SOURCE: "Fordian Tragedy," in John Ford and the Drama of His Time, Chatto & Windus, 1957, pp. 67-98.

In the following essay, Leech contends that despite displaying a generally refined dramatic technique, Ford nevertheless is unable to imbue the tragic events in Love's Sacrifice, The Broken Heart, and Perkin Warbeck with an overall significance.

The totality of human perception embraces several levels of experience. Because, as we live from moment to moment, we have a strong sense of the actual, of 'now', we establish mental relationships with people, things, situations within the shortest period of time in which it is possible to apprehend them. We respond to, we evaluate, these objects of our perception as if their basic character were static, not subject to the principle of growth or to modification by circumstance, proof against the shifting of viewpoint or other change in ourselves. We know, of course, that this...