The Queen (play)
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The Queen, or The Excellency of Her Sex is a Caroline era tragicomedy. Though published anonymously in 1653, The play is now generally attributed to John Ford—making it a significant addition to the very limited canon of Ford's works.
The date and circumstances of the play's authorship and performance are unknown, though scholars can draw some inferences from the little factual information available. The first quarto edition of 1653 was published by the actor-turned-bookseller Alexander Gough. Gough had earlier been a member of the King's Men, and had been part of the cast of that company's production of Ford's The Lover's Melancholy in late 1628 or 1629. This suggests that The Queen may also have been acted by the King's Men. Since Ford is thought to have written for the King's Men only early in his career—just two of his earlier plays were acted by the company—The Queen may be another early work. Internal evidence—"the work's incidence of rhymes and double and triple endings relative to that of Ford's other plays"—also appears to favor an early date in Ford's career. The assignment of the play to Ford, first made by the German scholar Willy Bang in 1906, is widely accepted.[1]
[edit] Synopsis
Like The Lover's Melancholy, The Queen shows a strong influence from Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. Alphonso, the play's protagonist, is a defeated rebel against Aragon; he has been condemned to death and is about to be executed. The Queen of Aragon intercedes at the last moment, and learns that Alphonso's rebellion is rooted in his pathological misogyny. The Queen is struck with love at first sight; she is, in her way, just as irrational as Alphonso is in his. The Queen pardons Alphonso and marries him. Alphonso requests a seven-day separation, to enable him to set aside his feelings against women; and the Queen grants his request. The week extends to a month, and the new king still avoids his queen; the intercession of her counsellors, and even her own personal appeal, make no difference. One man, however, sees a solution to the problem. The psychologically sophisticated Muretto half-counsels, half-manipulates Alphonso into a more positive disposition toward the Queen. Muretto praises the Queen's beauty to Alphonso and simultaneously suggests that she is eroctically active outside her marriage, arousing his jealousy. Muretto functions rather like a modern therapist to treat Alphonso's psychological imbalance. The treatment is effective in the end, and the royal couple settle into a more normal and contented relationship.
The play's secondary plot deals with the love affair of the Queen's general Velasco and the widow Salassa. Velasco has the opposite problem from Alphonso: he idealizes his love for Salassa, and allows her to dominate their relationship. Salassa indulges in her power over him by asking him to give up combat for two years; and when he agrees, Velasco finds that he has lost his self-respect and the regard of others. Only when he rejects Salassa's domination does he reach a mature balance.
There is also a third-level comic subplot involving Pynto the astronomer and a captain named Bufo.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Logan and Smith, pp. 143-4.
[edit] References
- Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliogrpahy of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1978.
- Stavig, Mark. John Ford and the Traditional Moral Order. Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.
- Sykes, H. Dugdale. Sidelights on Elizabethan Drama. London, Oxford University Press, 1924.
