Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/409

Rh those most characteristically expressive of his peculiar strength, viz., 'Tis Pity she's a Whore and The Broken Heart (both printed 1633), he had found themes the horrible situations in which required dramatic explanation by intensely powerful motives. Ford by no means stood alone among our dramatists in his love of abnormal subjects but few were so capable of treating them sympathetically, and at the same time without that reckless grossness or extravagance of expression which renders the morally repulsive æsthetically intolerable, or converts the horrible into the grotesque. For in Ford's genius there was an element of true refinement, except when the self-delusion referred to came into play. In a third tragedy, Love's Sacrifice (also printed in 1633) he again worked on similar materials; but this time he unfortunately essayed to base the interest of his plot upon an unendurably unnatural possibility—doing homage to virtue after a fashion in which to honour is almost equivalent to insulting her. He might seem by this time to have been in danger of indulging still further a morbid tendency, the corroding influence of which is fatal to any genius abandoning itself to it; yet we find him in Perkin Warbeck (printed 1634) choosing an historical subject, and, alone among the dramatists of his age, seeking to emulate the glory of the great series of Shakespeare's national histories. It is true that his treatment of his theme, though neither unskilful nor unworthy, could not at once compass the breadth and variety which this species of drama demands. But the effort is one of the most commendable, as it was by no means one of the least successful, in the dramatic literature of this period; and we may unhesitatingly regret that he should not have made another essay in the same field, instead of turning to romantic comedy, for which he was without the requisite buoyancy of spirit, while all but devoid of the faintest vestige of comic humour. The Fancies Chaste and Noble (printed 1638), though it includes scenes of real force and feeling, is dramatically a failure, of which the main idea is almost provokingly slight and feeble; and The Lady's Trial (acted 1638, printed 1639) is only redeemed from utter wearisomeness by an unusually even pleasingness of form. There remain two other dramatic works, of very different kinds, in which Ford co-operated with other writers, the mask of The Sun's Darling (acted 1624, printed 1657), which is hardly to be placed in the first rank of early compositions, and The Witch of Edmonton (printed 1658, but probably acted about a quarter of a century earlier), in which we see Ford as a joint writer of one of the most powerful domestic dramas of our own or any other stage.

A few notes maybe added on some of the more remarkable of the plays enumerated. A wholly baseless anecdote, condensed into a stinging epigram by Endymion Porter, asserted that The Lover's Melancholy was stolen by Ford from Shakespeare's papers. Lesser dramatists are in the habit of borrowing from greater; and there were few among the writers of our old drama, of whatever eminence or calibre, to whom plagiarism, whether in the matter of situations and characters, or of passages and expressions, would have seemed a literary liberty requiring defence. Undoubtedly, the madness of the hero of this play of Ford's occasionally recalls Hamlet, while the heroine is one of the many, and at the same time one of the most pleasing, parallels to Viola. But neither of them is a copy, as Friar Bonaventura in Ford's second play may be said to be a copy of Friar Lawrence, whose kindly pliability he disagreeably exaggerates, or as D'Avolos in Love's Sacrifice is clearly modelled on Iago. The plot of The Lover's Melancholy, which is ineffective because it leaves no room for suspense in the mind of the reader, seems original; in the dialogue, on the other hand, a justly famous passage in Act i. (the beautiful version of the story of the nightingale's death) is translated from Strada; while the scheme of the tedious interlude exhibiting the various forms of madness is avowedly taken, together with sundry comments, from that storehouse of useless learning, Anatomy of Melancholy. Already in this play Ford exhibits the singular force of his pathos; the despondent misery of the aged Meleander, and the sweetness of the last scene, in which his daughter comes back to him, alike go to the heart. A situation—hazardous in spite of its comic substratum—between Thaumasta and the pretended Parthenophil is conducted, as Gifford points out, with real delicacy; but the comic scenes are merely stagey, notwithstanding, or by reason of, the effort expended on them by the author.

