Love's Sacrifice is aCaroline era stage play, atragedy written byJohn Ford, and first published in1633. It is one of Ford's three surviving solo tragedies, the others beingThe Broken Heart and'Tis Pity She's a Whore.
The date of the play's authorship and first performance is uncertain, though some scholars cite1633 as the most likely year. A mention of "woman antics" in Act III may refer to the performance of Walter Montague'smasqueThe Shepherd's Paradise by QueenHenrietta Maria and her ladies in waiting in January 1633.[1] (The production of that masque was innovative in that the aristocratic women in the cast performed spoken parts, rather than merely appearing in or dancing in the masque, which had been common for two generations.)[2]
The 1633quarto was published by the bookseller Hugh Beeston. Ford dedicated the play to his cousin John Ford ofGray's Inn, "my truest friend, my worthiest kinsman." This second John Ford had been one of the dedicatees of Ford'sThe Lover's Melancholy (1629), and wrotecommendatory poems to the dramatist's works. The 1633 quarto contains prefatory poems, including one byJames Shirley.[3] The title page of the quarto states that the play was acted byQueen Henrietta's Men at theCockpit Theatre, and was "received generally well."
Ford largely based the main plot of the play on the life ofCarlo Gesualdo, Prince ofVenosa, who murdered his first wife Maria D'Avolos after catching her with her lover. Ford probably drew uponHenry Peacham'sThe Compleat Gentleman as his source.[4]
Critics have varied in their reactions to the play.T. S. Eliot wrote that it is "disfigured by all the faults of which Ford was capable," while Ronald Huebert called it "not a great play, but...a fertile one," and "Ford's most typical play."[5] The play is, in one view, "the most puzzling of Ford's works,"[6] and in another, "a botched mess."[7]
Phillippo Caraffa, Duke ofPavia, has accidentally caught sight of a beautiful young woman named Bianca, the daughter of aMilanese gentleman, while he was hunting. Caraffa falls in love with her, and marries her. Yet the Duke's close friend Fernando also falls in love with the new duchess; she rejects him at first, but eventually acknowledges similar feelings for him. Fiormonda, the widowed sister of Caraffa, has long suffered an unrequited passion for Fernando; she perceives the attraction between Fernando and Bianca, and informs her brother. Through hersycophant, the conniving villain D'Avolos, she works upon her brother's feelings of jealousy and outrage until he precipitates the final scene's violence that leaves both lovers dead ("lovers," though the affair between Fernando and Bianca is in fact never consummated physically). Caraffa joins them by taking his own life.
Love's Sacrifice, like most of Ford's plays, employs a three-level plot structure. The secondary plot yields a serio-comic treatment of the romances of Ferentes, a profligate courtier. The comic third-level subplot concerns the character Mauruccio, and provides a mirror-image portrayal of love as sham and pretense.
Critics[who?] have seen an obvious influence fromShakespeare'sOthello in Ford's play. D'Avolos is a version of Iago; Bianca champions the cause of a courtier named Roselli, as Desdemona champions Cassio.[citation needed]
The poetRichard Crashaw refers to two of Ford's plays in a couplet in hisDelights of the Muses (1646):