English dramatist, baptized on the 17th of April 1586 at Ilsington in north Devon. He came of a good family; his father was in the commission of the peace and his mother was a sister of Sir John Popham, successively attorney-general and lord chief justice. The name of John Ford appears in the university register of Oxford as matriculating at Exeter College in 1601. Like a cousin and namesake (to whom, with other members of the society of Grays Inn, he dedicated his play of The Lovers Melancholy), the future dramatist entered the profession of the law, being admitted of the Middle Temple in 1602; but he seems never to have been called to the bar. Four years afterwards he made his first appearance as an author with an elegy called Fames Memorial, or the Earl of Devonshire deceased, and dedicated to the widow of the earl (Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, coronized, to use Fords expression, by King James in 1603 for his services in Ireland)a lady who would have been no unfitting heroine for one of his own tragedies of lawless passion, the famous Penelope, formerly Lady Rich. This panegyric, which is accompanied by a series of epitaphs and is composed in a strain of fearless extravagance, was, as the author declares, written unfeed; it shows that Ford sympathized, as Shakespeare himself is supposed to have done, with the awkward fate of the countesss brother, the earl of Essex. Who the flint-hearted Lycia may be, to whom the poet seems to allude as his own disdainful mistress, is unknown; indeed, the record of Fords private life is little better than a blank. To judge, however, from the dedications, prologues and epilogues of his various plays, he seems to have enjoyed the patronage of the earl, afterwards duke, of Newcastle, himself a muse after a fashion, and Lord Craven, the supposed husband of the ex-queen of Bohemia. Fords tract of Honor Triumphant, or the Peeres Challenge (printed 1606 and reprinted by the Shakespeare Society with the Line of Life, in 1843), and the simultaneously published verses The Monarches Meeting, or the King of Denmarkes Welcome into England, exhibit him as occasionally meeting the festive demands of court and nobility; and a kind of moral essay by him, entitled A Line of Life (printed 1620), which contains references to Raleigh, ends with a climax of fulsome praise to the address of King James I. Yet at least one of Fords plays (The Broken Heart, iii. 4) contains an implied protest against the absolute system of government generally accepted by the dramatists of the early Stuart reigns. Of his relations with his brother-authors little is known; it was natural that he should exchange complimentary verses with James Shirley, and that he should join in the chorus of laments over the death of Ben Jonson. It is more interesting to notice an epigram in honour of Ford by Richard Crashaw, morbidly passionate in one direction as Ford was in another. The lines run:
Thou cheatst us, Ford; makst one seem two by art: | |
What is Loves Sacrifice but the Broken Heart? |
It has been concluded that in the latter part of his life he gratified the tendency to seclusion for which he was ridiculed in The Time Poets (Choice Drollery, 1656) by withdrawing from business and from literary life in London, to his native place; but nothing is known as to the date of his death. His career as a dramatist very probably began by collaboration with other authors. With Thomas Dekker he wrote The Fairy Knight and The Bristowe Merchant (licensed in 1624, but both unpublished), with John Webster A late Murther of the Sonne upon the Mother (licensed in 1624). A play entitled An ill Beginning has a good End, brought on the stage as early as 1613 and attributed to Ford, was (if his) his earliest acted play; whether Sir Thomas Overburys Life and untimely Death (1615) was a play is extremely doubtful; some lines of indignant regret by Ford on the same subject are still preserved. He is also said to have written, at dates unknown, The London Merchant (which, however, was an earlier name for Beaumont and Fletchers Knight of the Burning Pestle) and The Royal Combat; a tragedy by him, Beauty in a Trance, was entered in the Stationers Register in 1653, but never printed. These three (or four) plays were among those destroyed by Warburtons cook. The Queen, or the Excellency of the Sea, a play of inverted passion, containing some fine sensuous lines, printed in 1653 by Alexander Singhe for private performance, has been recently edited by W. Bang (Materialien zur Kunde d. älteren engl. Dramas, 13, Louvain, 1906), and is by him on internal evidence confidently claimed as Fords. Of the plays by Ford preserved to us the dates span little more than a decadethe earliest, The Lovers Melancholy, having been acted in 1628 and printed in 1629, the latest, The Ladys Trial, acted in 1638 and printed in 1639.
