A broken heart (also known as a heartbreak or heartache) is a common metaphor for the intense emotional—and sometimes physical—stress or pain one feels at experiencing great longing. The concept is cross-cultural; most often, though not exclusively, cited with reference to a desired or lost lover; and dates back at least 3,000 years.
The emotional "pain" of a broken heart is believed to be part of the survival instinct. The "social-attachment system" uses the "pain system" to encourage humans to maintain their close social relationships by causing pain when those relationships are lost. Psychologists Geoff MacDonald of the University of Queensland and Mark Leary of Wake Forest University proposed in 2005 the evolution of common mechanisms for both physical and emotional pain responses and argue that such expressions are "more than just a metaphor". The concept is believed to be universal, with many cultures using the same words to describe both physical pain and the feelings associated with relationship loss.
Broken Hearts is a blank verse play by W. S. Gilbert in three acts styled "An entirely original fairy play". It opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 9 December 1875, running for three months, and toured the provinces in 1876. It was revived at the Savoy Theatre in 1882 (with Gilbert playing Florian, alongside Hermann Vezin as Mousta, after an accident incapacitated the actor who was originally to have played Florian).Julia Gwynne played Melthusine. It was revived again in 1883, and yet again in 1888 starring Marion Terry in February and Julia Neilson in May, and also at Crystal Palace that year. There was also a New York City production at the Madison Square Theatre].
Background and analysis
Broken Hearts was the last of several blank verse "fairy comedies" created by Gilbert in the early 1870s starring William Hunter Kendal and his wife Madge Robertson Kendal (sister of the playwright Tom Robertson). These plays, influenced by the fairy work of James Planché, are founded upon the idea of self-revelation by characters under the influence of some magic or some supernatural interference. The first was the fantasy The Palace of Truth in 1870. Pygmalion and Galatea, a satire of sentimental, romantic attitudes toward myth, was produced in 1871. Together, these plays, and successors such as The Wicked World (1873), Sweethearts (1874), Charity and Broken Hearts, did for Gilbert on the dramatic stage what the German Reed Entertainments had done for him on the musical stage, establishing that his capabilities extended far beyond burlesque. They won him artistic credentials as a writer of wide range, who was as comfortable with human drama as with farcical humour.