Born at Ilsington, Devonshire, England, 1586 (baptized April 17): died after 1639. An English dramatist. Little is known of his life except that he was a member of the Middle Temple and not dependent on his pen for his living, and that he was popular with playgoers. He apparently retired to Ilsington to end his days. His principal plays are “The Lover’s Melancholy” (printed 1629), “’Tis Pity She’s a Whore” (1633), “The Broken Heart” (1633), “Love’s Sacrifice” (1633), “The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck” (1634), “The Fancies Chaste and Noble” (1638), “The Lady’s Trial” (1639), “The Sun’s Darling” (with Dekker, 1656), “The Witch of Edmonton” (with Dekker, Rowley, etc., 1658). His works were collected by Weber in 1811, by Gifford in 1827, and by Dyce (Gifford) in 1869.
Personal
A Gentleman of the Middle-Temple, who liv’d in the Reign of King Charles the First: Who was a Well-wisher to the Muses, and a Friend and Acquaintance of most of the Poets of his Time.
Of his social habits there little can be told with certainty. There is sufficient, however, to show that he lived, if not familiarly, yet friendlily, with the dramatic writers of his day, and neither provoked nor felt personal enmities. He speaks, indeed, of opposition; but this is merely the language of the stage; opposition is experienced by every dramatic writer worth criticism, and has nothing in common with ordinary hostility. In truth, with the exception of an allusion to the “voluminous” and rancorous Prynne, nothing can be more general than his complaints. Yet Ford looked not much to the brighter side of life; he could, like Jaques, “suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs;” but he was unable, like this wonderful creation of our great poet, to extract mirth from it. When he touched a lighter string, the tones, though pleasingly modulated, were still sedate; and it must, I think, be admitted that his poetry is rather that of a placid and serene than of a happy mind: he was in truth, an amiable ascetic amidst a busy world.
He seems to have been a proud, reserved, austere kind of man, of few and warm attachments, with but slender gifts in the way of ebullient spirits or social flow. He was a barrister, with a respectable ancestry to look back to; and though he wrote several plays, and did not disdain to work in conjunction with such a professional playwright as Dekker, he was nervously anxious lest it should be supposed that he made his living by play-writing. In his first Prologue he spoke contemptuously of such as made poetry a trade, and he took more than one opportunity of protesting that his plays were the fruits of leisure, the issue of less serious hours. Some of his plays he dedicated to noblemen, but he was careful to assure them that it was not his habit to court greatness, and that his dedication was a simple offering of respect without mercenary motive.
Ford drops from sight after the publication of the “Ladies Trial” in 1639; but in Gifford’s time “faint traditions in the neighbourhood of his birth-place” led to the supposition that, having obtained a competency from his professional practice, he retired to Devonshire to end his days. In the “Time-Poets” (“Choice Drollery,” 1656) occurs the couplet—
| Deep in a dump John Forde was alone got, | |
| With folded arms and melancholy hat. |
The Lover’s Melancholy, 1628–29
“The Lover’s Melancholy; Contention of a Bird and a Musician.”—This Story, which is originally to be met with in Strada’s Prolusions, has been paraphrased in rhyme by Crashaw, Ambrose Philips, and others: but none of those versions can at all compare for harmony and grace with this blank verse of Ford’s. It is as fine as anything in Beaumont and Fletcher; and almost equals the strife which it celebrates.
“The Lover’s Melancholy” has been to almost all its critics a kind of lute-case for the very pretty version of Strada’s fancy about the nightingale, which Crashaw did better; otherwise it is naught.
Gifford rightly pronounces the comic portions of “The Lovers Melancholy” to be despicable; but it contains some choice poetry, notably the description (after Strada) of the contention between the nightingale and the musician.
’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, 1633
Thence to Salisbury Court play house, where was acted the first time “’Tis Pity She’s a Whore,” a simple play and ill acted, only it was my fortune to sit by a most pretty and most ingenious lady which pleased me much.
All we can say in favour of Ford is, to wish he had employed his beautiful writing to a more laudable purpose.
Ford was of the first order of poets. He sought for sublimity, not by parcels, in metaphors or visible images, but directly where she has her full residence in the heart of man; in the actions and sufferings of the greatest minds. There is a grandeur of the soul above mountains, seas, and the elements. Even in the poor perverted reason of Giovanni and Annabella, in the play which stands at the head of the modern collection of the works of this author, we discern traces of that fiery particle, which, in the irregular starting from out the road of beaten action, discovers something of a right line even in obliquity, and shows hints of an improvable greatness in the lowest descents and degradations of our nature.
