The Broken Heart is a Caroline-era tragedy written by John Ford, and was first published in 1633. "The drama has long competed with ' Tis Pity She's aa Whore as Ford's greatest work... the highest attainment of his genius.... "The authorship date of the drama is uncertain, and is generally placed in the period 1625-32 by scholars. The title page of the first edition states that the drama was acted upon by King's Men at Blackfriars Theater. This text is preceded by the motto "Fide Honor," anagram for "John Forde," which Ford uses in his other games as well. Volume dedicated to William Lord Craven, Baron of Hampsteed-Marshall. Video The Broken Heart
Synopsis
Set in Classical Greece, the drama tells the story of Amyclas, King of Laconia (or Sparta), his daughter Calantha, and their court. The young general Sparta Ithocles, motivated by pride, interrupted his sister's marriage, Penthea, to Orgilus. Ithocles demanded that he marry a larger nobleman, Bassanes. Bassanes proved to be a cruel, irrational and jealous husband, who made his wife a prisoner. Orgilus pretended to travel to Athens but secretly remained in Sparta in disguise. Ithocles, who won in battle, admitted that he had wronged Penthea and Orgilus, and supported a planned marriage between his friend, Prophilus and the sister of Orgilus, Euphrania. Ithocles himself seeks the hand of Calantha, the daughter of the King - and she accepts it, not her cousin Nearchos, a prince of Argos.
An unhappy Penthea makes him starve to death; Orgilus traps the Ithocles in his mechanical chair and kills him, just before the wedding is planned for Calantha. In the closing scenes, Calantha dances at the wedding banquet, and continues to dance when she is told about the death of her father the King, her friend Penthea, and her fiancé Ithocles. The dance ends, Calantha, now the Queen of Sparta, condemns Orgilus for his murder of Ithocles, appoints Nearchos as his successor and successor, and dies out of a broken heart.
Penthea's death from anorexia has attracted the attention of modern feminist critics, such as Nancy Gutierrez.
Maps The Broken Heart
Note
References
- Farr, Dorothy M. John Ford and Caroline Theater. London, Macmillan, 1979.
- Gutierrez, Nancy A. Will He Be Shy Then ?: Rejection of Women's Food in Early Modern England. London, Ashgate, 2003. ISBNÃ, 978-1-84014-240-2
- Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1978.
- Schelling, Felix Emmanuel. Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1908.
- Carsaniga, Giovanni, "The 'Truth' at John Ford's 'The Broken Heart'", Comparative Literature 4 (1958), p.Ã, 344 - 48
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