SOURCE: Sargeaunt, M. Joan. “The Setting of the Plays.” In John Ford, pp. 142-54. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966.

In the following essay, first printed in 1935, Sargeaunt discusses the relationship between setting and the characters' emotions in Ford's plays.

‘Shakespeare and his contemporaries,’ says Peacock, ‘… used time and locality merely because they could not do without them, because every action must have its when and where: but they made no scruple of deposing a Roman Emperor by an Italian Count, and sending him off in the disguise of a French pilgrim to be shot with a blunderbuss by an English archer. This makes the old English drama very picturesque, at any rate, in the variety of costume, and very diversified in action and character; though it is a picture of nothing that ever was seen on earth except a Venetian carnival.’¹

The lack of unity which might be expected...