Frustration and Deprivation in John Ford s The Broken Heart

John Ford's The Broken Heart was printed in 1633 and acted by the King's Men at the Blackfriars. Its setting is taken tiom ancient Greece, but the treatment of subject-matter is made f,rt to the contemporary themes of its period, as far as love, forced marriage and revenge are concerned. The piay has aftracted many critics' attention to it and is considered Ford's masterpiece,l according to Wilhelm Creizenach, the greatest of Ford's achievements,,,2 to Margaret Joan sargeaunt, and it is, to most of Ford's readers, the supreme reach of his genuis,3 to Una Ellis-Fermor. Again to Moody E. prior, Ford's,,The Broken Heart is perhaps the most satisfactory of his tragedies for detailed study,4 and to Juiiet McMasterThe Broke Heart is the play in which control and self-denial are triumphant.s yet henry W. Wells goes funher by regarding it as one of the most perfect works of the period.6 R. J. Kaufmann goes much further when he says