Abstract
Critical attention to John Ford’s The Broken Heart has tended to minimise the relevance of a Caroline context of production. In this essay, I reposition the play within a Caroline context, as engaging with issues of law and prerogative under debate in the late 1620s and 1630s. Through a politicised reading of its representations of love and death, and dramatic rendering of literary tropes of courtly love on stage, I argue that Ford employs ideas of neo-Platonism and the Caroline court’s chaste self-representation in an image of monarchy within marriage to advocate temperate monarchy, bound by the reason of law.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 179 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-22 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| Journal | Early Modern Literary Studies |
| Volume | Special Issue 24 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Sept 2015 |