.^' ^ .^^ ■* -^ ci* ^ \..^ :^:^m^ '^,^ y-^ ;^ % .c,^"" ^^^M^^- .4 O. ^^ ,y^ ^ ^r^Qi^,^ ,^ ^^ ^?^^^* < .^ o « c ^ ^ A' .^^ ^"-j-'/rTP^ .0^ 4. • >P'^^ ^' ^v: .*;o^ -o/ :'^R*- "^-^^0^ :4 ^J> * D N O ^ <^ qV ^o «^« ^_ '^o^ ^^ V vX, €fte 25eHe^^3lettte^ M>mt$ SECTION III THE ENGLISH DRAMA FROM ITS BEGINNING TO THE PRESENT DAY GENERAL EDITOR GEORGE PIERCE BAKER, A.B. PROFESSOR OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY inaJviorato This figure from the engraved title page of Robert Burton's Anatomi of Mehmcholy shows the image in the mind of the writer of these lines about John Ford: " Deep in a dump John Ford alone was got With folded amies and melancholy hat," 'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE AND THE BROKEN HEART By JOHN FORD EDITED BY S^'Pi-' SHERMAN, Ph.D. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE "university of ILLINOIS BOSTON, U. S. A., AND LONDON D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS \fi\ COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY D. C. HEATH & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ID5 MAY "7 1915 Tl ?)CI.A401058 ^Bfosmpi^l? John Ford was baptized at Ilsington in Devonshire on April 1 7, 1586. He came of a respectable family which had long lived in this neighborhood. His father, Thomas Ford, it appears from Rymer's Foedera (cited by GifFord) was in the commission of the peace. His mother was the sister of Lord-chief-justice Popham. " They in this county," says Fuller {Worthte%^ vol. i, p. 413, 1840), "seem innated with a genius to study law . . . Devonshire makes a feast of such who by the practice thereof have raised great estates." Ford's relationship to Popham, a man of weight and influence in the reigns of both Elizabeth and James I, may be presumed to have affected his choice of a career. For though it is probable that he matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, in March of 1601," we find him entered in November, 1602, at the Middle Temple, of which Popham was a member and for some time treasurer. Ford's London life, even after he became a well-recognized dramatist, re- mained closely associated with the Inns-of-Court. In Gray's Inn he had a cousin John Ford, to whom he was deeply attached, and who doubtless opened the way to a pleasant fellowship with the mem- bers of his own house. In 1629 Ford dedicated his Lo-ver^s Mel- ancholy "To my worthily respected friends, Nathaniel Finch, John Ford Esquires j Master Henry Blunt, Master Robert Ellice, and all the rest of the noble society of Gray's Inn." In 1633 he dedicated ho've s Sacrifice *' To my truest friend, my worthiest kinsman, John Ford, of Gray's Inn, Esq. " Commendatory verses for this play were written by James Shirley, who in 1 625 had taken up his residence at Gray's Inn. In these days there was a powerful literary leaven in the Inns-of- Court. It is necessary only to mention the names of Bacon, Mid- dleton, Beaumont, Sir John Davies, John Marston in order to sug- gest some of the forces that tended to divert young men from the ' A John Ford was entered under that date: see Dictionary of National Biography^ article on Ford the dramatist. vi llBiograpl^^ severity of their legal studies — the father of Marston, who lamented his son's seduction by the stage, had vainly bequeathed to his heir his law books in the Middle Temple. The young barrister who passed from the study of jurisprudence to the study and profession of letters was supported by many distinguished precedents. Yet for nearly a score of years after his admission to the Temple, Ford seems merely to have dallied with literary composition. So late as 1629 in the prologue to the Lover'' s Melancholy he assumes an air of patrician superiority to those who make "the noble use of poetry a trade." Till after 1620 his work may well have been, as he is so fond of asserting that it was, the fruit of his leisure. His first literary venture, -" Earners Memorial, 1606, is a long elegiac poem on the death of the Earl of Devonshire — a barely tolerable performance inspired by youthful enthusiasm and a desire to make himself known as a poet in polite society. Later in 1 606 the visit of the King of Denmark in Eng- land gave occasion tor his Honour Triumphant or the Peers^ Challenge, a romantic treatise in prose and verse, to which was added The Mon- archs" Meeting, containing three poetical pieces in honor of the Danish sovereign. This pamphlet, like Fame^s Memorial, was de- signed to commend its author to the attention of aristocratic circles. His next production is a lost and unpublished comedy, yf« III Be- ginning has a Goo J End, acted at the Cockpit in 16x3. &> Thomas O'verburf s Ghost, entered in the Stationers^ Register on the 25th of November, 161 5, is also merely a name. The last performance of this period is A Line of Life, a moral treatise in prose, published in 1620. The moral edification of the work is insignificant; but the style shows some interesting traces of Bacon's influence, and there are some suggestive sketches of contemporaries. After this long period of occasional, miscellaneous, and desultory > writing, Ford entered upon a short period of industrious collaboration with Dekker, Rowley, Webster and perhaps others. It is a rather striking coincidence that in the year 1 6 1 3, when Ford's first comedy (the lost An III Beginning has a Good End) was acted, Dekker was thrown into prison and was silent for seven years, and that Ford ap- parently made no further dramatic attempt till Dekker joined with him and Rowley in the composition of The Witch of Edmonton. This tragi-comedy was not published till 1658 ; but the execution of the witch referred to in the title took place in 1621; and it is generally agreed that the play was written to take immediate advan- tage of the interest aroused by the trial. In March, 1623-24, a moral masque, The Sun^ s Darlings was licensed for production at the Cock- pit j in 1636 it was printed with the names of Ford and Dekker on the title-page. In 1624 two other plays, The Fairy Knight and The Bristoive Merchant, were, according to Sir Henry Herbert's Diary^ produced by the joint authorship of Ford and Dekker ; but these are lost. In September of the same year a tragedy by Ford and Web- ster, A Late Murther of the Son upon the Mother, was licensed for the stage, but was not published, and is now lost. Further evidence of friendly relations between Ford and Webster is to be found in the commendatory verses by the former printed in the Duchess of Malfi, 1623 The production of The Lo'ver^s Melancholy, November 24, 1628 (published 1629), marks the beginning of Ford's independent ^ and significant dramatic period. In the dedicatory epistle he declares that this is the first dramatic piece of his "that ever courted reader," and he intimates that very likely he will not rush into print again. After a decent interval, however, he put forth in 1633 three trage- dies, ^ Tis Pity She^s a Whore, The Broken Heart, and Lo've'' s Sac- rifice. In 1634 ^^ published his one historical play, The Chronicle History of Per kin War beck. The Fancies Chaste and Noble appeared in 1638, and in the following year The Lady's Trial, the last drama to be published during the author's life-time. A tragedy. Beauty in a Trance, was entered in the Stationers' Register, September 9, 1653, and two comedies, beside An III Beginning has a Good End, were entered in June, 1660, namely The London Merchant and The Royal Combat; all these were sacrificed by Warburton's cook. It remains only to add The ^een or the Excellency of her Sex, a tragi-comedy published in 1653 by Alexander Goughe, and attributed by Professor Bang in his reprint of 1906 to John Ford. Of Ford's later days we know nothing^ after 1 639 he vanishes. Giftord says there was "an indistinct tradition among his neighbours that he married and had children." From various dedicatory epistles and complimentary verses we conclude that he lived on excellent terms with several gentlemen of the legal profession and several well- known playwrights — among the latter, Webster, Dekker, Shirley, Massinger, and Brome. He contributed verses prefixed to Barnabe viii Biograpl)^ Barnes's Four Books of Offices, 1 606; to several editions of Sir Thomas Overbury's fVife ^ and a highly laudatory poem on Ben Jonson to Jonsonus VirhiuSy 1638. Our knowledge of his character is mainly inferential, though his persistent emphasis upon his independence of the literary profession reveals clearly enough one of his points of pride. Aline in Heywood's Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels^ 1635, And hee's now but yocke Foord, that once was John perhaps indicates a certain loss of personal dignity which Ford suf- fered from his association with members of the dramatic