SOURCE: Lowell, James Russell. “Fourth Conversation.” In Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, pp. 112-242. Philadelphia: David McKay, 1893.

[In the following essay, originally published in 1845 and written as a fictional dialogue between the characters of Philip and John, Lowell acknowledges Ford as a talented playwright but not one of the first rank of English dramatists.]

PHILIP.

Ford's dramatic abilities have, I think, been rated too highly. He has a great deal of tragic excitability and enthusiasm, and a good knowledge of stage-effect; but these are the predominant qualities of his nature. In the strong mind they are always subservient. Ford can see the proprieties and beauties of a fine situation; but he has not that dignity in him which can create them out of its own substance. His poetic faculty leans upon the tragic element in his stories for support, instead of being the foundation of it. Tender and graceful he always is, almost to excess; never great and daring. He does not seem to me to deserve the high praise which, if I remember rightly, Lamb bestows upon him, and which other less judicious critics have repeated.

JOHN.

The sweet lovingness of Lamb's nature fitted him for a good critic; but there were knotty quirks in the grain of his mind, which seemed, indeed, when polished by refined studies, little less than beauties, and which we cannot help loving, but which led him to the worship of strange gods, and with the more scrupulous punctuality that the mass were of another persuasion. No field is so small or so barren but there will be grazing enough in it to keep a hobby in excellent case. Lamb's love was of too rambling and wide-spreading a kind to be limited by the narrow trellises which satisfy a common nature. It stretched out its feelers and twined them around everything within its reach, clipping with its tender and delicate green the fair tree and unsightly stump alike. Everything that he loved was, for the time, his ideal of loveliness. Even tobacco, when he was taking leave of it, became the very “crown of perfumes,” and he affirmed

Roses and violets but toys
For the greener sort of boys
Or for greener damsels meant.

PHILIP.

In this, and in the finer glimpses of his humor, and in the antique richness of his style in the best parts, he reminds me of Emerson; but he had not the divine eye of our American poet, nor his deep transparency and majestic simpleness of language, full of images that seem like remembrance-flowers dropped from between the pages of Bacon, or Montaigne, or Browne, or Herbert; reminding us of all felicitous seasons in our own lives, and yet infused with a congenial virtue from the magic leaves between which they had been stored.

John Ford, though he cannot rank with the first order of minds, yet claims an instinctive deference, as one of that glorious brotherhood who so illustrated and dignified our English tongue at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Set beside almost any of our modern dramatists, there is certainly something grand and free about him; and though he has not that “large utterance” which belonged to Shakespeare, and perhaps one or two others of his contemporaries, he sometimes rises into a fiery earnestness which falls little short of sublimity, and proves that he had in him, as Drayton said of Marlowe,

Those brave translunary things
That our first poets had.

It is this abandoned earnestness and willingness and simplicity which so much elevate the writers of that age above nearly all succeeding ones. In their companionship, a certain pardoning and compromising restraint, which hampers us in the society of less unconscious writers, seems to be thrown off the mind. Here, at last, we find frankness, contempt of consequences, dignity that finds graceful sustenance in the smallest and most ordinary events of to-day, as well as in the greatest, or in prophecies of a nobler tomorrow. They laid the deep-set bases of their works and thoughts in the cheap but eternal rock of nature, not idly writing their names upon the shifting and unstable sands of a taste or a prejudice, to be washed out by the next wave, or blurred and overdrifted by the first stronger breeze. Pegasus is the most unsafe of hobby-horses. The poet whose pen is governed by any self-built theory (even if he persuade men to believe in it) will be read only so long as that theory is not driven out by another. …

[Ford's] dramatic power consists mainly in the choice of his plots. His characters, as is often the case with those of retired students, are rather certain turns of mind or eccentricities put into a body, than real men and women.

JOHN.

He does not carry matters quite so far as some later writers, who go to the expense of a whole human frame for the mere sake of bringing a single humorous phrase upon the stage,—the sole use of the legs being to carry about the body, that of the body to sustain the head, and that of the head to utter the said humorous phrase at proper intervals. Friar Bacon's head, or one of those “airy tongues” which Milton borrowed of Marco Polo, would save these gentry a great waste of flesh and bone, if it could be induced to go upon the stage.

PHILIP.

