John Ford

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  • Ali, Florence, Opposing Absolutes: Conviction and Convention in John Ford's Plays. Jacobean Drama Studies 44. Edited by James Hogg. Salzburg, Austria: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1974, 109 p. (Posits that rather than committing to such opposing absolutes as Christian morality or scientific physiology, Ford intentionally maintains an ambivalence toward the characters and themes in his plays.)
  • Amtower, Laurel, "'This Idol Thou Ador'st': The Iconography of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore," Papers on Language and Literature 34, No. 2 (Spring 1998): 179-206. (Argues that Ford created an ambivalent iconography in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore which is analogous to England's religious and political stance toward Catholicism in the early seventeenth century.)
  • Anderson, Jr., Donald K., "John Ford," in The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists, edited by Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, pp. 120-51. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978. (In-depth bibliographical survey of Ford's life and works.)
  • Anderson, Jr., Donald K., "The Heart and the Banquet: Imagery in Ford's 'Tis Pity and The Broken Heart," Studies in English Literature 2, No. 1 (Winter 1962): 209-17. (Examines Ford's sophisticated use of heart and banquet imagery in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and The Broken Heart.)
  • Anderson, Jr., Donald K., John Ford. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972, 160 p. (Monograph covering Ford's life, literary career, and critical reception.)
  • Anderson, Jr., Donald K., ed., "Concord in Discord": The Plays of John Ford, 1586-1986. New York: AMS Press, 1986, 298 p. (Collection of scholarly essays addressing various topics related to Ford's plays.)
  • Babb, Lawrence, "Abnormal Psychology in John Ford's Perkin Warbeck," Modern Language Notes 51, No. 4 (April 1936): 234-37. (Posits that Ford conceived of Perkin Warbeck as “a melancholic with the delusion of grandeur.”)
  • Barish, Jonas A., "Perkin Warbeck as Anti-History," Essays in Criticism XX, No. 2 (1970): 151-71. (Contends that Perkin Warbeck represents Ford's idealized concept of a monarch who, while he cannot succeed in the face of the “politics of pragmatism,” “wrings from defeat a triumph peculiar to his virtues, and it is a royal one.”)
  • Barton, Anne, "He That Plays the King: Ford's Perkin Warbeck and the Stuart History Play," in 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.)
  • 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.")
  • Boas, Frederick S., "John Ford," in his An Introduction to Stuart Drama, pp. 337-51. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946. (Survey of Ford's life and literary canon.)
  • Bradbrook, Muriel C., "The Decadence," in Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy, pp. 241-67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952. (Discusses Ford's dramatic works within the context of the decadent literary tradition following the Elizabethan age.)
  • 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.")
  • 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.")
  • Clark, Ira, "Ford's Tragedy of Ritual Suffering," in his Professional Playwrights: Massinger, Ford, Shirley, & Brome, pp. 73-111. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1992. (Examines Ford's plays as social dramas in which the characters represent unexamined social and moral roles that usually lead to tragedy.)
  • 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.)
  • Edwards, Philip, "The Royal Pretenders: Ford's Perkin Warbeck and Massinger's Believe As You List," in his Threshold of a Nation: A Study in English and Irish Drama, pp. 174-190. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. (Analyzes the historical significance of Ford's sympathetic treatment toward the royal pretender in Perkin Warbeck.)
  • Eliot, T. S., "John Ford," in Selected Essays, pp. 193-204. London: Faber and Faber, 1934. (Argues that Ford holds a unique position among Shakespeare's successors for his distinctive manipulation of blank verse poetry.)
  • Ellis-Fermor, Una, "Ford," in her The Jacobean Drama: An Interpretation, pp. 227-46. 1936. Reprint. London: Metheun, 1961. (Maintains that Ford's art signifies the conclusion of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic ages.)
  • Ewing, S. Blaine, "The Significance of Melancholy," in Burtonian Melancholy in the Plays of John Ford, pp. 92-116. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940. (Examines the influence of Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy on Ford's dramatic works.)
  • Farr, Dorothy M., John Ford and the Caroline Theatre. London: Macmillan, 1979, 184 p. (Asserts that a more complete understanding of Ford's plays can be realized when the works are analyzed in relation to the Caroline theaters for which they were written and performed.)
  • 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.)
  • Gifford, W., "Introduction," in The Dramatic Works of John Ford, pp. v-cxci. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1831. (Comprehensive overview of Ford's life and literary career.)