profession. A couplet in 'Die Time Poets (Choyce Drollery, 1656) throws some light upon his temperament : Deep in a dump jfohn Ford alone was got With folded amies and melanchoUy hat. From first to last Ford wrote to please selected judgments, and, though several of his plays seem to have met with tolerable approval, there is little evidence that he ever enjoyed wide reputation. Aside from the tributes of fellow dramatists, the most interesting contem- porary mention that he received is the epigram of Richard Crashaw: Thou cheat'st us, Ford; mak'st one seem two by art: What is Love's Sacrifice but The Broken Heart .? Under the date March 3, 1668-69, Pepys writes in his Diary: *' To the Duke of York's playhouse, and there saw an old play, the first time acted these forty years, called * The Lady's Tryali,* acted only by the young people of the house ; but the house very full." In 1 7 14 Per kin Pf^arheck was reprinted to take advantage of the excitement caused by the Jacobite insurrection in Scotland, and in 1745 it was acted on similar occasion. In 1748 Macklin revived the Lever's Ale/anc/io/y in Drury-Lane for the benefit of his wife. ' Tis Pity She's a fVhore was included in Dodsley's Select Collection -of Old Plays, 1744. The beginning of Ford's modern and substan- tial recognition, however, is marked by Lamb's panegyric on The > Broken Heart in his Specimens from the Dramatic Potts, 1808, 3Inttot)«ctfon When John Ford was a young man of twenty read- ing law at the inns-of-court he committed two trifling literary indiscretions called Fame^s Memorial z.nA Honour Triumphant. These little tracts, both published in 1606, are of slight intrinsic interest, and they have passed hitherto with insignificant comment. At first sight, indeed, there seems to be no important connection between them and their author's dramatic work which began to appear in print more than a score of years later. As a matter of fact, however, they yield to closer scrutiny extremely suggestive hints on the source of Ford's ideas and cul- ture, on the native bias of his character, and on his pe- culiar conception of tragedy. The immediate occasion of the first of these publica- tions was the death, April 3, 1606, of the accomplished and valiant Lord Montjoy, Earl of Devonshire. Suc- cessor in Ireland to the ill-fated Essex, he had in the last years of Elizabeth's reign gained military and ad- ministrative glory. On December 26, 1605, he married Lady Rich, then divorced from her husband, and, as Gifford says, **by this one step, which, according to our notions and probably to his own, was calculated to repair in some measure the injury which the lady's character had sustained, ruined both her and himself. . . . While the Earl maintained an adulterous com- merce with the lady all went smoothly; but the instant X 31ntroDuctton he married her, he lost the protection of the court and the estimation of the public. * The King,' says San- derson, * was so much displeased thereat as it broke the Earl's heart; for his Majesty told him that he had pur- chased a fair woman with a black soul.' " The situation evidently interested Ford greatly. As we shall have occasion to note elsewhere, he was al- ways on the side of lovers. Love seemed to him first and last the supreme reality of life. In 1606 he was himself, according to Fame* 5 Memorial^ hopelessly in love, and so perhaps predisposed to sympathy. There was, moreover, much in the Devonshire case to enlist his interest. The Lady Rich had never loved Lord Rich, and had been married to him against her will. Between her and Devonshire, on the other hand, was the bond of a long and faithful affection. Rich was mean, brutal, and jealous. Devonshire was one of the first gentlemen of the time. Lady Rich under the name of ** Stella " had been the muse of courtly poets from the days of Sidney. Ford enters the field with Fame* s Memorial not merely to celebrate the character of the dead nobleman, but also to plead the rights of love against public opinion. His appeal is to the select few : non omnibus studeo, non malevolis. He refers to the Earl's alliance thus: <*Link'd in the graceful bonds of dearest life, | Unjustly term'd disgraceful, he enjoy'd | Content's abundance." He characterizes the lady whom James had called a «* fair woman with a black soul " as **that glorious star | Which beautified the value of our land, | The lights of whose perfections brighter are I Than all the lamps which in the lustre stand | Of 31ntroUuction xi Heaven's forehead." He commends her for braving popular censure: ** A beauty fairly-wise, wisely-dis- creet I In winking mildly at the tongue of rumour." Finally he reveals ihe intensely romantic ground on which he stands by a veiled reference to this affair in Honour Triumphant : **They principally deserve love who can moderate their private affections, and level the scope of desert to the executing their ladies command, and adorn their names by martial feats of arms: . . . Yea, what better example than of late in our own ter- ritory? that noble, untimely-cropt spirit of honour, our English Hector [Devonshire] , who cared not to un- dergo any gust of spleen and censure for his never- sufficiendy admired Opia, a perfect Penelope [Penelope was the lady's given name] to her ancient knight Ulysses." The circumstances which led to the composition of Honour Triumphant are worthy of a brief notice. In the summer of 1 606 the King of Denmark paid a visit to the English court. In honour of the occasion there were endless banquets, parades, pageants, plays, and royal joustings. Among the martial pastimes one inter- esting revival from bygone days of chivalry demands our attention, namely, a ** Challenge of four Knights Errant of the Fortunate Islands, (Earls of Lenox, Arundel, Pembroke, and Montgomery,) to maintain four propositions relating to love and ladies, addressed to all honourable * Men at Arms, Knights Adventurers of Hereditary Note, that for most maintenable actions wield the sword or lance, in the quest of glory.' " This entry may be found in the Calendar of State Papers xii 3|ntroUuction Domestic, vol. xxii, June i, page 319. To the notice is added in brackets, ** By Wm. Drummond of Haw- thornden." It is not clear what is meant by this ascrip- tion. In 1 606 Drummond was making his first visit to London, and since his father was in attendance upon the King, would naturally have been in touch with the affairs of the court. In a letter dated at Greenwich, June I, 1606 (see Drummond's Works, Edinburgh, 171 1, pp. 231—32), Drummond gives the full text of the challenge, and names the four defenders. His wording of the four propositions, slightly different from Ford's, is as follows: ** I. That in service of ladies no knight hath free will. ** 2. That it is beauty maintaineth the world in valor. "3. That no fair lady was ever false. **4. That none can be perfectly wise but lovers." Drummond adds : ** The king of Denmark is expected here daily, for whose entertainment, this challenge ap- peareth to be given forth ' ' ; this does not seem to indi- cate Dfummond's authorship. In a letter of June 28 (Works as above, p. 233), Drummond records a hu- morous answer to the challenge with four counter propositions; but he remarks that **the answerers have not appeared.'* The affair made th,e king laugh, says the Scotch poet, but the young Templar Ford was struck by the happy thought that the pen is mightier than the sword. Ac- cordingly he brings forth his pamphlet Honour Trium- phant : or the Peeres' Challenge with this motto on the title-page: Tarn Mer curio, quam Marti — ** In honor 3introJ3uction xiii of all faire ladies, and in defence of these foure positions following: i . Knights in ladies service have no free- will. 2. Beauty is the mainteiner of valour. 3. Faire lady was never false. 