[In the following essay, Sensabaugh proposes that Ford can be viewed as a prophet of modern thought in that his dramas explore the nascent issues of scientific determinism and extreme individualism.]

I

John Ford stands in the eyes of competent critics as a poet of considerable stature. Commentary uniformly commends his solemn blank verse and his poetic power; editors include at least one of his plays in every important collection of Renaissance drama. Indeed, Charles Lamb places him in the “first order of poets”;¹ and subsequent criticism, though less adulatory, unanimously maintains that Ford's polish and skill entitle him to fame in an age which gave England Shakespeare. Swinburne, for example, describes Ford's poetry as “piercing and intense of sight, steady and sure of stroke, solemn and profound of strain”;² and even Hazlitt, one of Ford's most severe critics, admits that the poetry of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore shows a “power of simple painting and polished style.”³ Furthermore, twentieth-century scholars agree with these able critics. M. Joan Sargeaunt, for instance, in a recent review of Ford's reputation, concludes that Ford's plays present “a body of poetry direct in expression and of grave and passionate import penetrated by a knowledge of the motives that sway the actions of mankind.”⁴ It is clear that Ford as a poet receives unquestioned acclaim.

But where Ford stands as a playwright is neither clear nor unquestioned. In fact, so sharp is the clash of critical opinion that recent scholarship doubts whether “there will ever be agreement among the critics of Ford.”⁵ The growth of two opposing traditions from the time of Charles Lamb to that of modern scholars, moreover, lends credence to the view that Ford's position in the annals of English drama must remain indeterminate. One tradition holds that Ford should be deemed high priest of decadence, an example par excellence of Elizabethan dramatic decline. Thus William Hazlitt, probably the immediate father of this tenacious tradition, accuses Ford of playing with “edged tools” and knowing the use of “poisoned weapons,”⁶ an accusation which later crystallized into an unyielding dogma of Ford's degenerate place in the drama. A second tradition, perhaps born of Charles Lamb's sincere praise, argues that Ford stands as a prophet of modern times, foreseeing contemporary values and problems. Thus Emil Koeppel finds The Broken Heart expressing “ein ganz moderner Gedankengang,”⁷ and one recent critic feels that “in this age we are in outlook nearer to Ford than the generations of the intervening centuries.”⁸

Little commentary lies completely outside these two main traditions. Sometimes one tradition wholly dominates a critical estimate of Ford, sometimes the other. Moody and Lovett, for example, in their History of English Literature, adhere solely to the opinion that Ford was of the decadence:

But while his work shows no sign of degeneration in respect to form, his deliberate turning away from the healthy and normal in human life, and the strange morbid melancholy which shadows his work, betray very plainly that he is of the decadence.⁹

On the other hand, John Buchan, in his History of English Literature, extols Ford's modernity:

Ford is the most modern of the Elizabethans. He studied the springs of action, and as the exponent of the naked human soul is akin in his subtle analysis to Stendhal, Flaubert, and the Goncourts.¹⁰

More often, however, these two traditions appear vaguely joined and thus present a confused clash of critical opinion. Stuart Sherman, cognizant of this confused clash, made an adroit though none too successful attempt to reconcile the two by portraying Ford as a propounder of social dilemmas and problems which, because they appear familiar to contemporary minds, seem modern but which, because they hastened the dissolution of Renaissance custom and law, may be considered to have nourished the germs of decadence. Thus Stuart Sherman contends that The Broken Heart enjoys the unique distinction of being the first problem play in English; but he hastens to add that, since this play subtly attacks the established ethical order, it therefore contributed to the decline of the drama:

It is the forerunner of a long line of modern plays which attack from many different approaches the same problem. We cannot, to-day, call it decadent work, because the ideas involved are now familiar and old; our liberal divorce courts deal with the situation as a part of their business in the existing order. But we must remember that not Shakespeare, nor Jonson, nor Dekker, nor Webster had ever presented the problem of the Broken Heart. …¹¹

This crumbling and dissolution of the established order seems to me the proper meaning to attach to the term decadence.¹²

In short, from a Renaissance point of view Ford may be judged decadent because he helped dissolve the existing Renaissance order; but in contemporary eyes he stands as a modern because of his very rebellion. Now, such adroitness in criticism may be admirable; unfortunately, however, it still leaves Ford in an uncertain position. For calling Ford's revolt against the existing order both decadent and modern is a juggling of terms which gives rise to even further confusion.

