John Ford
baptized April 17, 1586, Ilsington, Devon, Eng.
died 1639?
English dramatist of the Caroline period, whose
revenge tragedies are characterized by certain
scenes of austere beauty, insight into human
passions, and poetic diction of a high order.
In 1602 Ford was admitted to the Middle Temple
(a training college for lawyers), and he
remained there, except for a period of
suspension (1606–08), until at least 1617 and
possibly much later still. He published an elegy
on the Earl of Devonshire and a prose pamphlet
in 1606, and a few other minor nondramatic works
have been attributed to him during this period.
It is not certain that he wrote for the stage
until his collaboration with Thomas Dekker and
William Rowley on the play The Witch of Edmonton
in 1621. He also collaborated with Dekker in The
Sun’s Darling (1624), perhaps also in The Welsh
Ambassador (1623), and in three other plays, now
lost, of about the same date. His hand has been
seen in Thomas Middleton’s and William Rowley’s
Spanish Gypsy (1623), John Fletcher’s Fair Maid
of the Inn (1626), and other plays of Francis
Beaumont and Fletcher.
From about 1627 to 1638 Ford wrote plays by
himself, mostly for private theatres, but the
sequence of his eight extant plays cannot be
precisely determined, and only two of them can
be dated. His plays are: The Broken Heart; The
Lover’s Melancholy (1628); ’Tis Pity She’s a
Whore; Perkin Warbeck; The Queen; The Fancies,
Chaste and Noble; Love’s Sacrifice; and The
Lady’s Trial (1638). There are a few
contemporary references to Ford, but nothing is
known of his personal life, and there is no
certain record of him after 1639.
Ford’s reputation, which has never been
beyond controversy, rests mainly on the first
four plays he wrote alone; of these, ’Tis Pity
She’s a Whore is probably the best known. The
story concerns the incestuous love of Giovanni
and his sister Annabella. When she is found to
be pregnant, she agrees to marry her suitor
Soranzo; the lovers’ secret is finally
discovered, but Soranzo’s plan for revenge is
outpaced by Giovanni’s murder of Annabella and
then Soranzo, at the hands of whose hired
killers Giovanni himself finally dies. There is
no sense in ’Tis Pity that Ford is arguing a
case for the brother and sister’s unnatural
union, but he does exhibit an eloquent sympathy
for the lovers, who are set apart from others by
their unlawful relationship, their consciousness
of their sin, and their sensual and at times
even arrogant acceptance of it.
The Broken Heart is characteristic of Ford’s
work in its depiction of a noble and virtuous
heroine who is torn between her true love and an
unhappy forced marriage, again with tragic
consequences for all concerned. Perkin Warbeck
is a historical play centring on the tragic fate
of the deluded impostor of that name who claimed
to be the Duke of York. The Lover’s Melancholy
is the best of Ford’s other plays, all of which
are tragicomedies.
Ford’s austerely powerful themes are blurred
by subplots featuring minor characters and bad
comedy, but he is still considered the most
important tragedian of the reign of King Charles
I (1625–49). Ford’s work is distinguished by the
highly wrought power of its blank verse and by
its tragically frustrated characters whose
intense desires are blocked by the dictates of
circumstance.
