"Touching tochets": 'Perkin Warbeck' and the Buggery Statute (Plumbing hidden depths of transgressive sexual subversion and deviation in 17th-century English theatre)

At first sight, The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck seems to be the only one of Ford's plays that is not pointedly and openly concerned with sexual deviation; in contrast to his other plays, it presents a cast of characters who are models of sexual rectitude. Sometimes, however, dogs that do not bark can be as significant as ones that do. This paper argues that Perkin Warbeck actually encodes a trangressive sexuality so subversive that its traces are hidden deep within the fabric of the play, visible only to a reading that historicizes Ford's work within very specific contexts and connects the play with the Buggery Statute.