The Laws of Candy

The Laws of Candy is a Jacobean stage play, a tragicomedy that is significant principally because of the question of its authorship. 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.