Ford, John - M. Joan Sargeaunt (essay date 1935)

M. Joan Sargeaunt (essay date 1935)

SOURCE: Sargeaunt, M. Joan. “The Setting of the Plays.” In John Ford, pp. 142-54. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966.

[In the following essay, first printed in 1935, Sargeaunt discusses the relationship between setting and the characters' emotions in Ford's plays.]

‘Shakespeare and his contemporaries,’ says Peacock, ‘… used time and locality merely because they could not do without them, because every action must have its when and where: but they made no scruple of deposing a Roman Emperor by an Italian Count, and sending him off in the disguise of a French pilgrim to be shot with a blunderbuss by an English archer. This makes the old English drama very picturesque, at any rate, in the variety of costume, and very diversified in action and character; though it is a picture of nothing that ever was seen on earth except a Venetian carnival.’1

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