4. Perfect lovers are onely wise. Mainteined by Arguments." The four parts of the dis- course are addressed to the Lords Lennox, Arundel, Pembroke, and Montgomery in the order named. The dedicatory epistle is addressed to the Countess of Pem- broke and the Countess of Montgomery. There is also a saucy address "to every sundry-opinioned reader" which contains the assurance that Ford is writing to please the fair and noble, and is utterly indiiFerent to the judgment of all others. But what chiefly concerns us is the spirit and temper of the document itself. We should not expect much originality of thought in a youth of twenty, nor do we find it here. Honour Triumphant reveals a mind im- mersed in the chivalric romances and poetry of the Elizabethan reign,' and deeply impregnated with the Platonic ideas of love and beauty best represented in the hymns of Spenser but through the medium of Italian literature widely disseminated in English. The upshot of the argument is to identify the good with the beauti- ful and the service of a fair lady with the pursuit of virtue. **The chiefest creation of man," says Ford, ** was — next his own soul — to do homage to the ex- cellent frame of beauty — a woman!" **To be cap- tived to beauty is to be free to virtue." To be excluded from the favour of beauty is a ** hell insufferable." All men of valour aim at honour ; but, he contends, <* the ^ The influence of Lyly's Euphua is obvious. xiv 31ntroDuccion mark which honour directs his level to is to participate the delightful sweets of sweetest beauty." Beauty alone is a good in itself. ** For men to be honoured of ladies is the scope of ill 1 felicity." This position is supported by Aristotle who says : ** the temperature of the mind follows the temperature of the body." Hence it follows that if a lady is beautiful she must be good : ** as the outward shape is more singular, so the inward virtues must be more exquisite." To love a beautiful woman is the highest wisdom. Indeed, lovers are often superior to theologians in their knowledge of the divine; for theologians are occasionally distracted by human affairs ; but ** lovers have evermore the idea of beauty in their imaginations, and therefore hourly doadore their Maker's architecture." In conclusion : ** Would any be happy, courageous, singular, or provident ? let him be a lover. In that life consisteth all happiness, all courage, all glory, all wisdom," The ardor and earnestness of Ford's stvle suggest that the leading propositions ot this pamphlet were to him not merely a set of pretty paradoxes, but a religion. The worship of beauty, the fatality of love, the glorifi- cation of passion — these were the fruits of an aristo- cratic and highly captivating mode of free thought, inde- pendent alike of public opinion, common morals, laws, and religion, and at times even clashing sharplv with them. For it is clear that most startlingly unconventional conclusions may be logically derived from the fundamen- tal principles of the religion of beautv. To take a single instance, Spenser savs in his " H)mne in Honour of Beautie " that love is a celesti;il harmony of hearts 3Introtmctiou xv ** composed of starrcs concent," of hearts that kneyv each other before they descended from their ** heavenly bowres." Then wrong it were that any other twaine Should in love's gentle band combyned bee But those whom heaven did at first ordaine, And made out of one mould the more t'agree. Suppose, for the sake of illustration, a common Eliz- abethan marriage, such as that of Lord and Lady Rich, in which relatives dispose of the bride for reasons of fortune and family. Subsequently the man destined by heaven for Lady Rich appears. According to the relig- ion of beauty, it is right that they should be united ; but the corrupted currents of law, morality, and church religion do not allow it. Spenser's wish to withdraw this poem from circulation because of its dangerous implications — finding that young readers **do rather suckc out poyson to their strong passion, then hony to their honest delight"' — is a characteristic example of English ethical sense curbing the itsthetic impulse in the interest of conduct, in F.ngland this religion of beauty was then, as it has always been, an exotic ; ^ and graver heads in Ford's own time repudiated it in no mild terms, betraying their conviction that the glorification of amorous passion was a curse out of Italy, a weakness to be condoned in youth, a vice to * See his prefiitorv note to the edition of 1596. ^ Cf. Camilla to Pliilautus : *' In Italy to ly ve in love is thought no fault, ft)r that there they are all given to lust, which maketh thee to conjecture that we in England recken love as ye chiefest vertue, which we abhorre as ye greatest vice." Kuphues, p. 373, London, 1900. xvi 31ntrotmction be condemned in maturity. **The stage,** says Lord Bacon, **is more beholden to love than the life of man. For as to the stage love is ever a matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies, but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury. . . . Great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion." ' Equally striking is the judgment on love by that little known but very interesting essayist Sir William Cornwallis : **It is a pretty soft thing this same Love . . . the badge of eighteene, and upward, not to be disallowed ; better spend thy tinle so then at Dice. I am content to call this Love, though I holde Love too worthy a Cement to joyne earth to earth.'* So far is Cornwallis from partaking in the pseudo-Pla- tonic ideas of Ford that he is unwilling to bestow the name of love at all on the ** affection" existing between the sexes, **for it gives opportunity to lust, which the purenessof Love will not endure.*' ^ As further evidence of a contemporary distrust of human nature and disgust at all irregular relations, take these sentences from an excellent ** Discourse of Laws " 3 which appeared in 1620: "Laws are so absolutely necessary ... to m^ke such a distinction between lawful and exorbitant desires, as unhuvfull affections may not be colored with good appearances. . . . Whereas men be ntiturall'^ affected and possessed with a violent heat of desires and passions and fancies, laws restrain and draw them from those actions and thoughts that would precipitate to all " See his essay "Of Love." * Essayt's. By Sir William Cornewallys, London, 1606 : Essay 5. ^ An essay in IJortt Subsecivie^ London, 1620. 3|ntrotiuction xvii manner of hazards and ill, which natural inclination is prone enough to." Finally, Robert Burton after rang- ing widely through the vast literature of the subject de- fines romantic love as a disease, **The comeliness and beauty which proceeds from woman," he says, **caus- eth Heroic aly or Love-melancholy, is more eminent above the rest, and properly called Love. The part af- fected in men is the liver, and therefore called Hcroicaly because commonly Gallants, Noblemen, and the most generous spirits are possessed with it." ' Yet this hero- ical love, he declares, *' deserves much rather to be called burning lust than by such an honourable title." ' It is the special passion of an idle nobility : ** We may conclude, that if they be young, fortunate, rich, high- fed, and idle withal, it is almost impossible that they should live honest, not rage and precipitate themselves into those inconveniences of burning lust. "3 Now it is a significant fict that one of the few bits of contemporary evidence bearing on Ford's character tends to show that he had the reputation of a romantic amorist. In Choyce Drollery ( 1656) there appear two lines with distinct implications: Deep in a dump John Ford alone was got With folded armes and melancholly hat.* Ellis seems to think that this means that he was of **shy and reserved temperament." Ward glosses thus: ** He * The Anatomy of Melancholy^ vol. in, p. 43, London, 1904. 2 Ibid., p. 57. ' Ihid., p. 69. •* Choyce Drollery. . . . Now first reprinted from the edition of 1656. . . . Ed. by j. Woodfail Kbsworth, Boston, 1876: the refer- ence is in a poem On the I'ime- Poets, pp. 5-7. xviii 3|ntrotiuction is ridiculed for a tendency to self-seclusion and melan- choly." But the best commentary upon the couplet is furnished by one of the curious sections of the frontis- ^ piece of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. It represents ^ a tall, elegantly attired young gentleman standing with folded hands and wide hat pulled far down over his e;yes. Beside him are books and quill pen, at his feet music and a lute, and he is labeled ** Inamorato." He illustrates the section of the work called ** Love Melan- choly." The couplet, then, does not furnish us per- haps ** that vivid touch of portraiture " which Ellis sees in it, but it refers Ford by a conventional sign to a well recognized type. This interpretation is borne out by a passage in Cornwallis; love, he says, brings forth ** songs full of passion, enough to procure crossed arms, and the Hat pulled down." ^ I dwell upon this point because it goes to prove, with the other evidence, that Ford portrayed the various passions of love in his dramas from an inside view, and not with the detach- ment of the sovereign dramatist nor the objectivity of a scholar or a physician, but with the brooding sym- pathy of a lover. It is especially necessary to insist upon this point, furthermore, because Ford, in spite of his fundamentally different point of view, shows a large obligation to Bur- ton. With the single exception of Perkin Warbecky he chooses for the theme of his plays some aspect of ro- mantic or **heroical" love, and he scrutinizes the mental and physical symptoms of the lovers with some- thing of medical interest. Like Burton, he seems to ^ Essay 5. 