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Death and the Married Maiden: Performing Gender in The Broken Heart

2004; University of Western Ontario Libraries; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/esc.2004.0017

1913-4835

Roberta Barker,

Literature: history, themes, analysis

Death and the Married Maiden: Performing Gender in The Broken Heart Roberta Barker Dalhousie University I. The Ghost Bride Most early modern tragedies end in multiple deaths, and many feature ghosts, but Michael Boyd's 1994 staging of John Ford's The Broken Heart (c. 1629) at the rsc's Swan Theatre began with a haunting before the character who appeared as a phantom was actually dead. In the production's pro­ logue, the spectator encountered Orgilus (Iain Glen), gaunt and black-clad, playing on a lute (Figure 1). He sang of the joys of marriage, of "Hearts by holy union wedded, / More than theirs by custom bedded; I Fruitful issues; life so graced, I Not by age to be defaced" (m.iv.74-7). These were pleasures he himself had lost. The Broken Heart hinges on the abortive betrothal between Orgilus and his beloved Penthea, destroyed when her brother Ithocles forces her into marriage with Bassanes. As Glen's Orgilus finished singing, Boyd's production evoked those broken nuptials. The frail, white-clad figure of Penthea (Emma Fielding) appeared, her face hidden by a bridal veil. Orgilus drew it aside to gaze at her face, but immediately his father Crotolon (Tony Britton) entered, speaking the first words of Ford's playtext: "Dally not further" (i.i.i). At this, Penthea turned from Orgilus and began to walk slowly upstage. Crotolon did not register her presence as she passed him, for she was not a bride of flesh and blood, but a figment of Orgilus' imagination— or a ghost. ESC 30.2 (June 2004): 67-89 Roberta Barker is Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of King's College/Dalhousie University. Her recent and forthcoming articles explore issues of gender and performance as they relate to the plays of Shakespeare, Middleton, Webster and Stoppard. She recently completed a facsimile edition of Common Conditions (1576) for the Malone Society. Her book, Early Modern Tragedy, Gender and Performance, 1980-1999, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2006. With David R. Nicol, she is also working on stage and musical histories ofA Midsummer Night' s Dream for the New Variorum Shakespeare edition. Figure 1 The bereaved Orgilus (Iain Glen) sings his wedding song. Photo: Malcolm Davies. By permission of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. 68 |Barker The spectral quality of this initial image pervaded Boyd's whole pro­ duction, which Jack Tinker likened to "a deathly masque being played out." Set in a lavish Caroline version of Ford's Spartan court, it followed The Broken Heart's recent critics by emphasizing the entrapment of Ford's characters within a kind of living death. After all, this tragedy sees its four leading characters accept death willingly, one of them with the frightening affirmation, "Welcome, thou ice, that sittest about my heart; I No heat can ever thaw thee" (v.ii.154-55). Set in classical Sparta, it portrays men and women who bear suffering in silence until it kills them. Many critics have focused on the codes of virtue that govern these characters, tracing their relationship to ancient and early modern versions of stoicism; most argue that the play exposes the destructive effects of stoical philosophy on Spartan society. In a recent article, Kristin Crouch cogently shows how the imagery of Boyd's production supported such interpretations by depicting a world whose citizens "bury all unacceptable human experience, inner desire and emotional impulse under the weight of silence, stillness and death" (270).1 Her analysis agrees well with that of R. J. Kaufmann, who describes the play as "Ford's Waste Land," and remarks that its "characters are doomed by tragically narrow, nonorganic identifications of their own natures" (184). Yet if these identifications are narrow, they are also multiple, and not limited to the workings of stoical philosophy. During a crucial scene between the playtext's leading female characters, Penthea traces the con­ fines of her own identity by describing how on the stage O f my mortality my youth hath acted Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length By varied pleasures, sweetened in the mixture, But tragical in issue, (m.v.15-19) With these words, Penthea seems to turn on...