The Lover's Melancholy
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''The Lover's Melancholy'' is an early Caroline era stage play, a
tragicomedy Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragedy, tragic and comedy, comic forms. Most often seen in drama, dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the ov ...
written by
John Ford John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), better known as John Ford, was an American film director and producer. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and w ...
. While the dating of the works in Ford's canon is very uncertain, this play has sometimes been regarded as "Ford's first unaided drama," an anticipation of what would follow through the remainder of his playwriting career. It is certainly the earliest of his works to appear in print.


Performance and publication

The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the
Master of the Revels The Master of the Revels was the holder of a position within the English, and later the British, royal household, heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels". The Master of the Revels was an executive officer under the Lord Chamberla ...
, on 24 November
1628 Events January–March * January 19 – (26 Jumada al-Awwal 1037 Islamic calendar, A.H.) The reign of Shahryar Mirza, Salef-ud-din Muhammad Shahryar as the Mughal Emperor, Shahryar Mirza, comes to an end a little more than tw ...
. It was acted by the King's Men at the Blackfriars and
Globe A globe is a spherical Earth, spherical Model#Physical model, model of Earth, of some other astronomical object, celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but, unlike maps, they do not distort the surface ...
theatres. The play was first published in
1629 Events January–March * January 7 – Henry Frederick, Hereditary Prince of the Palatinate, the 15-year-old son of the German Palatinate elector, Frederick V of the Palatinate, Frederick V, drowns in an accident while sailing ...
by the bookseller Henry Seile. The quarto bears a dedication from Ford to four friends at
Gray's Inn The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. To be called to the bar in order to practise as a barrister in England and Wale ...
, one of whom is a cousin, also named John Ford. This second John Ford contributed
commendatory verse The epideictic oratory, also called ceremonial oratory or praise-and-blame rhetoric, is one of the three branches, or "species" (eidē), of rhetoric, as outlined in Aristotle's ''Rhetoric'', to be used to praise or blame, during ceremonies. Orig ...
to a couple of the dramatist's plays, including ''The Lover's Melancholy''. The first edition also supplies an unusually full cast list, specifying the 17 King's Men's actors who took part in the original production.
Charles Macklin Charles Macklin (26 September 1699 â€“ 11 July 1797), (Gaelic: Cathal MacLochlainn, English: Charles McLaughlin), was an Irish actor and dramatist who performed extensively at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Macklin revolutionised theatre in ...
revived the play at the
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and listed building, Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) an ...
in 1748, though the revival was not a success. Macklin was responsible for a story that Ford had stolen the play from
Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
's papers, which
Edmond Malone Edmond Malone (4 October 174125 May 1812) was an Irish barrister, Shakespearean scholar and Literary editor, editor of the works of William Shakespeare. Assured of an income after the death of his father in 1774, Malone was able to give up his ...
rejected in his 1790 edition of Shakespeare's works.


Sources

''The Lover's Melancholy'' is based on Robert Burton's ''
The Anatomy of Melancholy ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'' (full title: ''The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Ph ...
''; Ford draws on Burton most heavily in the play's
masque The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). A mas ...
of the mad (Act III, scene iii). The play also features a competition between a musician and a nightingale that draws upon the ''Academic Prolusions'' of Famiano Strada (
1617 Events January–March * January 5 **Pocahontas and Tomocomo of the Powhatan Algonquian tribe, in the Virginia colony of America, meet King James I of England as his guests, at the Banqueting House at Whitehall. **'' The Mad L ...
). The same poetic trope was also exploited by
Richard Crashaw Richard Crashaw (c. 1613 – 21 August 1649) was an English poet, teacher, High Church Anglican cleric and Roman Catholic convert, who was one of the major metaphysical poets in 17th-century English literature. Crashaw was the son of a famous ...
,
Ambrose Philips Ambrose Philips (167418 June 1749) was an England, English poet and politician. He feuded with other poets of his time, resulting in Henry Carey (writer), Henry Carey bestowing the nickname "Namby-Pamby" upon him, which came to mean affected, wea ...
, and other poets.
Charles Lamb Charles Lamb (10 February 1775 – 27 December 1834) was an English essayist, poet, and antiquarian, best known for his '' Essays of Elia'' and for the children's book '' Tales from Shakespeare'', co-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764†...
praised Ford's version as superior in his anthology ''Specimens of the Dramatic Poets'' (1808).


