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John Ford

Author profile

born

April 17, 1586 in Ilsington, The United Kingdom

died

January 01, 1640

gender

male

genre

Literature & Fiction, Poetry

About this author

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John Ford (baptised 17 April 1586 – c. 1640?) was an English Jacobean and Caroline playwright and poet born in Ilsington in Devon in 1586.

Ford left home to study in London, although more specific details are unclear — a sixteen-year-old John Ford of Devon was admitted to Exeter College, Oxford on 26 March 1601, but this was when the dramatist had not yet reached his sixteenth birthday. He joined an institution that was a prestigious law school but also a centre of literary and dramatic activity — the Middle Temple. A prominent junior member in 1601 was the playwright John Marston. (It is unknown whether Ford ever actually studied law while a resident of the Middle Temple, or whether he was strictly a gentleman boarder, which was a common ar...more John Ford (baptised 17 April 1586 – c. 1640?) was an English Jacobean and Caroline playwright and poet born in Ilsington in Devon in 1586.

Ford left home to study in London, although more specific details are unclear — a sixteen-year-old John Ford of Devon was admitted to Exeter College, Oxford on 26 March 1601, but this was when the dramatist had not yet reached his sixteenth birthday. He joined an institution that was a prestigious law school but also a centre of literary and dramatic activity — the Middle Temple. A prominent junior member in 1601 was the playwright John Marston. (It is unknown whether Ford ever actually studied law while a resident of the Middle Temple, or whether he was strictly a gentleman boarder, which was a common arrangement at the time.)

It was not until 1606 that Ford wrote his first works for publication. In the spring of that year he was expelled from Middle Temple, due to his financial problems, and Fame's Memorial and Honour Triumphant soon followed. Both works are clear bids for patronage: Fame's Memorial is an elegy of 1169 lines on the recently-deceased Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire, while Honour Triumphant is a prose pamphlet, a verbal fantasia written in connection with the jousts planned for the summer 1606 visit of King Christian IV of Denmark. It is unknown whether either of these brought any financial remuneration to Ford; yet by June 1608 he had enough money to be readmitted to the Middle Temple.

Prior to the start of his career as a playwright, Ford wrote other non-dramatic literary works—the long religious poem Christ's Bloody Sweat (1613), and two prose essays published as pamphlets, The Golden Mean (1613) and A Line of Life (1620). After 1620 he began active dramatic writing, first as a collaborator with more experienced playwrights — primarily Thomas Dekker, but also John Webster and William Rowley — and by the later 1620s as a solo artist.

Ford is best known for the tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633), a family drama with a plot line of incest. The play's title has often been changed in new productions, sometimes being referred to as simply Giovanni and Annabella — the play's leading, incestuous brother-and-sister characters; in a nineteenth-century work it is coyly called The Brother and Sister. Shocking as the play is, it is still widely regarded as a classic piece of English drama.

He was a major playwright during the reign of Charles I. His plays deal with conflicts between individual passion and conscience and the laws and morals of society at large; Ford had a strong interest in abnormal psychology that is expressed through his dramas. His plays often show the influence of Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. (less)

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Books by John Ford

Average rating: 3.69 · 807 ratings · 64 reviews · 106 distinct works

	'Tis Pity She's a Whore by John Ford, Martin Wiggins 3.60 avg rating — 512 ratings — published 1633 — 31 editions	My rating:
	'Tis Pity She's a Whore and Other Plays by John Ford, Marion Lomax (Editor) 3.91 avg rating — 112 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:
	The Broken Heart 3.10 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1633 — 10 editions	My rating:
	Three Plays 4.00 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1971	My rating:
	Tutankhamen's Treasures 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings	My rating:
	The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck: A Strange Truth 3.25 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1634 — 5 editions	My rating:
	'Tis Pity She's a Whore. by John Ford, Roper (Editor) 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1976	My rating:
	Love's Lure: God's Project People: A Third Millennium Vision 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2011	My rating:
	The Broken Heart 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating	My rating:
	Mister Roberts 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 2 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by John Ford

“Revenge proves its own executioner.”
― John Ford, The Broken Heart

tags: revenge

670 people liked it

“Lost, I am Lost! My fates have doomed my death.
The more I strive, I love; the more I love,
The less I hope. I see my ruin, certain.
What judgement or endeavors could apply
To my incurable and restless wounds
I throughly have examined, but in vain.
Oh, that it were not in religion sin
To make our love a god and worship it!
I have even wearied heaven with prayers, dried up
The spring of my continual tears, even starved
My veins with daily fasts; what wit or art
Could counsel, I have practiced. But, alas,
I find all these but dreams and old men's tales
To fright unsteady youth; I'm still the same.
Or I must speak or burst. Tis not, I know,
My lust, but tis my fate that leads me on.
Keep fear and low fainthearted shame with slaves!
I'll tell her that I love her, through my heart
Were rated at the price of that attempt.”
― John Ford, Tis Pity She's A Whore

11 people liked it

“Alas, poor gentleman,
He look’d not like the ruins of his youth
But like the ruins of those ruins.”
― John Ford, The Broken Heart

5 people liked it

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John's Fans (8)

John Ford

Author profile

combine editionsBooks by John Ford

Quotes by John Ford

combine editions
Books by John Ford