It has been lamented that the play of his which has been most admired (“’Tis Pity She’s a Whore”) had not a less exceptionable subject. I do not know, but I suspect that the exceptionableness of the subject is that which constitutes the chief merit of the play. The repulsiveness of the story is what gives it its critical interest; for it is a studiously prosaic statement of facts, and naked declaration of passions. It was not the least of Shakspeare’s praise, that he never tampered with unfair subjects. His genius was above it; his taste kept aloof from it. I do not deny the power of simple painting and polished style in this tragedy in general, and of a great deal more in some few of the scenes, particularly in the quarrel between Annabella and her husband, which is wrought up to a pitch of demoniac scorn and phrensy with consummate art and knowledge; but I do not find much other power in the author (generally speaking) than that of playing with edged tools, and knowing the use of poisoned weapons.
It is not easy to speak too favourably of the poetry of this play in the more impassioned passages; it is in truth too seductive for the subject, and flings a soft and soothing light over what in its natural state would glare with salutary and repulsive horror.
In spite of the harsh, affected, and offensive levity of the title, is Ford’s masterpiece,—the play that justifies Mr. Swinburne’s eloquent panegyric, and will always be most in the critic’s mind in all attempts to fix Ford’s place among the dramatists.
It is somewhat unfortunate that the very title of Ford’s masterpiece should sound so strangely in the ears of a generation “whose ears are the chastest part about them.” For of these great twin tragedies the first-born is on the whole the greater. The subtleties and varieties of individual character do not usually lie well within the reach of Ford’s handling; but in the part of Giovanni we find more of this power than elsewhere. Here the poet has put forth all his strength; the figure of his protagonist stands out complete and clear. There is more ease and life in it than in his other sculptures; though here as always Ford is rather a sculptor of character than a painter. But the completeness, the consistency of design is here all the worthier of remark, that we too often find this the most needful quality for a dramatist wanting in him as in other great writers of his time.
Never has genius more miserably misused its gifts. If, as the title of “’Tis Pity She’s a Whore” implies, this tragedy be intended to awaken a feeling akin to sympathy, or bordering upon it, on behalf of the heroine of its story of incest, the endeavour, so far as I can judge, fails in achieving the purpose insinuated. In truth, the dramatist’s desire is to leave an impression far other and more perilous than that of a mere feeling of compassion for a fair sinner;—his purpose is to persuade us that passion is irresistible. But his efforts are vain, and so too is the sophistry of those who seek to explain away their chief force; for while recognising their charm, the soul revolts against the fatalism which, in spite of the Friar’s preaching and Annabella’s repentance, the sum-total of the action of this drama implies.
English poets have given us the right key to the Italian temperament…. The love of Giovanni and Annabella in Ford’s tragedy is rightly depicted as more imaginative than sensual.
The man who thus conceived the horrors of the Italian Renaissance in the spirit in which they were committed is Ford. In his great play he has caught the very tone of the Italian Renaissance: the abominableness of the play consisting not in the coarse slaughter scenes added merely to please the cockpit of an English theatre, but in the superficial innocence of tone; in its making evil lose its appearance of evil, even as it did to the men of the Renaissance.
After repeated readings and very careful weighings of what has been said, I come back to my first opinion—to wit, that the Annabella and Giovanni scenes, with all their perversity, all their availing themselves of what Hazlitt, with his unerring instinct, called “unfair attractions,” are among the very best things of their kind. Of what may be thought unfair in them I shall speak a little later; but allowing for this, the sheer effects of passion—the “All for love and the world well lost,” the shutting out, not instinctively or stupidly, but deliberately, and with full knowledge, of all other considerations except, the dictates of desire—have never been so rendered in English except in “Romeo and Juliet” and “Antony and Cleopatra.” The comparison of course brings out Ford’s weakness, not merely in execution, but in design; not merely in accomplishment, but in the choice of means for accomplishment. Shakespere had no need of the haut goût of incest, of the unnatural horrors of the heart on the dagger. But Ford had; and he in a way (I do not say fully) justified his use of these means.
Unlike most of his Elizabethan brethren, was ever a deliberate, cool, calculating literary workman, and while he is weaving this story of abnormal passion and investing it with all the grace and charm at his command, it is manifest that he is nowise carried away by the imaginative contemplation of it himself, but is all the while curiously studying the monstrous growth of his own diseased fancy in a cold anatomical fashion that rouses our moral repugnance in direct proportion as it excites our æsthetic admiration. He is always the craftsman, possessing a faculty of self-criticism rare among his compeers of that age.