3|ntroDuction xix believe this heroical love the peculiar afFection of m&n and women living in luxurious idleness; for he excludes his characters from participation in field sports, war, adventure, and shuts them up where love is the only social resource — to quote Burton's own words, *Mn great houses, princes' courts, where they are idle in summo gradUf fare well, live at ease, and cannot tell otherwise how to spend their time." His characterful accordingly, being vacant of all other occupation, are I completely engrossed by a single passion of love, or of jealousy, or of revenge, or of grief, which becomes sole master of their fate, and ravishes them with extravagant joy, or secretly preys upon their spirits, or hurries them swiftly down to crime and death. In his first published play. The Lover'' s Melancholy ( 1629), Ford acknowledges by a marginal note his in- debtedness to Burton for a passage distinguishing certain mental diseases from melancholy. It has also been pointed out that the interlude of madmen is derived ^from the Anatomy, It should be made equally clear that the germinal idea of the whole play is due to Bur- ton. The Lover^s Melancholy is decidedly deficient in action, but such elements of plot as it possesses seem to have been suggested by Burton's procedure in the section of his work treating of love melancholy. Ford chooses for this scene a love-sick court, and in a medico-poetical fashion studies the causes, the symptoms and the cure of love. He even introduces as an active figure among the dramatis personae a physician who has evidently given his days and nights to the study of Burton. In this case the patients are all afiiicted with love-sorrow XX idntrotiuction caused by a separation from the objects of their affec- tions. Since their affections flow in permissible channels the cure is simple; it is necessary only to re-unite the sundered lovers. Closely related to The Lover'' s Melancholy by virtue of their common relation to the A?iatomy of Me/ancholy is the play called The Queen (1653), recently edited by Professor Bang and most plausibly attributed by him to the authorship of Ford. Here again, vi^ith something more of plot than in The Lover^ s Melancholy^ we find the same curious use of the Burtonian psychotherapeu- tics. Alphonso, the hero, is suffering from an unac- countable but intense antagonism to the entire female sex. The queen is suffering equally from a no less in- tense and unaccountable passion for Alphonso. Muretto, a benevolent villain who understands the nature of this heroical melancholy, deliberately goes about, like a mod- ern practitioner of the art of mental healing, to suggest to the mind of the hero thoughts favorable to the queen. By a strenuous course of psychological treatment he re- stores the woman-hater to a normal condition. Hero and heroine are manipulated by the master of the show in certain typical and exciting crises of love, jealousy, and remorse to illustrate the treatment of mental aber- ration. The formula is apparent: Alphonso is the pa- tient; Muretto is the physician; the queen is the cure. The Fancies Chaste and Noble (1638) is doubtless from the dramatic, the aesthetic, or the ethical point of view one of the worst plays in the world. It admits the reader to a disgustingly indecent situation, extracts from it the full measure of repulsiveness, and then in the fifth 31ntroiJuctwn xxi act blandly assures us it was all an innocent hoax. The thing is bad beyond condemnation, but perhaps not beyond explanation. One may assume that it was a work of Ford's dotage. Or — and it is rather tempt- ing — one may assume that Ford had undertaken, like his master Burton, to display not only all the common aspects of love-melancholy,, but also its sinister and execrable idiosyncrasies, of which senile lasciviousness is one. The Ladf s Trial ( 1 639), the last of the plays with happy endings, may be considered a study of ground- less jealousy after marriage. The husband returning from a long journey becomes gravely suspicious of his entirely innocent wife. All the friends and acquaint- ances of the family rise vehemently in defense of the wife, and at length the jealous man's ill fancies are routed. The interest here lies in the delicate portrayal of the emotions of a finely fibred woman under stress of a terrible accusation, in the chivalrous feeling which her virtue excites in the breast of the least virtuous, and in the careful exposition of the various shades of feeling through which the husband passes before his confidence is restored. The play contains some of Ford's sweetest blank verse and some excellently subtle bits of charac- terization; but the substance of the story is altogether too slight to be stretched over a five-act drama. If Ford had written only The Lover^ s Melancholy, The ^een. The Fancies Chaste and Noble , and The Ladj* s Trial he would have established but small claims on the attention of posterity. Nor would Per kin War- beck have made him a reputation. Coming to the stage xxii 3]utroUuction after Shakespeare, Chapman, Jonson, Dekker, Hey- vvood, Middleton, Webster, Beaumont, and Fletcher, he had nothing to contribute to dramatic technique but much to learn. On the basis of the five plays so far considered one might almost be justified in rating him as an intermittently successful imitator. The Lover^ s Mel- i2?icbo/y is a pretty thing in the Arcadian mood, but im- measurably surpassed in its kind by predecessors. As for The Oueen. Beaumont and Fletcher had written a half dozen tragi-comedies of its type as good or far better. No one who had seen Volponc would have endured sit- ting through The Fancies.'^ The old playgoer might fairly have regarded The LtiJy^ s Trial as a tame, un- eventful, somewhat modernized version of The Wmter* s Tale. Per kin War beck is a carefully constructed, well written, and highly respectable specimen of the English historical plav. Produced at a date long after the vogue of the chronicle play had died away, it has attracted attention by its solitariness and has been highly praised. Placed beside Edward II, Richard 111, Henry IV or Henry V it looks distinctly anaMiiic. Our dramatist, on the strength of this evidence, seems to lack ideas.* He catches a glimpse of an interesting dramatic situation, but he lacks the imagination to follow out its evolution. * Many situations in the two plays are parallel, and the supposed character of Octavio has something in common with that of Volpone. * The amount of credit that Ford should receive for Tht Sun % Darling and The fVitch of Edmonton is still disputable and, like most problems in collaboration, probably always will be. Since space does not permit of any profitable discussion of them here, I prefer to pass them with a reference to F. F. Pierce's two articles on the collaboration of Dekker and Ford in Aiiglia^ xxxvi (1911). 31ntroDuction xxiH He has a certain penetrating insight into the passionate moods of the spirit, but he lacks the power of inventing characteristic action for the display of those moods. Fre- quently he sets to work in a very mechanical fashion to contrive a story to fit his characters, and, being a feeble plotter, too often contents himself with presenting the persons of the main plot in a flimsy patchwork of scenes pieced out to the length of a play by an irrelevant and tedious sub-plot. By common consent it has been de- cided that wit and humour were omitted from his en- dowment, and that his comic characters are among the worst in the history of the English drama. Upon what, then, does Ford's reputation rest? In- dubitably upon his three tragedies, "7"/> Pity, The Brokc?i Hearty and Love* s Sacrifice, all published in 1633. liikc many another man of distinct but strictly lim- ited genius. Ford had two or three original ideas in him, uttered them with power, and then in a vain effort to re- peat his success puttered on from bad to worse. The fact seems to be that his genius remained somewhat lethargic unless his heart was engaged. It is highly significant that in these three really noteworthy plays his theme is \ forbidden love. In each case he confronts what he re- gards as an essentially tragic problem; and his construct- ive power, his characterization, and his poetry rise to the occasion. Tn each case he approaches his material with certain romantic preconceptions which give to his treatment of illicit passion an impressive consistency. He appears to believe still, as in his youth, that love be- tween the sexes is of mystical and divine origin, that it is irresistible, and that it is the highest good, the end xxiv idntrotiuction and aim of being. This certainly is the creed of his tragic