A Jacobean tragedy that is believed not to have been performed for nearly 400 years has been rescued from obscurity after an X Factor-style competition between academics.
Love’s Sacrifice by John Ford, described by the Royal Shakespeare Company as a “thrilling revenge tragedy”, fought it out with 15 other plays from the late 16th and early 17th centuries for the honour of being produced next year by the RSC at Stratford-upon-Avon.
Gregory Doran, artistic director of the RSC, described the play, which he believes has not been professionally produced since the 17th century, as “really, really interesting”.
Not everyone would agree. T S Eliot said it had “a few fine scenes” but was “disfigured by all the faults of which Ford was capable”. The Victorian essayist Hartley Coleridge, son of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wrote in 1840: “Love’s Sacrifice is a most unsavoury offering . . . and contains little to atone for a disgusting story, clumsily plotted, and characters essentially vile.”
The contest was set up last year by Doran in response to academics who pester him to produce various obscure plays from around Shakespeare’s time.
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He said: “I turned the tables on four academics and said, ‘Give me four plays that you really, really think will work on the Swan stage, that will be good box office, that actors will want to play, that directors will want to direct, and most importantly that audiences will want to come and see’.”
Each academic was given six actors and a director, and told to workshop each of their four chosen plays — 16 in all. At the end of the week, they chose one each, which they pitched to the whole group.
“It was a bit like the X Factor,” Doran said. “We all voted on who was best and Love’s Sacrifice came out on top.”
Some of the plays did not stand a chance. Ben Jonson’s The Magnetic Lady was abandoned after half a day. “The actors didn’t understand it, didn’t find it funny,” Doran said.
Another, Mercurius Rusticans, suffered the disadvantage of being written in Latin, although its champion, Dr Martin Wiggins of the Shakespeare Institute, described it as “the finest low comedy that has ever been written”.
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Ford, best known as the author of ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, wrote Love’s Sacrifice in about 1632. Based on the life of the musician Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, who murdered his first wife, it tells the story of Phillippo Caraffa, Duke of Pavia, who marries a younger woman, Bianca. She falls in love with his friend Fernando and, although she and Fernando never consummate their relationship, Caraffa kills Bianca, convinced that she has been unfaithful. The play, which has similarities to Othello,ends with both Caraffa and Fernando killing themselves.
Doran said the exercise was a useful way of rediscovering plays that had “fallen between the cracks”. He added: “I, for quite a lot of my career, have fought against a sort of prejudice that if they are 400 years old and they haven’t been done, they aren’t any good. Sometimes that is the case, but quite often the plays are not done because they are not done. It takes somebody to do them for them to be brought back into the canon.”
If this really were the X Factor, there might have been complaints that the vote was rigged. Dr Wiggins said that his play, The Insatiate Countess, won the popular vote. “But Greg preferred Love’s Sacrifice. Which is fair enough.”
There is a consolation prize, however. The Insatiate Countess, started by John Marston and finished by two other playwrights, is likely to be produced by the RSC at a later date.