Thus whether John Ford is high priest of decadence or prophet of a modern world is a critical problem yet unsolved. He may be both; but this hardly implies, as Stuart Sherman contends, that prophet and priest mean the same. Rather, it may indicate that his decadence is one thing, his modernity another; and that the confusion which hangs over Ford's place in the drama is a result of not recognizing the difference between them. A further separation of these two main traditions may reveal a sharp difference between prophet and priest and in so doing may indicate the procedure necessary for clarifying Ford's place in the annals of English drama.

II

The tradition which claims that Ford should be recorded as the high priest of decadence bestows upon him this title because of his sins of excess. Without a single dissent, critics in this tradition agree that Ford's comedy sinks to a depth of innuendo and filth which earlier playwrights had not dared to plumb. Thus Professor Neilson, in his comparison of Ford's comedy with that of earlier writers of similar rank, concludes that Ford's plays should be judged the lowest:

Finally, in his attempts at comedy, Ford sinks to a lower level than any dramatist of his class, and his farce lacks the justification of much of the coarse buffoonery of his predecessors. It is not realistic; it is not the expression of high spirits; it is a perfunctory attempt to season tragedy and romance with an admixture of rubbish, without humour and without joy.¹³

Moreover, Ford's tragedy, upon which his fame as a dramatist rests, receives the same acrimonious censure. Commentary usually agrees that Ford pandered to an audience growing jaded and tired, and that he heaped horror upon horror until no scene, however bloody, could further bead the brow or prickle the spine. It also contends that both his romance and his tragedy not only abound in scenes of eroticism and of lecherous intent but also attempt to arouse sexual passion for the sake of passion alone. A few comments from well-known critics of drama will illustrate these traditional notions. Professor Thorndike, in his study of the nature and function of tragedy, charges that Ford exhibits decadent excesses similar to the worst of Fletcher and Shirley:

His absorption with questions of sex, his searching for new sensation, his attempt to bestow on moral perversion the enticements of poetry correspond with what is most decadent in Fletcher and Shirley.¹⁴

Professor Schelling speaks more fully to the same point:

There is little question that as the age went on it demanded a stronger sensational diet and it was here that it found what it craved, not only by robustly heaping together horror upon horror but by, what was far worse, a pandering, in the brilliant but, some of them, degenerate plays of Ford, to a pruriency of taste which the cleaner age of Shakespeare had not known.¹⁵

So strong is the notion that Ford plumbed the depths of dramatic crime to an extent unequaled by men of his age that Professor Tucker Brooke states unequivocally that after him no playwright could hope to attract further attention:

After Ford, there was no psychological abnormality, no imaginable depth of misery or excess of half-crazed passion, which could stimulate any longer dramatic attention.¹⁶

Proponents of this tradition tend to exaggerate the extent of Ford's crimes; yet that Ford was decadent in this comparative sense is certain and clear. His comedies teem with the cheapest of wit; his tragedies equal and possibly excel in sensationalism those of John Webster and James Shirley. His principal characters, tortured with burning desires, whisper lecherous pleas and utter arguments for clandestine love which exceed in prurience some of the most erotic scenes in the plays of John Fletcher. Held up in this manner for comparison with men of his age, Ford clearly displays those dramatic sins of excess which common consent agrees to have forwarded dramatic decay; and for this reason alone, as tradition insists, Ford may rightly bear his title of high priest of decadence. So clear is this title for the reasons just given that no further questions arise.

The tradition which deems Ford a modern prophet, however, is neither clear nor explicit. Critics in this tradition associate him with modern thought; yet their reasons for so doing are general if not downright vague. Havelock Ellis, for instance, considers Ford “the most modern of the tribe to whom he belonged”; then he goes on to say:

He was an analyst; he strained the limits of his art to the utmost; he foreboded new ways of expression. Thus he is less nearly related to the men who wrote Othello, and A Woman killed with Kindness, and Valentinian, than to those poets and artists of the naked human soul, the writer of Le Rouge et le Noir, and the yet greater writer of Madame Bovary.¹⁷

To say that Ford is more closely related to Flaubert than to Shakespeare, or that he strains the limits of his art and forebodes new ways of expression, is not to make clear those specific qualities of mind which associate Ford with modern thought. Moreover, other critics show the same vague approach:

