Return to Domestic Tragi-comedy at the Phoenix: The Lady’s Trial and The Fancies Chaste and Noble

Abstract

In Perkin Warbeck Ford had completed his experiment with tragedy. Between The Lover’s Melancholy and that play he had explored from one angle after another the problem of preserving the integrity of the individual against the pressures of established moral and social codes, against the tensions of pride, ambition, lust and love, and against the inexorable march of human events. Now he was to turn to the predicament of the individual confronted with the claims and prejudices of a sophisticated society. Considering the current taste in the private theatre to which Jonson responded in his Caroline plays, this theme could have formed the basis of social satire. But Ford approached the subject as a human problem; he needed a fresh pattern and he looked for his model in the domestic drama of the early years of the Century.