characters. They believe in it uncompromisingly; for it they are ready to die, reiterating their faith in the last disgrace and agony. In discussing the peculiar tragic effects which issue from this romantic creed I shall dis- regard the conjectural dates of the plays, and take them up in a kind of climactic order. This procedure is war- ranted by the facts, first, that the dates of composition appear to be indeterminable, and, second, that the dates of composition do not affect the present discussion. The Broken Heart presents a clearly defined moral problem. Penthea, very much in love with Orgilus and betrothed to him, is forced to marry Bassanes. Orgilus, taking a purely rationalistic or idealistic view of the matter, refuses to acknowledge anv validity in the union of Penthea and Bassanes. Frantic with indignant passion he cries: I would possess my wifej the equity Of very reason bids me. Penthea with a supreme effort preserves self-control, and urges her desperate lover to resign himself to the irrevocable, pleading that the true quality of their mu- tual affection will best show itself in virtuous submission to necessity. Which of the two is right? In Elizabethan times when parents disposed of their children in a rather more highhanded fashion than now obtains — when Penelope Devereux was carried protesting to the altar to marry Lord Rich — was it not a fair question? By a subtlety in feminine characterization unsurpassed if not unequalled in the period Ford reveals the full tragic meaning of the problem. Penthea's conduct in 31ntroDuction xxv this difficult crisis is beyond criticism. She shows ten- derness to her lover without tempting his weakness. She admits that they have been grievously wronged, but she will not consent to his righting that wrong by another. Under the burden of her own sorrow she finds strength to comfort his. Yet she is intensely human even at the height of an almost saintly renunciation; though she has the rare charity to wish him happy with another wife, she feels a sensitive solicitude for that wife's opin- ion of her. When she has finally been forced to send her lover away with sharp words, she is torn by the conflict of love and honor, and is dissolved in pity for the suffering of the unhappy man. Having resolved, come what may, to respect the ceremonial bond, she must fight for honor in a long and silent inner struggle in which victory is attended with no less misery than defeat. For she is held in a living death by her rela- tions with Bassanes, her husband. The situation has been a favorite on the modern stage. She is impaled on the horns of a dilemma — dishonor in the arms of Or- gilus, dishonor in the arms of Bassanes. Because she is a woman and the weight of convention is heavy upon her, she chooses the legitimatized rather than the unle- gitimatized shame. Yet at last her revolted spirit bursts into speech; and she begs her brother Ithocles, who was instrumental in her marriage, to kill her. ** How does thy lord esteem thee? " asks the now remorseful brother. Penthea's reply approaches the unbearable: Such an one As only you have made me; a faith breaker, xxvi 31ntrolmction A spotted whore ; forgive me, I am one, In act, not in desires, the gods must witness. For she that's wife to Orgilus, and lives In known adultery with Bassanes Is at the best a whore. Wilt kill me now ? This tremendous sense of involuntary pollution in a woman legally blameless and in the vulgar sense per- fectly respectable is a new note in the drama and an important one. Penthea's high-strung soul cannot for long endure the strain. Her mind begins to break down under the omnipresent horror of her unclassified sin. Stroke by stroke Ford makes it appear more and more dubious whether she has chosen the better part. With wits wandering on the verge of final dissolution she turns in the last gasp of her strangled emotion to the well-beloved Orgilus, murmuring of bride's laces and gathered roses. Over all still broods the undving horror; from the depths of pure pathos, from the ultimate bitterness of a ruined life comes her cry: Since I was first a wife, I might have been Mother to many pretty smiling babes; They would have smiled when I smiled, and for certain I should have cried when they cried; truly, brother, My father would have picked me out a husband, And then my little ones had been no bastards; But 'tis too late for me to marry now, I am past child-bearing. Such a revelation of complex tragic emotion in the soul of a pure woman cannot be found elsewhere in the old drama, even in Shakespeare — perhaps 1 should say, least of all in Shakespeare. I wish here to accent IdntroDuctton xxvii the words **complcx" and **pure." Dcsdemona, far example, is pure; but her tragic emotion is simple. The tragic emotion of Cleopatra, on the other hand, may be described as complex; but she cannot be described as pure. And in general the tragic heroines of the period range themselves under one banner or the other: under Desdemona's, Aspatia in the Ma'uP s Tr/igcdy, the Duchess of Malfi, and Dorothea in the Virgi?i Martyr; under Cleopatra's, Tamyra in Bussy W Amboisy Evadne in the Maid'' s Tragedy y Vittoria in the White Devil, and Beatrice-Joanna in the Changelmg. There is per- haps a third class of those who, like Mrs. Frankford in the Woman Killed with Ki?idnesSy are neither pure nor emotionally complex — weak sisters who are perfectly conventional even in their sins. The orthodox and un- adventurous ethics of the majority of the Elizabethan dramatists are seen in nothing more distinctly than in the fact that they keep their pure women out of moral dilemmas. In their representation of life the world may break the hearts of the innocent, but only the wicked, it seems, may break their own hearts. The tragic emo- tions of the pure are simple, because their disaster comes upon them from without; the tragic emotions of the guilty are complex, because their disaster is due to a discord in their own souls. In The Broke?i Heart Ford throws down the gauntlet to orthodox morality by placing a thoroughly pure woman in a genuine moral dilemma. This is his most notable innovation. By estab- lishing the tragic conflict of Penthea in her own spirit, he makes of her a distinctly modern type of heroine. In a mood of high and poignant seriousness he shows that } xxviii 3fl"ti*otmction keeping the laws and statutes may sometimes make against virtue, and the preservation of honor Ix; the wreck ot peace. Before leaving this play we must give a word to the cniincntlv Fordian hut far less complex character of Orgilus. Convinced that Penthea's resolution will never be moved, he fixes all his thoughts on revenge, and, in a kind of icv ardor or madness, murders Ithocles; for which he is sentenced to death with the approval of those surviving in the last act. It is to be noted, how- ever, that he welcomes death, dies bravely, and abso- lutely unrepentant. The man is reallv depicted as a martvr to the strength and fidelity of his passion; he is an uncompromising idealist. The laws against murder must be recognized; but bv emphasizing the outrage which Orgilus has suffered, the vehemence of passion by which he is consumed, and the stoical calm with which he meets his fate. Ford has made him appear rather a victim than a monster. The death of Penthea, the murder of Ithocles, the execution of Bassanes, and the death of Calantha all prove how fatal it is to offer resistance to omnipotent love. Lor't'\f Sticrijirt'y which treats of a more advanced de- gree of" forbidden love than Tbf Broktfi Heart, arouses in the reader a mingled feeling of admiration and dis- gust. It is not so evenly and carefully composed as The Broken Heart. It admits unenlivening comic scenes and an extensive and repulsive sub-plot. It employs prose freely, whereas "The Broken Heart is entirely in verse. Finally its moral issues are very badly defined, and it ends weakly in dense moral confusion. On the 31ntioDuctton xxix other hand, the plot of Love'' s Sacrijice is a more mocl- ern conception. The principal characters are drawn with a bolder and more energetic stroke. The atmos- phere has a warmth and color not found in the Spartan play. And in the two or three best scenes there is a sheer dramatic intensity unsurpassed elsewhere in Ford's work. Love* s Sacrifice is distinctly modern in conception, for it deals scricnisly with " elective allinilies " after marriage. The Duke of CarafFa loves and marries Bi- anca, a respectable woman of inferior rank, who re- spects her luisband's position and virtues but feels no great affection for him. Then appears Fernando, young, handsome, captivating, the third person of what we have learned to call the ** inevitable triangle." lie con- ceives a vi(ilent passion for