['Tis Pity She's a Whore] is modern in feeling rather than for all time; it is not the ice-cold words of Hamlet and the Gravedigger that we hear, but something very much nearer to ourselves, that appeals especially to us, as we stand to-day perhaps, who knows, on the verge of a new age of faith.¹⁸

To leave Ford's modernity thus in the realm of “feeling” may satisfy an occultist; but a mundane scholar, seeking to discover the cast of Ford's thought, may modestly ask what this feeling is, particularly if it is related to a new age of faith upon whose verge we now stand. In short, from Charles Lamb, who extolled Ford for pursuing a “right line even in obliquity,” to John Buchan, who called him the “most modern of the Elizabethans,” critics have associated Ford with modern faiths and beliefs; but they have neither made that association clear nor defined the specific faiths which allow him to claim his title of prophet.

Thus, although Ford has been accorded two definite titles during the last century of criticism, only one has been clearly bestowed. Melodrama, sensationalism, and dramatic excesses of all kinds undoubtedly make him high priest of decadence; his philosophy of life, as revealed through the dramatic world he created, just as undoubtedly associates him with the mind of modern man. Recognition of this difference between prophet and priest, moreover, clarifies in some measure his anomalous position. But, since critics have yet to define his philosophy, his relation to modern thought and hence his title of prophet remain obscure.

III

The unquestioned fame of Ford as a poet demands a consideration of his dramatic world and of the philosophy in it so that his title of prophet, and thus his place in the drama, may be clearly established. Such a consideration, however, is beset with many scholarly pitfalls. In the first place, an attempt to discover what Ford really thought is in itself perilous. Other than a few early prose pieces and poems, he left no statement of his philosophy; and what may be inferred from his mature plays is at best only an indication, not a final demonstration, of his faiths and beliefs. Second, an endeavor to characterize the modern mind so that Ford may be held up in comparison to it appears at the outset to be highly presumptuous; for so diverse are human interests today and so complex is modern thought that it is hard to find agreement even among men of similar training and taste. Finally, an effort to relate Ford's faiths to modern thought is at best dubious in that the association is bound to be broad. Yet risks of inference, of oversimplification, and of broad association must be taken not only to reveal Ford's philosophy but also to relate it to modern thought and hence to secure for him his title of prophet.

Perhaps the first logical step in making clear Ford's title of prophet involves describing a few beliefs and dilemmas generally unknown to Renaissance man but considered today as marks of the modern mind. Widely accepted by modern man is the belief that scientific laws determine the course of his life. This belief, which began to affect English thought early in the seventeenth century, sprang from scientific inquiries into the nature of man, grew swiftly through succeeding years, and has become in modern times a fixed habit of mind. This belief has so directed the course of contemporary life that old Renaissance values, such as the idea of retributive justice, for example, in reality no longer obtain. In fact, modern man deliberately seeks the meaning of life, not in a study of morals and ethics, but in the discovery of physical laws; and the result has been that man now observes crime and defection with clinical eyes. Witness, for example, the approach of Havelock Ellis to problems of morals and sex. He, with Bertrand Russell and hosts of like-minded men, convinced that misbehavior is simply behavior, probes conventional sins with an air of detachment similar to that of a mechanic examining a defective machine. As a consequence of this scientific approach, evil loses the appearance of evil, for the very reason that scientifically no evil exists. Whatever else modern man may believe, his conviction that life is determined by amoral forces, with the logical corollary that actions resulting from these amoral forces must themselves be viewed with complete amorality, distinguishes the man of today from his Renaissance ancestor.

A second belief which distinguishes modern man from his Renaissance forebears is his faith in the supreme authority of the individual. This faith is not to be confused with the perennial desire of all humanists for liberty and individual rights; instead, it is to be associated with passionate and often unbridled rebellion. Stemming from the Reformation and growing rapidly during the Renaissance, this faith helped produce religious schism in the seventeenth century, Romanticism in the eighteenth, and “rugged individualism” in the century just past. Wherever found, such individualism expresses a caustic mistrust of institutions and laws; its exponents are always professed rebels. Milton in his pamphleteer years, Rousseau in his Émile, and Byron in his Childe Harold illustrate a cast of mind which modern men now claim for their own. This association of unbridled individualism with modernity may have no logical basis; nevertheless, the association exists. In fact, individualism carried to a degree which would have astonished both Richard Hooker and William Shakespeare is generally considered to be a sign of the modern and emancipated mind.