Here Ford is at his best—and worst. He is the dramatist of passion—passion that neither inspires or ennobles; but drives on its victims with the awful force of irresistible destiny. Lost souls, struggling in the maelstrom of over-mastering fate, with no issue possible but self-destruction; and here and there a “despicable buffoon” to make coarse and insane jests—these are the elements of Ford’s tragedy. The theme of the play is repulsive; it affords the most characteristic example of that straining after the fantastic and extraordinary, which marked the close of a literary period that seemed to have exhausted the simpler possibilities of tragedy.
The Witch of Edmonton, 1622?–58
It is very easy to sneer at the supernatural portions of this play … I consider creditable to the talents and feelings of both poets. I believe in witchcraft no more than the critics; neither, perhaps, did Ford and Decker, but they dealt with those who did; and we are less concerned with the visionary creed of our forefathers than with the skill and dexterity of those who wrote in conformity to it, and the moral or ethical maxims which they enable us to draw from it. The serious part of this drama is sweetly written. The character of Susan is delineated in Ford’s happiest manner; pure, affectionate, confiding, faithful, and forgiving; anxious as a wife to prove her love, but fearful to offend, there is a mixture of warmth and pudency in her language, particularly in the concluding scene of the second act, which cannot fail to please the most fastidious reader. Winnifrede is only second to her unfortunate rival; for, though highly culpable before marriage, she redeems her character as a wife, and insensibly steals upon our pity and regard. Even Katherine with any other sister would not pass unnoticed.
“The Witch of Edmonton” is a play of rare beauty and importance both on poetical and social grounds. It is perhaps the first protest of the stage against the horrors and brutalities of vulgar superstition; a protest all the more precious for the absolute faith in witchcraft and deviltry which goes hand in hand with compassion for the instruments as well as the victims of magic.
This remarkable play … was when first published attributed to the joint authorship of Dekker, Ford, Rowley, “&c.”—safety being evidently sought in numbers; but critical opinion has agreed in ascribing it in the main to Dekker and Ford. I confess at the same time that it is not obvious to me why the supposition should be excluded that William Rowley, whose literary identity seems to admit of so easy a treatment, had a substantial share in the play. In any case, there cannot be much likelihood of mistake in assuming Ford to have written at all events the earlier scenes, treating of the woes of Frank, Winnifrede and Susan. And assuredly the English drama includes very few domestic tragedies more harrowing than this play, of which its authors doubtless owed the immediate suggestion to a topic of the day, but which furnished Ford with an opportunity such as he would never have found by searching for it.
The Sun’s Darling, 1623–57
| Is he, then, found? Phœbus, make holiday, | |
| Tie up thy steeds, and let the Cyclops play; | |
| Mulciber, leave thy anvil, and be trim, | |
| Comb thy black muzzle, be no longer grim; | |
| Mercury, be quick, with mirth furnish the heavens; | |
| Jove, this day let all run at six and sevens; | |
| And, Ganymede, be nimble, to the brim | |
| Fill bowls of nectar, that the gods may swim, | |
| To solemnise their healths that did discover | |
| The obscure being of the Sun’s fond lover; | |
| That from th’ example of their liberal mirth | |
| We may enjoy like freedom (here) on earth. |
I know not on what authority Langbaine speaks, but he expressly attributes the greater part of this moral masque to Ford. As far as concerns the last two acts, I agree with him; and a long and clear examination of this poet’s manner enables me to speak with some degree of confidence. But I trace Decker perpetually in the other three acts, and through the whole of the comic part. I think well of this poet, and should pause before I admitted the inferiority of his genius—as far, at least, as imagination is concerned—to that of Ford: but his rough vigour and his irregular metre generally enable us to mark the line between him and his more harmonious coadjutor.
The greater part of the masque as we have it, or at all events the last two acts, have been thought attributable to Ford; but the ground is unsafe, the more so as the partial inconsistency of the allegory favours the notion of the work having been subjected to a revision. Much of the dialogue is very beautiful; the lyrics—in so far as they are original—seem to me less excellent.
The Broken Heart, 1633
I do not know where to find, in any play, a catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as in this…. What a noble thing is the soul in its strengths and its weaknesses! Who would be less weak than Calantha? Who can be so strong? The expression of this transcendent scene almost bears us in imagination to Calvary and the Cross; and we seem to perceive some analogy between the scenical sufferings which we are here contemplating, and the real agonies of that final completion to which we dare no more than hint a reference.