When writing The Lovers Melancholy, it would seem that Ford had not yet become fully aware of the bent of his own dramatic genius, although he was already master of his powers of poetic expression. He was attracted towards domestic tragedy by an irresistible desire to sound the depths of abnormal conflicts between passion and circumstances, to romantic comedy by a strong though not widely varied imaginative faculty, and by a delusion that he was possessed of abundant comic humour. In his next two works, undoubtedly those most characteristically expressive of his peculiar strength, Tis Pity shes a Whore (acted c. 1626) and The Broken Heart (acted c. 1629), both printed in 1633 with the anagram of his name Fide Honor, he had found horrible situations which required dramatic explanation by intensely powerful motives. Ford by no means stood alone among English dramatists in his love of abnormal subjects; but few were so capable of treating them sympathetically, and yet without that reckless grossness or extravagance of expression which renders the morally repulsive æsthetically intolerable, or converts the horrible into the grotesque. For in Fords genius there was real refinement, except when the supra-sensually sensual impulse or the humbler self-delusion referred to came into play. In a third tragedy, Loves Sacrifice (acted c. 1630; printed in 1633), he again worked on similar materials; but this time he unfortunately essayed to base the interest of his plot upon an unendurably unnatural possibilitydoing homage to virtue after a fashion which is in itself an insult. In Perkin Warbeck (printed 1634; probably acted a year later) he chose an historical subject of great dramatic promise and psychological interest, and sought to emulate the glory of the great series of Shakespeares national histories. The effort is one of the most laudable, as it was by no means one of the least successful, in the dramatic literature of this period. The Fancies Chaste and Noble (acted before 1636, printed 1638), though it includes scenes of real force and feeling, is dramatically a failure, of which the main idea is almost provokingly slight and feeble; and The Ladys Trial (acted 1638, printed 1639) is only redeemed from utter wearisomeness by an unusually even pleasingness of form. There remain two other dramatic works, of very different kinds, in which Ford cooperated with other writers, the mask of The Suns Darling (acted 1624, printed 1657), hardly to be placed in the first rank of early compositions, and The Witch of Edmonton (printed 1658, but probably acted about 1621), in which we see Ford as a joint-writer with Dekker and Rowley of one of the most powerful domestic dramas of the English or any other stage.
A few notes may be added on some of the more remarkable of the plays enumerated. A wholly baseless anecdote, condensed into a stinging epigram by Endymion Porter, asserted that The Lovers Melancholy was stolen by Ford from Shakespeares papers. Undoubtedly, the madness of the hero of this play of Fords occasionally recalls Hamlet, while the heroine is one of the many, and at the same time one of the most pleasing, parallels to Viola. But neither of them is a copy, as Friar Bonaventura in Fords second play may be said to be a copy of Friar Lawrence, whose kindly pliability he disagreeably exaggerates, or as DAvolos in Loves Sacrifice is clearly modelled on Iago. The plot of The Lovers Melancholy, which is ineffective because it leaves no room for suspense in the mind of the reader, seems original; in the dialogue, on the other hand, a justly famous passage in Act i. (the beautiful version of the story of the nightingales death) is translated from Strada; while the scheme of the tedious interlude exhibiting the various forms of madness is avowedly taken, together with sundry comments, from Burtons Anatomy of Melancholy. Already in this play Ford exhibits the singular force of his pathos; the despondent misery of the aged Meleander, and the sweetness of the last scene, in which his daughter comes back to him, alike go to the heart. A situationhazardous in spite of its comic substratumbetween Thaumasta and the pretended Parthenophil is conducted, as Gifford points out, with real delicacy; but the comic scenes are merely stagy, notwithstanding, or by reason of, the effort expended on them by the author.
