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The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
John Ford (1586–c. 1640)
Ford, John. An English dramatist; born at Islington in Devon, April 1586; died about 1640. He turned from law to devote himself to the drama. His first poem was ‘Fame’s Memorial,’ an elegy on the Earl of Devonshire. Alone and in collaboration he wrote a series of very successful plays. His tragedies sometimes go beyond even the elastic Elizabethan limits of the permissible, and are Greek in repulsiveness of theme; his comedies are sometimes distasteful; but as a poet he ranks among the foremost outside of Shakespeare. Among his best plays are: ‘The Lover’s Melancholy’; ‘The Broken Heart’; ‘Love’s Sacrifice’; ‘Perkin Warbeck’; ‘’Tis Pity She’s a Whore.’ (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).