Except the last scene of the “Broken Heart” (which I think extravagant—others may think it sublime, and be right) they are merely exercises of style and effusions of wire-drawn sentiment.
The “Broken Heart” has generally been reckoned his finest tragedy; and if the last act had been better prepared, by bringing the love of Calantha for Ithocles more fully before the reader in the earlier part of the play, there would be very few passages of deeper pathos in our dramatic literature.
Ford can fill the ear and soul singly, with the trumpet-note of his pathos; and in its pauses you shall hear the murmuring voices of nature—such a nightingale, for instance, as never sang on a common night. Then that death scene in the “Broken Heart!” who has equalled that? It is single in the drama,—the tragic of tragedy and the sublime of grief.
Even in that single play of Ford’s which comes nearest to the true pathetic, “The Broken Heart,” there is too much apparent artifice, and Charles Lamb’s comment on its closing scene is worth more than all Ford ever wrote. But a critic must look at it minus Charles Lamb. We may read as much of ourselves into a great poet as we will; we shall never cancel our debt to him. In the interests of true literature we should not honor fraudulent drafts upon our imagination.
Love’s Sacrifice, 1633
| Unto this altar, rich with thy own spice, | |
| I bring one grain to thy “Love’s Sacrifice;” | |
| And boast to see thy flames ascending, while | |
| Perfumes enrich our air from thy sweet pile. | |
| Look here, thou that hast malice to the stage, | |
| And impudence enough for the whole age; | |
| Voluminously-ignorant, be vext | |
| To read this tragedy, and thy own be next. |
| Thou cheat’st us, Ford; mak’st one seem two by art: | |
| What is Love’s Sacrifice but the Broken Heart? |
From the “high-tuned poem,” as he justly calls it, which he had here put forth in evidence of his higher and purer part of power, the fall, or collapse rather, in his next work was singular enough. I trust that I shall not be liable to any charge of Puritan prudery though I avow that this play of “Love’s Sacrifice” is to me intolerable. In the literal and genuine sense of the word, it is utterly indecent, unseemly and unfit for handling. The conception is essentially foul because it is essentially false; and in the sight of art nothing is so foul as falsehood.
Its theme is a tissue of passion and revenge, into which too many coarse threads are allowed to enter…. The dramatist has drawn so wavering a line between sin and self-restraint, guilt and innocence, that he may be suspected of having wished to leave unsettled the “problem” which he proposes. If so, he stands from every point of view self-condemned. The bye-plot of the play is utterly revolting, and in the character of d’Avolos, and the passages in which he excites the jealousy of the Duke against Fernando, Ford has most palpably copied Iago.
Perkin Warbeck, 1634
It is indeed the best specimen of the historic drama to be found out of Shakspeare; and, as a compact consecutive representation of a portion of English history, excels King John or the two Parts of Henry IV. It has as much unity as the dramatic history admits or requires; a clearly defined catastrophe, to which every incident contributes, and every scene advances. Ford showed great judgment in selecting a manageable episode of history, instead of a reign or a “life and death,” which no one but Shakspeare could ever make practicable.
As the last attempt at historical drama it suffers by contrast with the masterpieces of Shakespeare, but its merits are considerable, and entirely different from those of Ford’s other works. The tragedy is founded on Bacon’s “Life of Henry the Seventh,” and the character of the monarch is developed with skill and discretion. The play, interesting, dignified and occasionally humorous, seems to indicate that Ford’s genius was capable of a wider range than his prevailing melancholy allowed. We doubt, indeed, whether more to wonder that he should have written one such play, or that, having written one, he should have written no more.
General
The author has not much of the oratorical stateliness and imposing flow of Massinger; nor a great deal of the smooth and flexible diction, the wandering fancy, and romantic sweetness of Beaumont and Fletcher; and yet he comes nearer to these qualities than to any of the distinguishing characteristics of Jonson or Shakespeare. He excels most in representing the pride and gallantry, and high-toned honour of youth and the enchanting softness, or the mild and graceful magnanimity of female character. There is a certain melancholy air about his most striking representations; and, in the tender and afflicting pathetic, he appears to us occasionally to be second only to him who has never yet had an equal. The greater part of every play, however, is bad; and there is not one which does not contain faults sufficient to justify the derision even of those who are incapable of comprehending its contrasted beauties. The diction we think for the most part beautiful, and worthy of the inspired age which produced it.
