Ford, John - William Hazlitt (essay date 1820)

William Hazlitt (essay date 1820)

SOURCE: Hazlitt, William. “Lecture IV.” In Lectures on the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth and Characters of Shakespear's Plays, pp. 107-43. London: Bell & Daldy, 1870.

[In the following essay, which was originally published in 1820, Hazlitt describes Ford's dramatic technique as artificial and lacking imagination, but notes that such deficiencies are often overlooked due to the sensational nature of his plays.]

Ford is not so great a favourite with me as with some others, from whose judgment I dissent with diffidence. It has been lamented that the play of his which has been most admired ('Tis Pity She's a Whore) had not a less exceptionable subject. I do not know, but I suspect that the exceptionableness of the subject is that which constitutes the chief merit of the play. The repulsiveness of the story is what gives it its critical interest; for it is a studiously prosaic statement of...

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