean era, providing temporary fare for an audience of tired interest and declining numbers. 2