Bianca, which, as often as he declares, she virtuously repulses. But these oft-re- peated protestations of love, though they do not at once conquer her will, insidiously take possession of her heart. The critical turn in the unequal duel is subtly conceived. In a moment of utuisual temptation Ivr- nando renews his fiery pleading, and once more l>i- anca with greater vehemence and asperity than ever s{)urns him fron) her. The imjictuous lover is at last touchetl in his better self by her constancy, and begs forgiveness; which being granted, they bid each other good-night. But alas for the perverse reactions of the human spirit! Bianca's virtue has cooled F'ernando's passion; but Bianca's passion is kindled by Fernando's virtue. While he assailed her, siie stood on her guard; when he XXX 31ntrotmction desists from his attack, her defenses tall. Distraught with stifled emotions, she steals into Fernando' s cham- ber, clad only in her night mantle, and finds him sleeping. His quick forgett'ulness bewilders her. She wakes him, and, as if frenzied by some demoniac power, lays bare her soul in an agony of confession, in shame and in sorrow: Howe'er my tongue Did often chide thy love, each word thou spak'st Was music to my ear; was never poor, Poor wretched woman liv'd that lov'd like me, So truly, so unfeignedly. I vow'd a vow to live a constant wife : 1 have done so 5 nor was there in the world A man created could have broke that truth For all tlie glories of the earth but thou, But thou, Fernando ! Do I love thee now ? Fernando, amazed by her abandonment to a passion so much more imperious than his own, can only gasp, ** Beyond imagination! '* She hurries breathlessly on: True, I do. Beyond imagination: if no pledge Of love can instance what I speak is true But loss of my best joys, here, here, Fernando, Be satisfied, and ruin me. Again Fernando is so stunned that she has to make very clear what she means. But on the heels of surrender she cries: Mark me now, If thou dost spoil me of this robe of shame, By my best comforts, here I vow again, To thee, to heaven, to the world, to time, Ere yet the morning shall new-christen day, I'll kill myself! 3flntroDiiction xxxi Say what we will of the character of this woman — ^ and there is little question what we shall have to say — here is the very whirlwind of conflicting emotions. It is doubtless a situation which should never be shown upon the stage; but it is wonderfully realized. It is morbid; but it is terrific — this love which must express its utter- most, though the cost be death. Beside the tragic tem- pest in the body and soul of the woman, Fernando's ardor seems but a little warmth of the blood. He shrinks before the storm he has raised, and, scarcely more from consideration than from terror, he refuses her sacri- fice. The momentous meeting ends with mutual vows of love which is to keep on the hither side of criminal realization. Up to this point the main story is conducted with great strength and skill. The characters arc clearly con- ceived and consistently portrayed. The action is clean and swift, with telling interplay of opposed wills strained in the crisis to the breaking point on the brink of disastrous decision. But after the supremely dra- matic niitlnight meeting Bianca and l^'ernando begin to lose their bearings, and unhappily Ford seems to lose his bearings, too. The lovers grow less and less Pla- tonic; their pledges prove poor shifts with the devil. In the fifth act they are indulging in dangerous specula- tions. Bianca speaks: Why sliouldst thou not he mine ? Why should the laws, The iron laws of ceremony, bar Mutual embraces? What's a vow? a vow ? Can there he sin in unity ? xxxii 31ntroDuctton I had rather change my life With any waiting-woman in the land To purchase one night's rest with thee, Fernando, Than be Caraffa's spouse a thousand years. The duke interrupts their embraces with drawn sword. Instead of showing fear or imploring pardon, Bianca turns hussy, flaunts her love for Fernando, and courts death, although at the same time she declares that she is innocent. Goaded at length to fury, the duke gives her a mortal wound. Bianca dies with these extraordi- nary words on her lips: Live to repent too late. Commend my love To thy true friend, my love to him that owes it; My tragedy to theej my heart to — to — Fernando. And so the tragic heroine passes away without a thought of repentance, without a shadow of suspicion that she has anything of which to repent. Indeed she ac- cepts her martyrdom, confident of her innocence as a very Desdemona. Her great love for Fernando she wears as a crown of glory. Yet, it is sufficiently plain, though she has abstained from the sin of the flesh, that her mind is as spotted with adultery as the merest strumpet's. Moreover, from this scene to the end of the play it is indubitable that Ford takes precisely Bianca' s posi- tion — that he wishes to leave the impression that she is a perfectly irreproachable woman. He makes Fer- nando assure the duke's counsellors that ** a better woman never blessed the earth." They agree, and take his side against the ** jealous madman," her hus- band. At the point of death Fernando assures the duke 31ntroi5uction xxxiii that the world's wealth could not redeem the loss of" ** such a spotless wife." The duke agrees, and repents of his ** hellish rage," declaring that **so chaste, so dear a wife" no man ever enjoyed. His faithful sec- retary, who first awakened his suspicions, is to be hanged on the prison top as a damned villain till he starve to death. He looks upon himself — so do the rest — as a rash murderer. In remorse he commits suicide, having first given orders that he be buried in one tomb with his chaste wife and his ** unequalled friend," Fernando! And in his last breath he hopes that his fate will be a warning to jealous husbands. Now the conclusion of this play must seem to every person of normal sense singularly wrong, weak, and futile. In the beginning of it every one knows what is decent; in the middle Fernando and Bianca grow skep- tical as to what is decent; in the end no one knows what is decent — - not even the author. That is the impression Love^ s Sacrifice makes upon the modern reader. Never- theless, Ford would doubtless have denied that there had been any moral vacillation on his part; and, indeed, it is not difficult to show that he has treated his theme in per- fect consistency with his romantic convictions. Love, as he had declared in Honour Triumpha?ity he regarded as the supreme good in life and as the irresistible master of the destinies of those whom it has joined together. Bianca and Fernando, therefore, in loving each other even unto death are not only fulfilling their inevitable destinies, but are also pursuing their supreme good. Of course. Ford might say, it was unfortunate that they did not meet before Bianca was married. That was their xxxiv 31mroDuctiou fatal misfortune; that was their tragedy. Yet on the whole how nobly they conducted themselves under the stress of adverse circumstances. They recognized the general force of the matrimonial bond, and they with- held from their love its natural sustenance in order not to violate that bond. As for refraining from love itself, that were as impossible as drawing the stars from their courses. Even the jealous husband, then, must confess that they conformed to the limit ot their power with the conventions of this somewhat helter skelter world. In some such tashion as this Ford himself must have jus- tified the work. ' Tis Pity is extremely interesting both as a play and as a psychological document; for it represents the height of Ford's achievement as a dramatist and the depth of his corruption as an apostle ot passion. The utterances of critics upon it from the seventeenth century to the present day emphasize the necessitv of a divided judg- ment. Langbaine declared "that it equals any of our author's plays; and were to be commended, did not the author paint the incestuous love between Giovanni and his sister Annabella in too beautiful colours." Lamb pointed out that "even in the poor perverted reason of Giovanni and Annabella, we discover traces ot that fiery particle, which in the irregular starting from out of the road of beaten action, discovers something of a right line even in obliquity, and shows hints of an improv- able greatness in the lowest descents and degradations of our nature." Git^brd substantially reiterated the sentiments of Langbaine: "It [the poetry] is in truth too seductive tor the subject, and flings a soft and sooth- introduction xxxv ing light over what in its natural state would glare with salutary and repulsive horror." Fleay is even more biting; he says: ** Well allowed of, when acted, by the