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Pathomachia, or the Battle of Affections , also known as Love's Lodestone, is an early 17th-century play, first printed in 1630. It is an allegory that presents a range of problems to scholars of the drama of the Jacobean and Caroline eras.
The full title of the play in the 1630 quarto is Pathomachia or the Battle of Affections, Shadowed by a Feigned Siege of the City of Pathopolis. The title page also states that the play was "Written some years since" by the late author and is now issued by one of his friends. The play's running title, which appears at the top of the pages of text, is Love's Lodestone. A University play by that name was staged c. 1616; the implication is that the Pathomachia of 1630 is the same work as the Love's Lodestone of c. 1616.E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 3, p. 499.
The play also exists in two manuscript texts; one is part of MS. Harl. 6869 Art. 1 in the collection of the British Library, and the other is MS. Eng. poet. e. 5 in the collection in the Bodleian Library.Alfred Harbage, "Elizabethan and Seventeenth-Century Play Manuscripts," Papers of the Modern Language Association Vol. 50 No. 3 (September 1935), pp. 687–99; see p. 695. Pathomachia shares the Harleian MS. with another allegorical play, titled The Fallacies, or the Troubles of Hermenia, which is dated 1631 and ascribed to Richard Zouch. The Harleian MS. text of Pathomachia contains variant readings and some material absent from the printed text, but is missing its last seventeen or so lines.
Perhaps the strongest case has been made for Thomas Tomkis as the author of Pathomachia; the play shares obvious commonalities with Tomkis's Lingua (1607). In fact Pathomachia contains two direct references to "Madame Lingua," and shows a range of similarities with Tomkis's play.Paul Edward Smith, ed., Pathomachia, Washington DC, Catholic University of America Press, 1942. Tomkis was an academic playwright; his Albumazar (1615) was acted at Cambridge University.Chambers, Vol. 3, p. 498.
( Pathomachia strongly resembles closet drama, and many critics would probably classify it as such; though if it was acted on stage as Love's Lodestone it would not qualify as a literal instance of closet drama.)
The text is rich with classical allusions and cultural references. In the opening scene of Act II, for example, Justice tells Love that Heroical Virtue "is gone to the Antipodes, unto Japonia" that and that "I have not heard of him since the time of Judas Maccabeus...." The drama also displays many references to then-recent historical events, including the Gunpowder Plot and François Ravaillac's assassination of Henri IV among others. (These contemporaneous references are consistent with a date of authorship c. 1616; none of them are to events of the 1620s that would contradict that dating.) The one passage in the play most often cited in the critical literature is probably the catalogue of torture devices in Act III, scene iv: "the Russian Shiners, the Scottish Boots, the Dutch Wheel, the Spanish strappado, linen ball, and pearl of confession shall torment thee...," etc.
Despite the play's references to contemporary events, it gives no sense that it is in any way a commentary on the specific English political situation of its time. It is hard to see how either set of English rulers in its era — King James I and Queen Anne, or King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria — could be allegorised as Love and Hatred.
Though the morality-play genre was definitely old-fashioned by 1630, it had not yet died out entirely. Apart from the earlier Lingua, Pathomachia can be classed with a roster of similar plays in its generation, including Dekker and Ford's The Sun's Darling, Thomas Nabbes's Microcosmus, Randolph's The Muses' Looking Glass, Barten Holyday's Technogamia, and William Strode's The Floating Island, among others.
In the view of one critic, Pathomachia has "a significance for the historian of ethics and psychological theory."Alfred Harbage, "Materials for the Study of English Renaissance Drama," Modern Language Notes Vol. 59 No. 2 (February 1944), p. 131.
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