No; Ford is not quite so spendthrift in human beings as that. Guardians should be appointed for such authors, as for those who cannot take care of their estates.—His plots raise him and carry him along with them whither they please, and it is generally only at their culminating points that he shows much strength; and then it is the strength of passion, not of reason. Indeed, I do not know but it should rather be called weakness. He puts his characters in situations where the heart that has a drop of hot blood in it finds it easier to be strong than weak. His heroes show that fitful strength which grows out of intense excitement, rather than healthy muscular action; it does not rise with the difficulty or danger they are in, and, looking down on it, assert calmly the unusurpable sovereignty of the soul, even after the flesh is overcome, but springs forward in an exulting gush of glorious despair to grapple with death and fate. In a truly noble bravery of soul, the interest is wholly the fruit of immortality; here, it is the Sodom-apple of mortality. In the one case, we exult to see the infinite overshadow and dwarf the finite; in the other, we cannot restrain a kind of romantic enthusiasm and admiration at seeing the weak clay so gallantly defy the overwhelming power which it well knows must crush it. High genius may be fiery and impetuous, but it can never bully and look big; it does not defy death and futurity, for a doubt of its monarchy over them never overflushed its serene countenance.

JOHN.

Shakespeare's characters seem to modify his plots as much as they are modified by them in turn. This may be the result of his unapproachable art; for art in him is but the tracing of nature to her primordial laws,—is but nature precipitated, as it were, by the infallible test of philosophy. In his plays, as in life, there is a perpetual seesaw of character and circumstance, now one uppermost, now the other. Nature is never afraid to reason in a circle; we must let her assume her premises, and make our deductions logical accordingly. The actors in Shakespeare's dramas are only overcome by so much as they fall below their ideal and are wanting in some attribute of true manhood. Wherever we go with him, the absence of a virtue always suggests its presence, the want of any nobleness makes us feel its beauty the more keenly.

PHILIP.

But Ford's heroes are strong only in their imperfections, and it is to these that whatever admiration we yield them is paid. They interest us only so far as they can make us forget our quiet, calm ideal. This is the very stamp of weakness. We should be surprised if we saw them show any natural greatness. They are morbid and unhealthy; for, in truth, what we call greatness and nobleness is but entire health; to those only who are denaturalized themselves do they seem wonderful; to the natural man they are as customary and unconscious as the beating of his heart or the motion of his lungs, and as necessary. Therefore it is that praise always surprises and humbles true genius; the shadow of earth comes then between it and its starry ideal with a cold and dark eclipse. In Ford's characters, the sublimity, if there be any, is that of a defiant despair.

JOHN.

The great genius may fail, but it is never thus. In him the spirit often overbalances the body, and sets its ideal too far beyond the actual. Unable to reach that, he seems to do less than many a one of less power; for the performance of anything lower than what he has marked out for himself carries with it a feeling almost of degradation, that dispirits him. His wings may be too weak to bear him to that infinite height; but, if he fail, he is an angel still, and falls not so low as the proudest pitch of talent. His failures are successful, compared with the successes of others. But not to himself do they seem so; though, at his earth-dwindling height, he show like a star to the eyes of the world, what is it to him, while he beholds the golden gates of his aspiration above him still, fast shut and barred immitigably? Yet high genius has that in it which makes that its longings can never be wholly fruitless; its utmost imperfection has some touch of the perfect in it.

PHILIP.

The slavery of the character to the incident in Ford's plays has often reminded me of that story of the travellers who lost their way in the mummy-pits, and who were all forced to pass through the same narrow orifice, which gave ready way to the slender, but through which the stout were obliged to wriggle and squeeze with a desperate forgetfulness of bulk. It may be foolish for a philosopher, but it is wisdom in a dramatist, to follow the example of nature, who always takes care to make large holes for her large cats and small holes for her small ones.—Ford, perhaps, more than any of his contemporaries deserves the name of sentimental. He has not the stately gravity and antique majesty of Chapman, the wild imagination or even the tenderness of Webster, the precise sense of Jonson, the homeliness of Heywood, nor the delicate apprehension and silver tongue of Fletcher; but he has more sentiment than all of them put together. The names of his plays show the bent of his mind; Love's Sacrifice, The Lover's Melancholy, and The Broken Heart, are the names of three of the best; and there is another in which the doctrine of the elective affinities is laid down broadly enough to have shocked even Goethe. His personal appearance seems to have answered well enough to what I have surmised of his character. A contemporary thus graphically describes him:

Deep in a dump John Ford was alone gat,
With folded arms and melancholy hat.

A couplet which brings up the central figure on the title-page to the old edition of the Anatomy of Melancholy very vividly before our eyes. His dependence on things out of himself is shown also in his historical play of Perkin Warbeck, in which, having no very exciting plot to sustain him, he is very gentlemanly and very dull. He does not furnish so many isolated passages which are complete in themselves,—a quality remarkable in the old dramatists, among whom only Shakspeare united perfectness of the parts with strict adaptation and harmony of the whole. A play of Shakespeare's seems like one of those basaltic palaces whose roof is supported by innumerable pillars, each formed of many crystals perfect in themselves. To give you a fair idea of Ford, I will sketch out the plot of his most famous tragedy, with a few extracts.

