(1586-?)
The dramatic genius of the English Renaissance had well-nigh spent
itself when the sombre creations of John Ford appeared upon a stage
over which the clouds of the Civil War were fast gathering. Little is
known of this dramatist, who represents the decadent period which
followed the age of Shakespeare. He was born in 1586; entered the
Middle Temple in 1602; after 1641 he is swallowed up in the turmoil of
the time. The few scattered records of his life add nothing to, nor do
they take anything from, the John Ford of 'The Broken Heart' and
'Perkin Warbeck.'
His plays are infected with a spirit alien to the poise and beauty of
the best Elizabethan drama. His creations tell of oblique vision; of a
disillusioned genius, predisposed to abnormal or exaggerated forms of
human experience. He breaks through the moral order, in his love for
the eccentricities of passion. He weaves the spell of his genius
around strange sins.
The problems of despair which Ford propounds but never solves, form
the plot of 'The Broken Heart'; Calantha, Ithocles, Penthea, Orgilus,
are wan types of the passive suffering which numbs the soul to death.
Charles Lamb has eulogized the final scene of this drama. To many
critics, the self-possession of Calantha savors of the theatrical. The
scene between Penthea and her brother Ithocles, who had forced her to
marry Bassanes though she loved Orgilus, is replete with the
tenderness, the sense of subdued anguish, of which Ford was a master.
He is the dramatist of broken hearts, whose waste places are
unrelieved by a touch of sunlight. His love of "passion at war with
circumstance" again finds expression in 'Love's Sacrifice,' a drama of
moral confusions. In 'The Lover's Melancholy' sorrow has grown
pensive. A quiet beauty rests upon the famous scene in which
Parthenophil strives with the nightingale for the prize of music.
'The Lady's Trial,' 'The Fancies Chaste and Noble,' 'The Sun's
Darling' (written in conjunction with Dekker), are worthy only of
passing notice. They leave but a pale impression upon the mind. In
'Perkin Warbeck,' the one historical play of Ford, he exhibits his
mastery over straightforward, sinewy verse. 'The Witch of Edmonton,'
of which he wrote the first act, gives a signal example of his modern
style and spirit.
With the exception of 'Perkin Warbeck,' his dramas are destitute of
outlook. This moral contraction heightens the intensity of passion,
which in his conception of it has always its ancient significance of
suffering. His comic scenes are contemptible. He is at his greatest
when dealing with the subtleties of the human heart. Through him we
enter into the darker zones of the soul; we apprehend its remoter
sufferings. Confusion of spiritual vision, blended with the tyranny of
passion, produce his greatest scenes. His are the tragedies of
"unfulfilled desire."
The verse of Ford is measured, passionless, polished. There is a
subtle music in his lines which haunts the memory.
"Parthenophil is lost, and I would see him;
For he is like to something I remember,
A great while since, a long, long time ago."
With Ford the sun-born radiance of the noblest Elizabethan drama fades
from the stage. An artificial light, thereafter, replaced it.