Ford possesses nothing of the energy and majesty of Massinger, and but little of the playful gaiety and picturesque fancy of Fletcher, yet scarcely Shakspeare himself has exceeded him in the excitement of pathetic emotion. Of this, his two Tragedies of “’Tis Pity She’s a Whore,” and the “Broken Heart,” bear the most overpowering testimony. Though too much loaded in their fable with a wildness and horror often felt as repulsive, they are noble specimens of dramatic genius; and who that has a heart to feel, or an eye to weep, can, in the first of these productions, view even the unhallowed loves of Giovanni and Annabella; or in the second, the hapless and unmerited fates of Calantha and Penthea, with a cheek unbathed in tears!
He has no great body of poetry, and has interested us in no other passion except that of love; but in that he displays a peculiar depth and delicacy of romantic feeling.
Ford is not so great a favorite with me as with some others, from whose judgment I dissent with diffidence.
I know few things more difficult to account for than the deep and lasting impression made by the more tragic portions of Ford’s poetry. Whence does it derive that resistless power which all confess, of afflicting, I had almost said harassing, the better feelings? It is not from any peculiar beauty of language,—for in this he is equalled by his contemporaries, and by some of them surpassed; nor is it from any classical or mythological allusions happily recollected and skilfully applied,—for of these he seldom avails himself: it is not from any picturesque views presented to the mind,—for of imaginative poetry he has little or nothing; he cannot conjure up a succession of images, whether grave or gay, to flit across the fancy or play in the eye. Yet it is hardly possible to peruse his passionate scenes without the most painful interest, the most heart-thrilling delight. This can only arise—at least I can conceive nothing else adequate to the excitement of such sensations—from the overwhelming efficacy of intense thought devoted to the embodying of conceptions adapted to the awful situations in which he has, imperceptibly and with matchless felicity, placed his principal characters.
Ford, with none of the moral beauty and elevation of Massinger, has, in a much higher degree, the power over tears: we smypathize even with his vicious characters, with Giovanni and Annabella and Bianca. Love, and love in guilt or sorrow, is almost exclusively the emotion he portrays: no heroic passion, no sober dignity, will be found in his tragedies. But he conducts his stories well and without confusion; his scenes are often highly wrought and effective; his characters, with no striking novelty, are well supported; he is seldom extravagant or regardless of probability.
It would be unfair … to conclude that he delighted in the contemplation of vice and misery as vice and misery. He delighted in the sensation of intellectual power, he found himself strong in the imagination of crime and of agony; his moral sense was gratified by indignation at the dark possibilities of sin, by compassion for rare extremes of suffering. He abhorred vice—he admired virtue; but ordinary vice or modern virtue were, to him, as light wine to a dram drinker. His genius was a telescope, ill-adapted for neighbouring objects, but powerful to bring within the sphere of vision, what nature has wisely placed at an unsociable distance. Passion must be incestuous or adulterous; grief must be something more than martyrdom, before he could make them big enough to be seen. Unquestionably be displayed great power in these horrors, which was all he desired; but had he been “of the first order of poets,” he would have found and displayed superior power in “familiar matter of to-day,” in failings to which all are liable, virtues which all may practise, and sorrows for which all may be the better.
His most splendid successes are in the handling of subjects which are, in themselves, unwritten tragedies—the deepest distresses of the heart and the terrible aberrations of the passions. His works make a sad, deep, and abiding impression on the mind, though hardly one that is pleasing or healthy. He had little of that stalwart strength of mind, and heedless daring, which characterize the earlier dramatists.
In fulness and fine equability Ford was far below Massinger; but in intensity, in the power of making an audience miserable and moving them to tears, he was thought to excel him. Indeed the reputation of lugubriousness had attached itself to him personally.
By Ford, incidents of the most revolting kind are laid down as the foundation of his plots, upon which he wastes a pathos and tenderness deeper than is elsewhere found in the drama.
Ford’s blank verse is not so imposing as Massinger’s; but it has often a delicate beauty, sometimes a warbling wildness and richness, beyond anything in Massinger’s fuller swell.
He would not seem to have looked at his plays from the point of view of his audience, or to have exerted himself to stir their interest or to keep it from flagging. There is a certain haughtiness of touch even in his language; sometimes a repudiation of emphasis, as if he did not care to be impressive on a slight occasion; sometimes a wilful abstruseness, as if it mattered nothing though his words were misunderstood. This alone is often the cause of considerable reaches of dull dialogue—dull, that is to say, for the purposes of the stage.