The plot of The Broken Heart is simply this. Ithocles, the favorite of Amyclas, king of Laconia, instigated by an ancient feud with Orgilus, the betrothed of his sister Penthea, has forced her to break the match and marry Bassanes. Orgilus, full of an intent to revenge himself at the first chance, pretends a reconcilement with Ithocles, who, meanwhile, has repented of the wrong he had done, and moreover loves and is beloved by Calantha, the king's daughter. Penthea dies mad. Orgilus murders Ithocles on the eve of his marriage with Calantha, who dies of a broken heart, after naming Nearchus, a former suitor, her successor to the throne. The following scene has great purity and beauty, and withal much sentimentalism in it. Orgilus, in the disguise of a scholar (a disguise as common now as then), has gained speech of Penthea. I read only the last part of the scene:

Org. All pleasures are but mere imagination,
Feeding the hungry appetite with steam
And sight of banquet, whilst the body pines,
Not relishing the real taste of food:
Such is the leanness of a heart divided
From intercourse of troth-contracted loves;
No horror should deface that precious figure
Sealed with the lively stamp of equal souls.
Pen. Away! some fury hath bewitched thy tongue:
The breath of ignorance that flies from thence
Ripens a knowledge in me of afflictions
Above all sufferance. Thing of talk, begone,—
Begone without reply!
Org. Be just, Penthea,
In thy commands; when thou send'st forth a doom
Of banishment, know first on whom it lights.
Thus I take off the shroud in which my cares
Are folded up from view of common eyes.
                                                                                                    [Throws off his scholar's dress.
What is thy sentence next?
Pen. Rash man! thou lay'st
A blemish on mine honor, with the hazard
Of thy too desperate life; yet I profess,
By all the laws of ceremonious wedlock,
I have not given admittance to one thought
Of female change, since cruelty enforced
Divorce betwixt my body and my heart.
Why would you fall from goodness thus?
Org. O, rather
Examine me, how I could live to say
I have been much, much wronged! 'T is for thy sake
I put on this imposture; dear Penthea,
If thy soft bosom be not turned to marble,
Thou 'lt pity our calamities; my interest
Confirms me, thou art mine still.
Pen. Lend your hand;
With both of mine I clasp it thus, thus kiss it,
Thus kneel before ye.
                                                                                                    [Penthea kneels.
Org. You instruct my duty.
                                                                                                    [Orgilus kneels.
Pen. We may stand up. [They rise.] Have you aught
else to urge
Of new demand? as for the old, forget it;
'T is buried in an everlasting silence,
And shall be, shall be ever: what more would you?
Org. I would possess my wife; the equity
Of very reason bids me.
Pen. Is that all?
Org. Why, 't is the all of me, myself.
Pen. Remove
Your steps some distance from me; at this pace
A few words I dare change; but first put on
Your borrowed shape.
Org. You are obeyed; 't is done.
                                                                                                    [He resumes his disguise.
Pen. How, Orgilus, by promise, I was thine,
The heavens do witness; they can witness, too,
A rape done on my truth: how I do love thee
Yet, Orgilus, and yet, must best appear
In tendering thy freedom; for I find
The constant preservation of thy merit,
By thy not daring to attempt my fame
With injury of any loose conceit,
Which might give deeper wounds to discontents.
Continue this fair race; then, though I cannot
Add to thy comfort, yet I shall more often
Remember from what fortune I am fallen,
And pity mine own ruin. Live, live happy,
Happy in thy next choice, that thou may'st people
This barren age with virtues in thy issue!
And, O, when thou art married, think on me
With mercy, not contempt! I hope thy wife,
Hearing my story, will not scorn my fall.—
Now let us part.
Org. Part? yet advise thee better:
Penthea is the wife to Orgilus,
And ever shall be.
Pen. Never shall, nor will.
Org. How!
Pen. Hear me; in a word I'll tell thee why.
The virgin-dowry which my birth bestowed
Is ravished by another; my true love
Abhors to think that Orgilus deserved
No better favors than a second bed.
Org. I must not take this reason.
Pen. To confirm it,—
Should I outlive my bondage, let me meet
Another worse than this, and less desired,
If, of all men alive, thou shouldst but touch
My lip or hand again!
Org. Penthea, now
I tell you, you grow wanton in my sufferance;
Come, sweet, thou art mine.
Pen. Uncivil Sir, forbear,
Or I can turn affection into vengeance:
Your reputation, if you value any,
Lies bleeding at my feet. Unworthy man,
If ever henceforth thou appear in language,
Message, or letter, to betray my frailty,
I'll call thy former protestations lust,
And curse my stars for forfeit of my judgment.
Go thou, fit only for disguise and walks
To hide thy shame; this once I spare thy life.
I laugh at mine own confidence; my sorrows
By thee are made inferior to my fortunes:
If ever thou didst harbor worthy love,
Dare not to answer. My good genius guide me,
That I may never see thee more!—Go from me!
Org. I'll tear my veil of politic French off,
And stand up like a man resolved to do:
Action, not words, shall show me.—O Panthea!
                                                                                                                                            [Exit.
Pen. He sighed my name, sure, as he parted from me;
I fear I was too rough. Alas, poor gentleman!
He looked not like the ruins of his youth,
But like the ruins of those ruins. Honor,
How much we fight with weakness to preserve thee!
                                                                                                                        [Walks aside.

