We are very pleased that Lisa Hopkins has found our work on The Broken Heart useful. Her essay is of great interest, and we find much to commend in it. The connection that she draws between Lady Arbella Stuart on Penthea is especially convincing, and we are chagrined that we did not make this connection ourselves.

In her essay as a whole we find that each of the points Dr. Hopkins makes is well argued and defensible but that the overall logic by which the pieces are fitted together seems somewhat tenuous. This is not to say that Dr. Hopkins is wrong, but that we would need more evidence to make the kinds of connections that she sees in Ford's work among colonization, land inheritance, and the making of Stuart Britain.

Yours sincerely,

Verna A. Foster Department of English Loyola University Chicago

Stephen Foster Department of History Northern Illinois University