'Tis Pity she's a Whore has been justly recognized as a tragedy of extraordinary power; but it seems no hard matter to join in this recognition, while reserving to oneself the right, which no canon of criticism can rebut, of protesting against the abuse of art of which this play furnishes an almost unparalleled example. Mr Swinburne, in his eloquent essay on Ford, has rightly shown what is the meaning of this tragedy, and has at the same time indicated wherein consists its poison. He dwells with great force upon the different treatment applied by Ford to the characters of the two miserable lovers—brother and sister. "The sin once committed, there is no more wavering or flinching possible to him, who has fought so hard against the demoniac possession; while she who resigned body and soul to the tempter almost at a word, remains liable to the influences of religion and remorse." This different treatment shows the feeling of the poet—the feeling for which he seeks to evoke our inmost sympathy—to oscillate between the belief that an awful crime brings with it its awful punishment (and it is sickening to observe how the argument by which the Friar persuades Annabella to forsake her evil courses mainly appeals to the physical terrors of retribution), and the notion that there is something fatal, something irresistible, and therefore in a sense self-justified, in so dominant a passion. The key-note to the conduct of Giovanni lies in his words at the close of the first scene—

All this I'll do, to free me from the rod Of vengeance; else I'll swear my fate's my god."

Thus there is no solution of the conflict (which in one form or the other all men have to undergo) between passion on the one side, and law, duty, and religion on the other; and passion triumphs, in the dying words of "the student struck blind and mad by passion"—

"O, I bleed fast! Death, thou'rt a guest long look'd for; I embrace Thee and thy wounds: O, my last minute comes! Where'er I go, let me enjoy this grace Freely to view my Annabella's face."

It has been observed by a recent critic of mark that "English poets have given us the right key to the Italian temperament The love of Giovanni and Annabella is rightly depicted as more imaginative than sensual." It is difficult to allow the appositeness of Mr J. A. Symonds's special illustration; on the other hand, Ford has even in this case shown his art of depicting sensual passion without grossness of expression; for the exception in Annabella's language to Soranzo seems to have a special intention, and is true to the pressure of the situation and the revulsion produced by it in a naturally weak and yielding mind. The entire atmosphere, so to speak, of the play is stifling, and is not rendered less so by the underplot with Hippolita.

Like this tragedy, The Broken Heart was probably founded upon some Italian or other novel of the day; but since in the latter instance there is nothing revolting in the main idea of the subject, the play commends itself as the most enjoyable, while, in respect of many excellences, an unsurpassed specimen of Ford's dramatic genius. The complicated plot is constructed with greater skill than is usual with this dramatist, and the pathos of particular situations, and of the entire character of Penthea—a woman doomed to hopeless misery, but capable of seeking to obtain for her brother a happiness which his cruelty has condemned her to forego—has an intensity and a depth which are all Ford's own. Even the lesser characters are more pleasing than usual, and some beautiful lyrics are interspersed in the play.

Of the other plays written by Ford alone, The Chronicle Historie of Perkin Warbeck—A Strange Truth alone appears to call for special attention. A repeated perusal of this drama suggests the judgment that it is overpraised when ranked at no great distance from Shakespeare's national dramas. Historical truth has not to be taken into consideration in the matter; and if (notwithstanding Mr Gairdner) there are still credulous persons left to think and assert that Perkin was not an impostor, they will derive little satisfaction from Ford's play, which with really surprising skill avoids the slightest indication as to the poet's own belief on the subject. That this tragedy should have been reprinted in 1714 and acted in 1745 only shows that the public, as is often the case, had an eye to the catastrophe rather than to the development of the action. The dramatic capabilities of the subject are, however, great, and it afterwards attracted, who, however, seems to have abandoned it in favour of the similar theme of the Russian Demetrius. Had Shakespeare treated it, he would hardly have contented himself with investing the hero with the nobility given by Ford to this personage of his play, for it is hardly possible to speak of a personage as a character when the clue to his conduct is intentionally withheld. Nor could Shakespeare have failed to bring out with greater variety and distinctness the dramatic features in Henry VII., whom Ford depicts with sufficient distinctness to