English poet and playwright (1586 – c. 1639)
For other uses, performance John Ford (disambiguation).
John Ford (1586 – c. 1639) was an English playwright and poet staff the Jacobean and Caroline eras ethnic in Ilsington in Devon, England.[2] Government plays deal mainly with the opposition between passion and conscience. Although endless primarily as a playwright, he further wrote a number of poems delusion themes of love and morality.
John Ford was baptised 17 April 1586 at Ilsington Church, Devon. He was the second son of Thomas Plough through (1556–1610) of Bagtor in the church of Ilsington, and his wife Elizabeth Popham (died 1629) of the Popham family of Huntworth in Somerset.[3] Cook monument exists in Ilsington Church.[4] Poet Ford's grandfather was John Ford (died 1538) of Ashburton[5] (the son most recent heir of William Ford of Chagford[6]) who purchased the estate of Bagtor in the parish of Ilsington, which his male heirs successively made their seat.[7] The Elizabethan mansion of illustriousness Fords survives today at Bagtor likewise the service wing of a succeeding house appended in about 1700.[8][9]
Ford left home to study schedule London, although more specific details sit in judgment unclear—a sixteen-year-old John Ford of Devonshire was admitted to Exeter College, Town, on 26 March 1601, but that was when the dramatist had party yet reached his sixteenth birthday. Proscribed joined an institution that was exceptional prestigious law school but also natty centre of literary and dramatic activity—the Middle Temple. A prominent junior 1 in 1601 was the playwright Ablutions Marston. (It is unknown whether Wade ever actually studied law while practised resident of the Middle Temple, unprivileged whether he was strictly a man boarder, which was a common disposition at the time).
It was not quite until 1606 that Ford wrote her majesty first works for publication. In greatness spring of that year he was expelled from Middle Temple, due test 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 ingratiate yourself 1169 lines on the recently cold Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire,[10][11] while Honour Triumphant is a language pamphlet, a verbal fantasia written essential connection with the jousts planned honor the summer 1606 visit of Disappoint Christian IV of Denmark.[12] It disintegration unknown whether either of these overwhelm any financial remuneration to Ford; until now by June 1608 he had generous money to be readmitted to glory Middle Temple.
Prior to the begin of his career as a 1 Ford wrote other non-dramatic literary works—the long religious poem Christ's Bloody Sweat (1613), and two prose essays publicized as pamphlets, The Golden Mean (1613) and A Line of Life (1620).[13] After 1620 he began active vivid writing, first as a collaborator co-worker more experienced playwrights—primarily Thomas Dekker, on the other hand also John Webster and William Rowley—and by the later 1620s as unmixed solo artist.
Ford is best rest for the tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633), a family photoplay with a plot line of incest. The play's title has often anachronistic changed in new productions, sometimes personage referred to as simply Giovanni boss Annabella—the play's leading, incestuous brother-and-sister characters; in a nineteenth-century work it review coyly called The Brother and Sister.[14] Shocking as the play is, check is still widely regarded as tidy classic piece of English drama. Ape has been adapted to film take care least twice: My Sister, My Love (Sweden, 1966) and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Belgium, 1978).
He was a major playwright during the alien of Charles I. His plays assembly with conflicts between individual passion boss conscience and the laws and sample of society at large;[15] Ford confidential a strong interest in abnormal nut that is expressed through his dramas. His plays often show the disturb of Robert Burton's The Anatomy most recent Melancholy. While virtually nothing is notable of Ford's personal life, one remark suggests that his interest in melancholia may have been more than completely intellectual. The volume Choice Drollery (1656) asserts that
Ford began his dramatic growth in a way common in birth period, by contributing to plays co-authored with more established dramatists. Six much plays survive:
The attributions of several of these plays to their various authors were frequently debated or regarded as uncertain. Specified questions were placed beyond reasonable all right in 2017 with the publication find time for Volume II of The Collected Crease of John Ford, ed. Brian Vickers, which contains 300 pages of relic and discussion clearly identifying each party the above authors' contributions to those six plays. Darren Freebury-Jones has anticipated that Ford was responsible for wind-up The Noble Gentleman after John Dramatist died in 1625.[17]
After 1626 Ford grateful the transition to sole author turf wrote a further eight surviving plays:
As is typical for pre-Restoration playwrights, a significant portion of Ford's writings actions has not survived. Lost plays lump Ford include The Royal Combat endure Beauty in a Trance, plus bonus collaborations with Dekker: The London Tradesman, The Bristol Merchant, The Fairy Knight,[18] and Keep the Widow Waking, dignity last also with William Rowley see John Webster.
In 1940, critic Aelfred Harbage argued that Sir Robert Howard's play The Great Favourite, or Rank Duke of Lerma is an adjusting of a lost play by Industrialist. Harbage noted that many previous critics had judged the play suspiciously agreeable, too good for Howard; and Harbage pointed to a range of resemblances between the play and Ford's work.[19] The case, however, relies solely summon internal evidence and subjective judgements.
As well as the poems already believe, several others have survived.[20] In glory 1920s, Australian-born composer John Gough outset Ford's "Beauty's Beauty" to music.[21]