To my mind, Panthea's last speech is the best part of the scene. In the first part, she shows an apparently Roman virtue; but there seems to be in it a savor of prudery, and a suspicion of its own strength, which a truly courageous honor and chastity would be the last to entertain.

None of our dramatists but Shakespeare have been able to paint madness. Most of their attempts that way are failures; they grow silly and mopingly sentimental; they utter a great deal of such stuff as nobody in his senses would utter, and as nobody out of them could have the ingenious leisure to invent. Here is a specimen of Ford's mania:

Pen. Sure, if we were all sirens, we would sing pitifully;
And 't were a comely music, when in parts
One sung another's knell: the turtle sighs
When he hath lost his mate; and yet some say
He must be dead first. 'T is a fine deceit
To pass away in a dream! indeed, I've slept
With mine eyes open a great while. No falsehood
Equals a broken faith; there 's not a hair
Sticks on my head but, like a leaden plummet,
It sinks me to the grave: I must creep thither;
The journey is not long. …
Pen. Spare your hand;
Believe me, I'll not hurt it.
Org. My heart too.
Pen. Complain not, though I wring it hard; I'll kiss it:
O, 't is a fine, soft palm!—Hark, in thine ear;
Like whom do I look, prithee?—nay, no whispering.
Goodness! we had been happy; too much happiness
Will make folk proud, they say,—but that is he,—
                                                                                                    [Pointing to Ithocles.
And yet he paid for 't home; alas! his heart
Is crept into the cabinet of the princess:
We shall have points and bride-laces. Remember,
When we last gathered roses in the garden,
I found my wits; but truly you lost yours.
That 's he, and still 't is he.
                                                                                          [Again pointing to Ithocles.

Now let us turn to the catastrophe. Calantha, after settling the succession of the kingdom, turns to the body of Ithocles.

Cal. Forgive me:—now I turn to thee, thou shadow
Of my contracted lord! Bear witness all,
I put my mother's wedding-ring upon
His finger; 't was my father's last bequest.
                                                  [Places a ring on the finger of Ithocles.
Thus I new-marry him whose wife I am;
Death shall not separate us. O my Lords,
I but deceived your eyes with antic gesture,
When one news straight came huddling on another,
Of death! and death! and death! still I danced forward;
But it struck home, and here, and in an instant.
Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries
Can vow a present end to all their sorrows,
Yet live to [court] new pleasures, and outlive them:
They are the silent griefs which cut the heart-strings;
Let me die smiling.
Near. 'T is a truth too ominous.
Cal. One kiss on these cold lips, my last!—[Kisses Ithocles.]—crack, crack,—
Argos now 's Sparta's king. Command the voices
Which wait at th' altar now to sing the song
I fitted for my end.

Lamb speaks of this death-scene as “carrying us back to Calvary and the cross” (or uses words to that effect); but this, it seems to me, is attributing too much importance to the mere physical fact of dying.

JOHN.

What one dies for, not his dying, glorifies him. The comparison is an irreverent one, as that must need be which matches a selfish love with a universal. Love's nobility is shown in this, that it strengthens us to make sacrifices for others, and not for the object of our love alone. All the good we do is a service done to that, but that is not the sole recipient. Our love for one is only therefore made pre-eminent, that it may show us the beauty and holiness of that love whose arms are wide enough for all. It is easy enough to die for one we love so fiercely; but it is a harder and nobler martyrdom to live for others. Love is only then perfected, when it can bear to outlast the body, which was but its outward expression and a prop for its infant steps, and can feel its union with the beloved spirit in a mild serenity, and an inward prompting to a thousand little unrewarded acts of every-day brotherhood. The love of one is a mean, not an end.

PHILIP.

Another objection which I should feel inclined to bring against this scene is, that the breaking of Calantha's heart seems to be made too palpable and anatomical an event. It is too much like the mere bursting of a blood-vessel, which Smith or Brown might accomplish, though wholly incapable of rendering themselves tragically available by the breaking of their hearts. It is like that stanza of the old ballad,

She turned her back unto the wall,
          And her face unto the rock;
And there, before her mother's eyes,
          Her very heart it broke.

In the ballad, however, there is more propriety; the heroine's heart gives way suddenly, under a sudden blow. But Calantha saves up her heart-break, as it were, until it can come in with proper effect at the end of the tragedy.