Tis Pity shes a Whore has been justly recognized as a tragedy of extraordinary power. Mr. Swinburne, in his eloquent essay on Ford, has rightly shown what is the meaning of this tragedy, and has at the same time indicated wherein consists its poison. He dwells with great force upon the different treatment applied by Ford to the characters of the two miserable loversbrother and sister. The sin once committed, there is no more wavering or flinching possible to him, who has fought so hard against the demoniac possession; while she who resigned body and soul to the tempter, almost at a word, remains liable to the influences of religion and remorse. This different treatment shows the feeling of the poetthe feeling for which he seeks to evoke our inmost sympathyto oscillate between the belief that an awful crime brings with it its awful punishment (and it is sickening to observe how the argument by which the Friar persuades Annabella to forsake her evil courses mainly appeals to the physical terrors of retribution), and the notion that there is something fatal, something irresistible, and therefore in a sense self-justified, in so dominant a passion. The key-note to the conduct of Giovanni lies in his words at the close of the first scene
All this Ill do, to free me from the rod | |
Of vengeance; else Ill swear my fates my god. |
O, I bleed fast! | |
Death, thourt a guest long lookd for; I embrace | |
Thee and thy wounds: O, my last minute comes! | |
Whereer I go, let me enjoy this grace | |
Freely to view my Annabellas face. |
Tis Pity shes a Whore was translated into French by Maurice Maeterlinck under the title of Annabella, and represented at the Théâtre de luvre in 1894. The translator prefixes to the version an eloquent appreciation of Fords genius, especially in his portraits of women, whose fate it is to live dans les ténèbres, les craintes et les larmes.
Like this tragedy, The Broken Heart was probably founded upon some Italian or other novel of the day; but since in the latter instance there is nothing revolting in the main idea of the subject, the play commends itself as the most enjoyable, while, in respect of many excellences, an unsurpassed specimen of Fords dramatic genius. The complicated plot is constructed with greater skill than is usual with this dramatist, and the pathos of particular situations, and of the entire character of Pentheaa woman doomed to hopeless misery, but capable of seeking to obtain for her brother a happiness which his cruelty has condemned her to foregohas an intensity and a depth which are all Fords own. Even the lesser characters are more pleasing than usual, and some beautiful lyrics are interspersed in the play.
Of the other plays written by Ford alone, only The Chronicle Historie of Perkin Warbeck. A Strange Truth, appears to call for special attention. A repeated perusal of this drama suggests the judgment that it is overpraised when ranked at no great distance from Shakespeares national dramas. Historical truth need not be taken into consideration in the matter; and if, notwithstanding James Gairdners essay appended to his Life and Reign of Richard III., there are still credulous persons left to think and assert that Perkin was not an impostor, they will derive little satisfaction from Fords play, which with really surprising skill avoids the slightest indication as to the poets own belief on the subject. That this tragedy should have been reprinted in 1714 and acted in 1745 only shows that the public, as is often the case, had an eye to the catastrophe rather than to the development of the action. The dramatic capabilities of the subject are, however, great, and it afterwards attracted Schiller, who, however, seems to have abandoned it in favour of the similar theme of the Russian Demetrius. Had Shakespeare treated it, he would hardly have contented himself with investing the hero with the nobility given by Ford to this personage of his play,for it is hardly possible to speak of a personage as a character when the clue to his conduct is intentionally withheld. Nor could Shakespeare have failed to bring out with greater variety and distinctness the dramatic features in Henry VII., whom Ford depicts with sufficient distinctness to give some degree of individuality to the figure, but still with a tenderness of touch which would have been much to the credit of the dramatists skill had he been writing in the Tudor age. The play is, however, founded on Bacons Life, of which the text is used by Ford with admirable discretion, and on Thomas Gainsfords True and Wonderful History of Perkin Warbeck (1618). The minor characters of the honest old Huntley, whom the Scottish king obliges to bestow his daughters hand upon Warbeck, and of her lover the faithful Dalyell, are most effectively drawn; even the men of judgment, the adventurers who surround the chief adventurer, are spirited sketches, and the Irishman among them has actually some humour; while the style of the play is, as befits a Chronicle History, so clear and straightforward as to make it easy as well as interesting to read.
