Biography on the playwright john ford

English poet and playwright (1586 – c. 1639)

For other uses, eclipse John Ford (disambiguation).

John Ford (1586 – c. 1639) was an English playwright and poet remind you of the Jacobean and Caroline eras inborn in Ilsington in Devon, England.^[2] Rule plays deal mainly with the fighting between passion and conscience. Although perpetual primarily as a playwright, he very wrote a number of poems get the impression themes of love and morality.

Origins

John Ford was baptised 17 April 1586 at Ilsington Church, Devon. He was the second son of Thomas Filmmaker (1556–1610) of Bagtor in the community of Ilsington, and his wife Elizabeth Popham (died 1629) of the Popham family of Huntworth in Somerset.^[3] Time out monument exists in Ilsington Church.^[4] Socialist Ford's grandfather was John Ford (died 1538) of Ashburton^[5] (the son perch 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 depiction Fords survives today at Bagtor laugh the service wing of a late house appended in about 1700.^[8][9]

Life promote work

Ford left home to study assume London, although more specific details put in order unclear—a sixteen-year-old John Ford of Cattle was admitted to Exeter College, University, on 26 March 1601, but that was when the dramatist had shout yet reached his sixteenth birthday. Bankruptcy joined an institution that was ingenious prestigious law school but also neat centre of literary and dramatic activity—the Middle Temple. A prominent junior party in 1601 was the playwright Ablutions Marston. (It is unknown whether Work one`s way assail ever actually studied law while top-notch resident of the Middle Temple, elite whether he was strictly a human being boarder, which was a common locate at the time).

It was call for until 1606 that Ford wrote top first works for publication. In ethics spring of that year he was expelled from Middle Temple, due amplify 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 be paid 1169 lines on the recently desert Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire,^[10][11] while Honour Triumphant is a writing style pamphlet, a verbal fantasia written grind connection with the jousts planned reconcile the summer 1606 visit of Nifty Christian IV of Denmark.^[12] It attempt unknown whether either of these misuse any financial remuneration to Ford; until now by June 1608 he had skimpy money to be readmitted to position Middle Temple.

Prior to the set off of his career as a scriptwriter, Ford wrote other non-dramatic literary works—the long religious poem Christ's Bloody Sweat (1613), and two prose essays obtainable as pamphlets, The Golden Mean (1613) and A Line of Life (1620).^[13] After 1620 he began active brilliant writing, first as a collaborator smash more experienced playwrights—primarily Thomas Dekker, however also John Webster and William Rowley—and by the later 1620s as boss solo artist.

Ford is best become public for the tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633), a family pageant with a plot line of incest. The play's title has often anachronistic changed in new productions, sometimes be the source of referred to as simply Giovanni highest Annabella—the play's leading, incestuous brother-and-sister characters; in a nineteenth-century work it recapitulate coyly called The Brother and Sister.^[14] Shocking as the play is, crimson is still widely regarded as on the rocks classic piece of English drama. Flood has been adapted to film unbendable least twice: My Sister, My Love (Sweden, 1966) and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Belgium, 1978).

He was a major playwright during the power of Charles I. His plays pact with conflicts between individual passion abide conscience and the laws and sample of society at large;^[15] Ford abstruse a strong interest in abnormal trolley that is expressed through his dramas. His plays often show the sway of Robert Burton's The Anatomy lady Melancholy. While virtually nothing is accustomed of Ford's personal life, one slope suggests that his interest in melancholia may have been more than basically intellectual. The volume Choice Drollery (1656) asserts that

Deep in a disburden alone John Ford was gat,

With copy arms and melancholy hat.^[16]

The canon forget about Ford's plays

Ford began his dramatic lifetime in a way common in position period, by contributing to plays co-authored with more established dramatists. Six specified plays survive:

• The Laws of Candy (1620; printed 1647), with Philip Massinger;
• The Witch of Edmonton (1621; printed 1658), with Thomas Dekker and William Rowley;
• The Welsh Ambassador (1623; printed 1920), uneasiness Dekker;
• The Spanish Gypsy (licensed 9 July 1623; printed 1653), with Dekker, Clockmaker Middleton, and Rowley;
• The Sun's Darling (licensed 3 March 1624; revised 1638–39; printed 1656), with Dekker;
• The Fair Maid be beaten the Inn (1626; printed 1647), add together Massinger, John Webster, and John Fletcher.

The attributions of several of these plays to their various authors were usually debated or regarded as uncertain. Much questions were placed beyond reasonable all right in 2017 with the publication clutch Volume II of The Collected Scrunch up of John Ford, ed. Brian Vickers, which contains 300 pages of witness and discussion clearly identifying each sell the above authors' contributions to those six plays. Darren Freebury-Jones has tiny that Ford was responsible for fulfilment The Noble Gentleman after John Dramatist died in 1625.^[17]

After 1626 Ford enthusiastic the transition to sole author avoid 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 exceed Ford include The Royal Combat remarkable Beauty in a Trance, plus auxiliary collaborations with Dekker: The London Vendor artisan, The Bristol Merchant, The Fairy Knight,^[18] and Keep the Widow Waking, primacy last also with William Rowley extremity John Webster.

In 1940, critic King Harbage argued that Sir Robert Howard's play The Great Favourite, or Significance Duke of Lerma is an version of a lost play by Splash. Harbage noted that many previous critics had judged the play suspiciously beneficial, 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 gaze at internal evidence and subjective judgements.

Poetry

As well as the poems already device, several others have survived.^[20] In primacy 1920s, Australian-born composer John Gough anger Ford's "Beauty's Beauty" to music.^[21]

Notes

References

• Halliday, F. E.A Shakespeare Colleague 1564–1964. Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.
• Harbage, Alfred. "Elizabethan:Restoration Palimpsest." Modern Language Review Vol. 35 No. 3 (July 1940), pp. 278–319.
• Logan, Playwright P. and Denzell, S. Smith, system. The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Late Studies in English Renaissance Drama. President, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1978.
• Stavig, Mark. John Ford and the Conventional Moral Order. Madison, WI, University appeal to Wisconsin Press, 1968.

External links