Earl of Peterborough to whom he dedicated it. So it is now by some critics and publishers . . . but not by any well regulated mind." In connection with Fleay's, the comment of Ellis is striking: "In 'T/j /*//y," says Ellis, **Ford touched the highest point that he ever reached. He never succeeded in presenting an image so simple, passionate, and complete, so free compara- tively from mixture of weak or base elements as that of the boy and girl lovers who were brother and sister. The tragic story is unrolled from first to last with fine truth and clear perceptions." Ward says, ** The poison of this poetic treatment of mortal sin is dissolved in a cup of sweetness." Schelling finds in it ** consum- mate poetic art ... a strange and unnatural origi- nality like a gorgeous and scented but poisonous exotic of the jungle." Of all these criticisms Lamb's seems to me the most penetrating and the most illuminating. Speaking in his poetical Brunonian fashion of ** that fiery particle " and the ** something of a right line even in obliquity " he touches upon the intense romantic idealism which marks all Ford's lovers, and which is the fundamental and controlling spirit in all Ford's most characteristic work. It will not do to attribute his amazing attempt to excite sympathy for the depraved hero and heroine to the general spirit of the time ; the unnatural passion which is the theme of his play was quite as abhorrent to common feelings in the age of Charles I. as it is today. xxxvi 3|ntroliuction Indeed, there is some evidence that it was even more abhorrent. In the Calendar of State Papers for 1631 y two years before the publication of * lis P/Vy, is re- corded under the date of May 12 a ** sentence of the ecclesiastical commissioners upon Sir Giles Allington for intermarrying with Dorothy Dalton, daughter of Mi- chael Dalton and his wife, which latter was half-sister to Sir Giles." A few days later the Rev. Joseph Mead writing to Sir Martin Stuteville dwells upon the im- pressiveness of the trial at which eight bishops presided, and upon the heavy penalties imposed, which included a fine of ^2000 upon the procurer of the license. In conclusion Mead writes: ** It was the solemnest, the gravest and the severest censure that ever, they say, was made in that court." ' It is possible that this case, doubtless the talk of Lon- don, mav have suggested to Ford the composition of 'T/'j P//y. It was exactly the situation to appeal to his sympathies as a poet and to his interest as a lawyer. Here again, as in the Devonshire -Rich affair, the im- pulses of the heart were in conflict with the world's laws as defined by the ecclesiastical court. The Bishop of London had pronounced Sir Giles Allington 's mar- riage a most heinous crime. But Ford did not look to bishops for his moral judgments; his court of last appeal was the small circle of those unfettered spirits who re- cognized a kind of higher morality in obedience to the heart. It would at any rate have accorded with his temper and his previous work to write a play presenting a case of incest much more flagrant than that before the * Court and Times of Charles /., vol. 11, p. 119. ^Introduction xxxvii public yet so veiled with poetical glamour as to elicit for the criminals both pity and admiration. That, at least, is what he did. He approaches the theme not with the temper of a stern realist bent on laying bare the secret links of cause and effect in a ferocious and ugly story of almost un- mentionable lust and crime, but with the temper of a decadent romanticist bent on showing the enthralling power of physical beauty and the transfiguring power of passion. He accordingly makes the ill-starred Gio- vanni and Annabella the well-bred offspring of a pros- perous gentleman of Parma. The young man has had every opportunity of religious training, study at the university, and intercourse with good society. The girl, brought up carefully in her father's house, is endowed with every grace of mind and body, and is flattered by the attention of distinguished suitors. But like their author they have been nourished on that great mass of Renaissance literature which in Italy and in England establishes the religion and theology of earthly love. In the opening scene Giovanni, already in the throes of passion, fortifies himself with philo- sophical authority, casuistical argument, and Platonic nonsense quite in the vein of Spenser's hymns. Shock- ing as it is, we must recognize that this blossomed corruption is rooted in the fair garden of Elizabethan romance. To Giovanni, as to the youthful Spenser, love is the supreme thing in the world, beauty the un- questioned object of adoration. Since he finds this adorable beauty in his sister, his soul conforming to its celestial nature must bow and worship. Duty in its xxxviii 31ntrolmction ordinary sense is not in this field at all; the soul's duty is complete submission to the divinity ot beauty — Must I not praise That luMuty which, if tVam'd anew, the gods Would make a god of, it they had it there, And kneel to it, as I do kneel to them ? This note is struck again and again; thus in complaint: The love of thee, my sister, and the view Of thy immortal beauty have untun'd All harmony both of my rest and life. Thus argumentatively: Wise nature first in your creation meant To make you mine, else't had been sin and foul To share one beauty to a double soul. In another more extended passage he actually makes the Platonic identification of the good and the beautiful, repeating in part exactly the argument which Ford had employed in Honour Triumphant when defending the position, ** Fair lady was never false " : What I have done I'll prove both fit and good. It is a principle which you have taught, When I was yet your scholar, that the frame And composition of the mind doth follow The frame and composition ot the body: So where the body's furniture is beauty, The mind's must needs be virtue j which allow'd, Virtue itself is reason but refin'd, And love the quintessence of that: this proves, My sister's beauty being rarely fair Is rarely virtuous; chieHy in her love, And chiefly in that love, her love to me. According to the romantic creed the worship of beauty is not inercly the soul's duty; it is also the soul's JlntroUuction xxxix necessity. Hence Ciiovanni's reiterated accent upon fate : Lost ! I am lost ! my fates have doom'd my death: The more I strive I love. Giovanni ilistinguislics between the common motions of the blood and the inexorable power not himself: Or I must speak or burst. 'Tis not, I know, My lust, but 'tis my fate that leads mc on He recognizes that resistance to this power is mortal: 'Tis my destiny That you must either love, or I must die. Under the stress of his passion Giovanni becomes an absolutely uncompromising exponent of Ford's ro- mantic idealism. Fn the first part of the play he exhibits some regard, though slight respect, for ordinary mo- rality. But he is soon brushing aside his scruples with the impatient inquiry: Shall a peevish sound, A customary form, from man to man. Of brother and of sister, be a bar 'Twixt my perpetual happiness and me ? And before long he has resolved that prayer and heaven and sin are ** dreams and old men's tales to fright un- steady youth." In this conviction he is confirmed by Annabclla's acknowledgment that he had captivated her heart long before he challenged her to surrender. By making her yield at once with an abandon equal to Giovanni's Ford plainly intends to show that the souls of the brother and sister were predestined for union in that Platonic heaven of lovers whence they came. With xl JflntroDuction this conviction strong upon them both, they fall upon their knees and vow the most astounding vow by the sacredness of their mother's ashes to be true one to the other. It is the passionate fidelity of Giovanni to his vow, his desperate single-mindedness, which lends to -this terrible transaction its evil splendor. Later, under the shadow of impending doom, the Friar makes a vain effort to shake the young man's resolution. If it were possible for a moment to forget the monstrosity of the affair, the fierce ecstasy of Giovanni's reply might stir a tragic thrill: Friar. The throne of mercy is above your trespass} Yet time is left you both — Gio. To embrace each other, Else let all time be struck quite out of number. So, too, the martyr-like rapture of Annabella when, her crime confessed, she is threatened by her husband with instant death: Che morte piu dolce eke morire per amore f and as he hales her up and down by the hair: Morendo in gra'zia dee morire sen-za dolore. As the fatal net closes around the lovers. Ford seems to summon all his powers to represent their misery as the price of their devotion to the highest ends of which their souls are capable. Giovanni nerves himself to take vengeance upon his enemies that when he falls he may die a ** glorious death." He slays his sister — not in .a blind rage, but to save her from the vile world — tenderly and with a kiss and crying: Go thou, white in thy soul, to fill a throne >— - Of innocence and sanctity in heaven. 