These two marks of the modern mind—belief in scientific determinism and faith in extreme individualism—will serve to identify Ford with modern thought. This identification, however, may await later analysis. At the present juncture it is more important to explore further the mind of today by examining the dilemmas these faiths have produced in modern writers. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley portrays the clash of old moral laws and new scientific injunctions; in addition, he describes sharp and disturbing dilemmas which arise from these conflicts. In The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot paints the hollow despair that attends the modern faith in individualism. Both authors imply that no matter how much man may wish to guide his course through the world by science or by claims of the ego, old gods and myths arise to prevent him from pursuing a strictly logical path. The modern Samaritan, contrary to what Albert Wiggam in The New Decalogue of Science suggests, cannot pass by on the other side with a clear conscience simply because he is not sure that his oil and wine are free from bacteria; nor can the modern egoist escape the injunctions of the moral world merely because he puts faith in individual whim. Thus, unable to accept wholeheartedly either old moral values or the new commandments of modern faiths, the man of today has reached an ethical impasse.

This ethical impasse has been central in most great English poetry of the last one hundred years. Lord Tennyson, in In Memoriam, shows the problems which arise from the clash between science and inherited religious beliefs; Robert Browning, in The Ring and the Book, reiterates the dilemmas which spring from pressing to a logical extreme the individual's claim against custom and law. Perhaps this ethical impasse has affected the nature and function of tragedy, however, more than the matter of poems. For tragedy no longer means, as of old, man's defeat in a world of retributive justice, where defects of character bring man to his doom; instead, tragedy means recognition of implacable physical laws which run athwart human hopes and ideals. Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck questions the value of traditional virtue by probing it with scientific laws; Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude toys with “scientific” adultery as a cure for Nina's libido, and in addition makes it appear that the individual suffers because he adheres to conventional ethics. In both plays the individual strengthens his case against old human ideals by appealing to facts or methods of science. Sharp dilemmas thus arise, and contemplation of these dilemmas, which admit of no clear-cut resolution, leads to hopeless despair and confusion.

This brief analysis of modern faiths and dilemmas makes no attempt at completeness; its shortcomings are so obvious that apology for it is superfluous. Brief as it is, however, it serves the purpose of this study in that it describes those faiths and dilemmas which not only moved Henrik Ibsen to write Ghosts but also, strange as it seems, motivated John Ford in his most significant plays. Yet that Ford should have foreseen at the close of the Renaissance the dilemmas inherent in modern tragedy is not strange if his plays are viewed with the perspective of his immediate milieu. During his time science took root, flourished apace, and gave rise to a belief later described as scientific determinism; and social and political revolts, which shook the foundations of English institutional life, engendered ideas of liberty and individualism subsequently claimed by modern man. If John Ford absorbed these faiths and ideas and revealed in his tragedies the very dilemmas they later produced in the modern mind, he can be considered a genuine prophet and should therefore be given a new place in the annals of English drama.

Notes

1. Charles Lamb, Specimens of English Dramatic Poets (London, 1854), p. 228.

2. Algernon Charles Swinburne, Essays and Studies (London, 1875), p. 304.

3. William Hazlitt, Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (New York, 1849), p. 109.

4. M. Joan Sargeaunt, John Ford (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1935), p. 187.

5. Sargeaunt, op. cit., p. 175.

6. Hazlitt, op. cit., p. 109.

7. Quellen-Studien zu den Dramen George Chapman's, Philip Massinger's und John Ford's (Strassburg, 1897), p. 175.

8. Sargeaunt, op. cit., p. 187.

9. Moody and Lovett, A History of English Literature (Chicago, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1918), p. 154.

10. John Buchan, A History of English Literature (New York, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1929), p. 183.

11. Stuart Sherman, in John Fordes Dramatische Werke. Materialien zur Kunde des älteren Englischen Dramas (ed. W. Bang, Louvain, 1908), Band XXIII, Introduction, p. xi.

12. Ibid., p. xviii.

13. William Allan Neilson, in The Cambridge History of English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1919), VI, 196. Quoted by special permission of The Macmillan Company, American publishers.

14. Ashley H. Thorndike, Tragedy (New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1908), p. 229.

15. Felix E. Schelling, Foreign Influences in Elizabethan Plays (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1923), p. 72.

16. C. F. Tucker Brooke, The Tudor Drama (New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911), p. 446.

17. Havelock Ellis, John Ford (London, Vizetelly & Co., 1888), p. xvii.

18. E. H., “John Ford,” The Academy, LX (1901), 430.