Synopsis

The plot of the play possesses an unusually complex
backstory A backstory, background story, background, or legend is a set of events invented for a plot, preceding and leading up to that plot. In acting, it is the history of the character before the drama begins, and is created during the actor's prepara ...
(perhaps a symptom of the playwright's relative inexperience), which is revealed through the course of the action. Meleander, a prominent nobleman of Cyprus, is the father of two daughters, Eroclea and Cleophila. The ruler of Cyprus proposes a match between his son Palador and Eroclea—but when Eroclea appears at his court, the ruler becomes violently enamored with her himself. Eroclea is spirited away to protect her virtue, and Palador is stricken with a deep melancholy as a result. Meleander is accused of treason and stripped of his rank and honors for protecting his daughter; in consequence, he too becomes mentally ill. He convalesces in his castle, under the care of the faithful Cleophila. The troublesome ruler of Cyprus dies and is succeeded by Palador—but the whereabouts of Eroclea are unknown. At the start of the play, Meleander's nephew Menaphon has returned from travel abroad; he has undertaken his journey to escape his unhappy love for the haughty Thamasta, Palador's cousin. Menaphon is accompanied by a new friend, Parthenophill, a young man met in the
Vale of Tempe The Vale of Tempe or Tembi (; ; ) is a gorge in the Tempi municipality of northern Thessaly, Greece, located between Olympus to the north and Ossa to the south, and between the regions of Thessaly and Macedonia. The gorge was known to the Byz ...
. Palador, now the ruler of Cyprus, is still mired in melancholy, a condition his prime minister Sophronos (Meleander's brother and successor), his physician Corax, and his tutor Aretus try in vain to alleviate. In due course, Palador's cure comes about when it is revealed that Parthenophill is Eroclea is disguise—a revelation that cures her father's depression as well. Cleophila, now free of the obligation to nurse her father, marries her devoted suitor Amethus. Thamasta, who had fallen in love with Parthenophill, is shocked out of her self-assured arrogance by the revealed disguise, and in a new spirit of humility becomes the wife of Menaphon. The play's
comic relief Comic Relief is a British charity, founded in 1986 by the comedy scriptwriter Richard Curtis and comedian Sir Lenny Henry in response to the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia. The concept of Comic Relief was to get British comedians to make t ...
is supplied by the character Rhetias, "a reduced courtier" who is the servant of Eroclea/Parthenophill, and "two foolish courtiers," Pelias and Cuculus. In portraying the depression of Prince Palador and Lord Meleander, Ford worked in a subgenre of psychiatric fiction that would only become prominent in the twentieth century. The play is also strongly influenced by the cult of love fashionable at the time. "Ford's characters speak in courtly love-jargon, pen and recite love letters and poems, woo in extravagant conceits, and carry on debates and similitude contests; they become involved in secret loves and disguises and despair over unsatisfied desire." Some of this is clearly satirical: the page Grilla "holds up for ridicule the whining tunes, sighs, and tears of Cuculus, a fool planning to win the love of his mistress through extravagant conceits."Sensabaugh, pp. 153–4.


Notes


References

* Halliday, F. E. ''A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964.'' Baltimore, Penguin, 1964. * 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. * Sensabaugh, George F. ''The Tragic Muse of John Ford.'' Palo Alto, CA, Stanford University Press, 1944. Reprints: Benjamin Blom, 1965; Ayer Publishing, 1994. * Stavig, Mark. ''John Ford and the Traditional Moral Order''. Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.


External links


1831 Edition of the Works of John Ford (Volume One) at the Internet Archive, including ''The Lover's Melancholy''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lovers Melancholy, The English Renaissance plays 1628 plays Plays by John Ford (dramatist)