SOURCE: Greenfield, Thelma N. “The Language of Process in Ford's The Broken Heart.” PMLA, 87, No. 3 (May, 1972): 397-405.

In the following essay, Greenfield examines how Ford uses language in The Broken Heart to convey the process of feelings and actions that create a tragic chain of events.

“Ford does not,” writes Mark Stavig, “simply rewrite the same play over and over again as so many of his contemporaries did. In each of the plays he attempts something a little different.”¹ Although this observation is certainly accurate, Ford's plays bear such a distinctive atmosphere, his characters and style are so much his own, and his focus in certain ways is so narrow, that there has been an understandable tendency to emphasize the similarities more than the differences among his plays.² Concerning his language, readers of Ford's plays have rather uniformly remarked on his poetic power and on his characteristic qualities...