OVERVIEWS AND GENERAL STUDIES

Davril, R., "Shakespeare and Ford." Shakespeare Jahrbuch 94 (1958): 121-31.

Argues that while many themes and devices in Ford's plays parallel those of Shakespeare, Ford succeeded in creating a distinct oeuvre containing substantial lyrical and psychological qualities.

Farr, Dorothy M. John Ford and the Caroline Theatre. London: The Macmillan Press, 1979, 184 p.

Examines Ford's plays in relation to the tastes and sensibilities of Caroline playgoers.

Hopkins, Lisa. John Ford's Political Theatre. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994, 196 p.

Interprets Ford's dramas and stage devices in the context of the political and religious issues of the Caroline era.

McMaster, Juliet. "Love, Lust, and Sham: Structural Pattern in the Plays of John Ford." Renaissance Drama New Series II (1969): 157-66.

Explores various kinds of sexual relationships in the main plots and subplots of Ford's plays as a key to understanding the dramatic structure of his tragedies.

Neill, Michael, ed. John Ford: Critical Revisions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, 287 p.

Collection of essays that strives to reevaluate Ford's place in the English literary canon using postmodern critical techniques.

Oliver, H. J. The Problem of John Ford. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1955, 146 p.

Comprehensive overview of Ford's life and literary career.

Sargeaunt, M. Joan. John Ford. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966, 232 p.

Influential biographical and critical survey of Ford.

Sensabaugh, G. F. The Tragic Muse of John Ford. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1944, 196 p.

Discusses Ford's plays as products of the Caroline age and attempts to reconcile them with modern sensibilities.

'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE

Champion, Larry S. "Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore' and the Jacobean Tragic Perspective." PMLA 90, No. 1 (January 1975): 78-87.

Asserts that Ford dramatizes a milieu of moral norms outside of the audience's traditional realm of experience in Tis Pity She's a Whore, enabling the playwright to create a "sustained ambivalence" that forces "the spectators simultaneously to sympathize vicariously with the lovers and to sit in judgment on their actions."

Hogan, A. P. '"Tis Pity She's a Whore: The Overall Design." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 17 (1977): 303-16.

Contends that both the main plot and subplot of Tis Pity She's a Whore provide an "integration of private and public which produces an analysis of human behavior shot through with the lurid illumination of uncompromising irony."

Hoy, Cyrus. '"Ignorance in Knowledge:' Marlowe's Faustus and Ford's Giovanni." Modern Philology LVII, No. 3 (February 1960): 145-54.

Proposes that Tis Pity She's a Whore was more likely influenced by Marlowe's Doctor Faustus than by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

THE BROKEN HEART

Barton, Anne. "Oxymoron and the Structure of Ford's 'The Broken Heart.'" Essays and Studies (1980): 70-94.

Examines Ford's use of oxymorons as a key thematic device in dramatizing the "contradictoriness of life … and something of its sense of claustrophobia and impasse."

Kaufmann, R. J. "Ford's 'Waste Land': The Broken Heart." Renaissance Drama New Series III (1970): 167-87.

Views The Broken Heart as a "tragedy of manners," in which each of the characters plays a specific role based on a predetermined set of social conditions.

Neill, Michael. "Ford's Unbroken Art: The Moral Design of 'The Broken Heart.'" Modern Language Review 75, No. 2 (April 1980): 249-68.

Asserts that Ford's adroit handling of several sophisticated social paradoxes in The Broken Heart attests to his ability as a dramatic artist.

PERKIN WARBECK

Barton, Anne. "He That Plays the King: Ford's Perkin Warbeck and the Stuart History Play." English Drama: Forms and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, pp. 69-93.

Analyzes Perkin Warbeck in the context of the precarious political conditions during the Jacobean and Caroline eras.

Candido, Joseph. 'The 'Strange Truth' of Perkin Warbeck." Philological Quarterly 59, No. 3 (Summer 1980): 300-15.

Interprets Ford's representation of Perkin Warbeck in the eponymous tragedy as an example of a dramatist exploring "the self-fashioning Renaissance spirit in action."

Struble, Mildred Clara. A Critical Edition of Ford's Perkin Warbeck. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1926, 214 p.

Influential early twentieth-century critical study of Ford's Perkin Warbeck.

Additional coverage of Ford's life and career is contained in the following source published by Gale Research: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 58.