Synopsis
The play is set in Crete — "Candy" and "Candia" being archaic names for the island. In Ford's fictional Candy, two unusual laws are in the statute books. One is a (highly impracticable) law against ingratitude: a citizen who is accused of ingratitude by another, and fails to make amends, can be sentenced to death. The second law holds that after a military victory, the soldiers will select the one of their number who has done the most to achieve the success.
The second law is the cause of the play's conflict. The forces of Candy have just won a great victory over the invading Venetians. (Historically, Venice conquered Crete in the early thirteenth century and ruled the island till 1669, though with many rebellions by the local populace.) The commander of the army, Cassilanes, the leading soldier of his generation, expects to receive the acclaim of the troops, and is incensed to find that he has a rival in his own son, Antinous, who has distinguished himself in his first battle. The father's concern is real: Antinous wins the approval of the soldiers. Paradoxically, Cassilanes is even more outraged when Antinous claims his reward from the state — and names a bronze statue of his father. To Cassilanes, this is only one more assertion of the son's assumed power.
Cassilanes is certainly an irascible old man — but he has an addition grievance. He has mortgaged his estates to pay the troops, who otherwise would not have fought; and the state is in no hurry to rectify the matter. The owner of the mortgage is Gonzalo, an ambitious Venetian lord. Gonzalo is the play's Machiavellian villain; he plots and manipulates with the goal of becoming both the king of Candy and the duke of Venice. Gonzalo, however, makes two mistakes. One is that he takes a young Venetian prisoner of war, Fernando, into his confidence, relying on their shared nationality. When Cassilanes retreats to a poverty-stricken retirement, Gonzalo arranges for Fernando to live in the general's little household to further his machinations. Fernando is a noble young man, in mind as well as in birth; and once he falls in love with Cassilanes' daughter Annophel, he reveals Gonzalo's plots.
Gonzalo's second mistake is to fall in love himself, with the princess Erota. The play's list of dramatis personae describes her as "a Princess, imperious, and of an overweaning Beauty." Royal, rich, witty, and beautiful, she is also extravagantly vain; she is loved by many men, including a prince of Cyprus named Philander, but scorns them all. Until, that is, she meets Antinous, and falls in love with him. Motivated by that love, she manipulates the vain Gonzalo into selling her Cassilanes' mortgage, and also into committing his plots and plans to writing.
In the play's final climactic scene, the other odd law of Candy comes into play. Cassilanes comes before the Senate with a complaint of ingratitude against his son; and Antinous, resigned to death, refuses to defend himself. But Erota makes a similar complaint of ingratitude against Cassilanes — which provokes Antinous to make the same complaint against her, in a sort of round-robin festival of egomania. The solution to this tangle comes when Annophel enters and makes her own complaint of ingratitude...against the Senate of Candy, for its treatment of her father.
The befuddled Senate turns to matter over the Cypriot prince Philander for judgment. Philander prevails on Cassilanes to repent and withdraw his complaint against Antinous, which allows all the subsequent difficulties to be resolved. Almost as an afterthought, the Cretans and Venetians unite in condemning Gonzalo to punishment. Erota's pride is humbled (we know this, since she tells us so herself), and she accepts her most constant (and noble) suitor, Prince Philander, as her spouse.
Read more about this topic: The Laws Of Candy