The Witch of Edmonton was attributed by its publisher to William Rowley, Dekker, Ford, &c., but the body of the play has been generally held to be ascribable to Ford and Dekker only. The subject of the play was no doubt suggested by the case of the reported witch, Elizabeth Sawyer, who was executed in 1621. Swinburne agrees with Gifford in thinking Ford the author of the whole of the first act; and he is most assuredly right in considering that there is no more admirable exposition of a play on the English stage. Supposing Dekker to be chiefly responsible for the scenes dealing with the unfortunate old woman whom persecution as a witch actually drives to become one, and Ford for the domestic tragedy of the bigamist murderer, it cannot be denied that both divisions of the subject are effectively treated, while the more important part of the task fell to the share of Ford. Yet it may be doubted whether any such division can be safely assumed; and it may suffice to repeat that no domestic tragedy has ever taught with more effective simplicity and thrilling truthfulness the homely double lesson of the folly of selfishness and the mad rashness of crime.
With Dekker Ford also wrote the mask of The Suns Darling; or, as seems most probable, they founded this production upon Phaeton, an earlier mask, of which Dekker had been sole author. Gifford holds that Dekkers hand is perpetually traceable in the first three acts of The Suns Darling, and through the whole of its comic part, but that the last two acts are mainly Fords. If so, he is the author of the rather forced occasional tribute on the accession of King Charles I., of which the last act largely consists. This mask, which furnished abundant opportunities for the decorators, musicians and dancers, in showing forth how the seasons and their delights are successively exhausted by a wanton darling, Raybright the grandchild of the Sun, is said to have been very popular. It is at the same time commonplace enough in conception; but there is much that is charming in the descriptions, Jonson and Lyly being respectively laid under contribution in the course of the dialogue, and in one of the incidental lyrics.
Ford owes his position among English dramatists to the intensity of his passion, in particular scenes and passages where the character, the author and the reader are alike lost in the situation and in the sentiment evoked by it; and this gift is a supreme dramatic gift. But his playswith the exception of The Witch of Edmonton, in which he doubtless had a prominent sharetoo often disturb the mind like a bad dream which ends as an unsolved dissonance; and this defect is a supreme dramatic defect. It is not the rigid or the stolid who have the most reason to complain of the insufficiency of tragic poetry such as Fords; nor is it that morality only which, as Ithocles says in The Broken Heart, is formed of books and school-traditions, which has a right to protest against the final effect of the most powerful creations of his genius. There is a morality which both
Keeps the soul in tune, | |
At whose sweet music all our actions dance, |
The sickness of a mind | |
Broken with griefs. |
BIBLIOGRAPHY.The best edition of Ford is that by Gifford, with notes and introduction, revised with additions to both text and notes by Alexander Dyce (1869). An edition of the Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford appeared in 1840, with an introduction by Hartley Coleridge. The Best Plays of Ford were edited for the Mermaid Series in 1888, with an introduction by W. H. Havelock Ellis, and reissued in 1903. A. C. Swinburnes Essay on Ford is reprinted among his Essays and Studies (1875). Perkin Warbeck and Tis Pity were translated into German by F. Bodenstedt in 1860; and the latter again by F. Blei in 1904. The probable sources of the various plays are discussed in Emil Koeppels Quellenstudien zu den Dramen George Chapmans, Philip Massingers und John Fords (1897). See also Cambridge History; Literary Criticism.