He stands apart among his fellows, without master or follower; he has learnt little from Shakespeare or Marlowe, Jonson or Fletcher…. The poetry of Ford is no branch or arm of that illimitable sea; it might rather be likened to a mountain lake shut in by solitary highlands, without visible outlet or inlet, seen fitlier by starlight than by sunlight; much such an one as the Lac de Gaube above Cauterets, steel-blue and sombre, with a strange attraction for the swimmer in its cold smooth reticence and breathless calm. For nothing is more noticeable in this poet than the passionless reason and equable tone of style with which in his greatest works he treats of the deepest and most fiery passions, the quiet eye with which he searches out the darkest issues of emotion, the quiet hand with which he notes them down. At all times his verse is even and regular, accurate and composed; never specially flexible or melodious, always admirable for precision, vigour, and purity…. No poet is less forgetable than Ford; none fastens (as it were) the fangs of his genius and his will more deeply in your memory. You cannot shake hands with him and pass by; you cannot fall in with him and out again at pleasure; if he touch you once he takes you, and what he takes he keeps his hold of; his work becomes part of your thought and parcel of your spiritual furniture for ever; he signs himself upon you as with a seal of deliberate and decisive power. His force is never the force of accident; the casual divinity of beauty which falls as though direct from heaven upon stray lines and phrases of some poets falls never by any such heavenly chance on his; his strength of impulse is matched by his strength of will; he never works more by instinct than by resolution…. By the might of a great will seconded by the force of a great hand he won the place he holds against all odds of rivalry in a race of rival giants. In that gallery of monumental men and mighty memories, among or above the fellows of his godlike craft, the high figure of Ford stands steadily erect: his name is ineffaceable from the scroll of our great writers; it is one of the loftier landmarks of English poetry.
He carried to an extreme the tendency of the drama to unnatural and horrible subjects, but he did so with very great power. He has no comic humour, but no man has described better the worn and tortured human heart.
What Ford especially imitated from Greene was the art of writing romantic tales with plenty of adventures, unexpected meetings and discoveries, much love, and improbabilities enough to enchant Elizabethan readers and sell the book up to any number of editions. In this he rivalled his model very successfully, and his romances were among the most popular of the time of Shakespeare. The number of their editions was extraordinary, and they were renewed at almost regular intervals up to the eighteenth century; there was a far greater demand for them than for any play of Shakespeare.
He, too, was borne down by enslavement to the red splendors of crime; his very titles carry such foretaste of foulness we do not name them. There are bloody horrors and moral ones. Few read him for love. Murder makes room for incest, and incest sharpens knives for murder. Animal passions run riot; the riot is often splendid, but never—to my mind—making head in such grand dramatic utterance as crowns the gory numbers of Webster. There are strong passages, indeed, gleaming out of the red riotings like blades of steel; now and then some fine touch of pathos—of quiet contemplative brooding—lying amid the fiery wrack, like a violet on banks drenched with turbid floods; but they are rare, and do not compensate—at least do not compensate me—for the wadings through bloody, foul quagmires to reach them.
In reading him again after a long interval, with elements of wider comparison, and provided with more trustworthy tests, I find that the greater part of what I once took on trust as precious is really paste and pinchbeck. His plays seem to me now to be chiefly remarkable for that filigree-work of sentiment which we call sentimentality. The word “alchemy” once had a double meaning. It was used to signify both the process by which lead could be transmuted into gold, and the alloy of baser metal by which gold could be adulterated without losing so much of its specious semblance as to be readily detected. The ring of the true metal can be partially imitated, and for a while its glow, but the counterfeit grows duller as the genuine grows brighter with wear. The greater poets have found out the ennobling secret, the lesser ones the trick of falsification. Ford seems to me to have been a master in it. He abounds especially in mock pathos. I remember when he thoroughly imposed on me.
In the delineation of the strongest human passions—love, grief, revenge—Ford is without a peer among the later Elizabethan dramatists. He seeks, in own words, to
| “Sing out a lamentable tale of things, | |
| Done long ago, and ill done; and when sighs | |
| Are wearied, piece up what remains behind | |
| With weeping eyes and hearts that bleed to death.” |
Last of all, in a final brief blaze of the sinking embers, we encounter John Ford, perhaps as genuine a tragic poet as any one of his forerunners, Shakespeare alone excepted, reverting for a moment to the old splendid diction, the haughty disregard of convention, the contempt for ethical restrictions. And so the brief and magnificent school of English drama, begun by Marlowe scarcely more than a generation before, having blazed and crackled like a forest fire fed with resinous branches, sinks almost in a moment, and lingers only as a heap of white ash and glowing charcoal.