3(IntroUuction xU Then turning away as from the sacrifice of a white lamb without blemish to the god of love, this fervid idealist, fresh from adultery, incest and murder, bids his heart stand up and act its ** last and greatest part " — another murder! Dying, he seals with his last breath his faith in the passion that has wrecked his life: Where'er I go, let me enjoy this grace, Freely to view my Annabella's face. Now it appears to me incontestable that a dramatist who seeks such effects as ' Tis Pity produces must write with a conscious and clearly-defined theory. Ford can- not be explained as an imitator of his contemporaries; for his impressive attempt to make his auditors believe in the whitenesss of a soul despite the abhorrent pollu- tion of its fleshly envelope is without precedent in the English drama of his age. ' The man is original in his fundamental conception of the nature of tragedy. I am not sure, with Havelock Ellis, that Ford ** foreboded new ways of expression " ; his analytic power, so much commented upon by his critics, he shares with Shakespeare and Middleton and Webster. I think it clear, however, that, so far as English drama is con- cerned, he did forebode a modern conception of the tragic conflict. That is to say, while his contemporaries continued to represent the tragic catastrophe as the disastrous issue of a clash between good and evil, he ^ There is sufficient non-dramatic precedent; compare these lines from Spenser's " Hymne in Honour of Beautie ": Nathelesse the soule is faire and beauteous still, How ever fleshes fault it filthy make; For things immortal no corruption take- xiii 3|ntroliuction seized the subtler and more bitter and less salutary no- tion, familiar enough to-day, that the tragic catastrophe results from the clash of the relative good with the ab- solute good. In other words, he foreboded a new way of envisaging morality. Recall Giovanni's valediction to the soul of his sister, and then read these words from Maurice Maeterlinck's ' Treasure df the Humble : *< It would seem as though our code of morality were changing, advancing with timid steps toward loftier re- gions that cannot be seen. And the moment has perhaps come when certain new questions should be asked. . . . What would happen if the soul were brought into a tri- bunal of souls? Of what would she be ashamed? Which are the things she fain would hide? Would she, like a ^ It is noteworthy in this connection that Maeterlinck has adapted T/i Fity for the modern stage: see Bibliography. M. Maeterlinck is, of course, also familiar with Platonic and Neo-Platonic theories. His modern heresy is simply a resuscitation of an obsolete, poetical commonplace. Charles Lamb rather curiously quoted as comment upon his selec- tion from this play a sonorous passage of Sir Thomas Browne's Fseu- dodoxia Epidemica, of which this is the gist: " Of sins heteroclital, and such as want either name or precedent, there is oft-times a sin even in their histories." Weber, Gifford, and Dyce in their complete edi- tions of the tragedy have with even less appositeness reproduced the passage. Loath to depart from the fine tradition — now a century old — of remembering Browne on this occasion, I respectfully sug- gest to future editors of Ford the substitution of the following maxims from Christian Morals : " Live by old ethics and the classical rules of honesty. Put no new names or notions upon authentic virtues and vices. Think not that morality is ambulatory^ that vices in one age are not vices in another; or that virtues, which are under the everlasting seal of right reason, may be stamped by opinion. And therefore though vicious times invert the opinions of things, and set up a new ethics against virtue, yet hold thou unto old morality." 31ntrotiuction xHii bashful maiden, cloak beneath her long hair the number- less sins of the flesh? She knows not of them, and those sins have never come near her. They were committed a thousand miles from her throne; and the soul even of the prostitute would pass unsuspectingly through the crowd, with the transparent smile of the child in her eyes." Whatever we may think of Maeterlinck's mystical theory — I, for one, consider it beautiful and pernicious nonsense — it is worth while to observe that his dra- matic illustration of it is entirely different from Ford's. He has the tact to perceive that plays built upon this theory have no place upon the realistic stage. He is even doubtful whether genuine tragedies of the spirit can be fitly represented by actors at all. They must touch the sympathy of the reader invisibly as he sits brooding in quietness, and like the indefinable appeal of music be felt rather than understood. Accordingly in his earlier work Maeterlinck divested his scene of every reminder of the gross and to him insignificant physical world, in order to make clear a stage for the interaction of almost disembodied spirits. In the dim light of the wan Arthurian realm where his tragedies are set, the passions ebb and flow with the tides of an unplumbed and uncharted sea, by whose waters naked soul meets naked soul under the wings of destiny. No question rises there of heredity, training, environment; for only immortal and immaterial essences are there engaged; and they cannot be affected by these mortal and ma- terial forces. Ford's theory of the inviolability of the soul has much in common with Maeterlinck's. It seems, how- xiiv 3|ntroUuction ever, much more startling because it is clothed in very human flesh and blood, and set upon a realistic stage. Ford presents his hero and heroine, for such they must be called, in the light of common day. He prepares us for a tragedy in which we should witness the operation of the laws of this world; but he presents us a tragedy in which the protagonists are emancipated from, the laws of this world, and act in accordance with the laws of a Platonized Arcadia. They are idealists in one world, but criminal degenerates in the other. The originality of 'TVj Pity has been pretty gen- erally conceded, at least by English critics; but it has not always been made sufficiently clear that the origi- nality lies in the treatment and not in the choice of the theme. As a matter of fact this subject was handled by several of Ford's important contemporaries, and it may be worth while briefly to indicate their decisively difi^er- ent method of approaching it. The crime here involved constitutes, it will be recalled, one of the iniquitous elements in the marriage of Claudius and Gertrude in Hamlety and it furnishes a shuddering background of horror for the first act oi Pericles. To the healthy mind of Shakespeare it is clearly a matter abhorrent. It is a part of a tangled web of lust which Tourneur made into the Revenger'' s Tragedy. But though Tourneur chose corrupt material, he dealt with it in a sound fashion. With him there was no poetical glozing, no veil of il- lusion cloaking the beast, no scape-goat fate occupying the place of the abdicating will, no ** higher morality'* subtly aspersing common decency. When his charac- ters commit gross or unnatural crimes, he makes it 31ntroi)uction xlv perfectly apparent that the moving force is bestial drunk-, enness or physical degeneracy, not celestial foreordina- tion. Thus the incestuous Spurio cries: 1 was begot in impudent wine and lust. Step-mother, I consent to thy desires. Beaumont and Fletcher's KiTig and No King has for its central theme the love of Arbaces for his supposed sister, Panthea. But in the end it transpires that Arbaces is a changeling, and in reality not related at all to Pan- thea. Nevertheless the authors do not wholly rely upon the unexpected denouement to explain the moral aberra- tion of the hero. They tell us in the first place that Pan- thea was but nine years old when Arbaces left her not to return till she had reached her maturity ; consequently he appears to be smitten rather with a fair stranger than with a sister. And in the second place they spare no pains to present him as a man of abnormally violent and unruly temperament. Furthermore, when after fearful struggles his passion begins to master him, he does not justify himself as an apostle of love and beauty and their ** higher" reasonableness; on the contrary he declares: I have lost The only difference betwixt man and beast, My reason. And Panthea, instead of admitting with Annabella that her lover has *