Love's Sacrifice

Love's Sacrifice is a Caroline era stage play, a tragedy written by John Ford, and first published in 1633. It is one of Ford's three surviving solo tragedies, the others being The Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore.

The date of the play's authorship and first performance is uncertain, though some scholars cite 1633 as the most likely year. A mention of "woman antics" in Act III may refer to the performance of Walter Montague's masque The Shepherd's Paradise by Queen Henrietta Maria and her ladies in waiting in January 1633. (The production of that masque was innovative in that the aristocratic women in the cast performed spoken parts, rather than merely appearing in or dancing in the masque, which had been common for two generations.)

The 1633 quarto was published by the bookseller Hugh Beeston. Ford dedicated the play to his cousin John Ford of Gray's Inn, "my truest friend, my worthiest kinsman." This second John Ford had been one of the dedicatees of Ford's The Lover's Melancholy (1629), and wrote commendatory poems to the dramatist's works. The 1633 quarto contains prefatory poems, including one by James Shirley. The title page of the quarto states that the play was acted by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre, and was "received generally well."

Ford largely based the main plot of the play on the life of Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, who murdered his first wife Maria D'Avolos after catching her with her lover. Ford probably drew upon Henry Peacham's The Compleat Gentleman as his source.

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