  • Harbage, Alfred, "The Mystery of Perkin Warbeck," in Studies in the English Renaissance Drama: In Memory of Karl Julius Holznecht, edited by Josephine W. Bennett, Oscar Cargill, and Vernon Hall, Jr., pp. 125-41. New York: New York University Press, 1959. (Proposes that the reason why Perkin Warbeck is so distinct in the Ford literary canon is because Ford may have collaborated with Thomas Dekker on the history play.)
  • 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.")
  • 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.)
  • 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.)
  • Huebert, Ronald, John Ford: Baroque English Dramatist. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1977, 248 p. (Maintains that intensely emotional characters, an open dramatic style, and an unconventional rhetorical practice all identify Ford as a baroque playwright.)
  • Jeffrey, Francis, Review of The Dramatic Works of John Ford, in Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, vol. II, pp. 284-314. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844. (Offers a review, originally published in 1811, in which Ford's plays are relegated to the status of unremarkable works produced in an inferior dramatic age.)
  • 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.)
  • Kaufmann, R. J., "Ford's Tragic Perspective," Texas Studies in Literature and Language 1, No. 4 (Winter 1960): 522-37. (Examines Ford's dramatic treatment of tragic jealousy, focusing on how such themes as misalliance, vows, and counterfeiting relate to “Ford's heightened awareness of the arbitrary in human life.”)
  • Kirsch, Arthur, "Ford," in his Jacobean Dramatic Perspectives, pp. 112-26. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 1972. (Challenges the Romantic bias that Ford was a distinctive tragedian, positing instead that his dramaturgy and themes were borrowed from Beaumont and Fletcher.)
  • Lee, Vernon, "The Italy of the Elizabethan Dramatists," in her Euphorion: Being Studies of the Antique and the Medieval in the Renaissance, pp. 57-108. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1885. (Maintains that Ford was a master of dramatizing intense tragic passion, but he nevertheless lacked moral fiber.)
  • Leech, Clifford, John Ford. Writers and Their Work 170. Edited by Geoffrey Bullough. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1964, 40 p. (General overview of Ford's life and literary career, emphasizing his discipleship to John Fletcher.)
  • McMaster, Juliet, "Love, Lust, and Sham: Structural Pattern in the Plays of John Ford," Renaissance Drama n.s. 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.)
  • 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, "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.)
  • 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.)
  • 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.)
  • Orbison, Tucker, The Tragic Vision of John Ford. Jacobean Drama Studies 21. Edited by James Hogg. Salzburg, Austria: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1974. 192 p. (Traces the evolution of Ford's tragic vision in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Love's Sacrifice, The Broken Heart, and Perkin Warbeck.)
  • Powell, Raymond, "The Adaptation of a Shakespearean Genre: Othello and Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore," Renaissance Quarterly 48, No. 3 (Autumn 1995): 582-92. (Discusses how Ford appropriated key Shakespearean themes for 'Tis Pity She's a Whore.)
  • Randall, Dale B. J., "Theatres of Greatness: A Revisionary View of Ford's Perkin Warbeck," Victoria, B. C.: English Literary Studies, University of Victoria, 1986, 80 p. (Argues that Perkin Warbeck was written in the 1620s rather than the 1630s and concludes that such a revision significantly alters the political undertones of the play.)
  • Ribner, Irving, "John Ford," in his Jacobean Tragedy: The Quest for Moral Order, pp. 153-75. London: Metheun, 1962. (Asserts that while Ford's pessimistic treatment of morality creates the potential for tragedy, his plays are often marred by an “inability to lead his audience to a full resolution of the moral problems which he proposes.”)
  • Robson, Ian, The Moral World of John Ford's Drama. Jacobean Drama Studies 90. Edited by James Hogg. Salzburg, Austria: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1983, 284 p. (Observes that since Ford “refuses to act as a moral judge” on the characters in his plays, it is not possible for the audience to make an “unequivocal judgement” about their actions.)
  • 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.)
  • Sherman, Stuart P., "Stella and The Broken Heart," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America XXIV, No 2 (1909): 274-85. (Contends that The Broken Heart is based on an actual love affair involving Lady Penelope Devereux, Countess of Devonshire.)
  • 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.)
  • Tannenbaum, Samuel A. and Dorothy R. Tannenbaum, "John Ford," in their Elizabethan Bibliographies, vol. II. 1941. Reprint. Port Washington, N. Y.: Kennikat Press, 1967. (Includes a brief introduction to Ford and a 26-page primary and secondary bibliography of his life and major works.)
  • Ure, Peter, "Cult and Initiates in Ford's Love's Sacrifice," Modern Language Quarterly XI (1950): 298-306. (Discerns evidence of the Platonic cult theme in Love's Sacrifice but concludes that it is not as clearly developed in this play as it is in later courtly dramas.)
  • Waith, Eugene M., "Struggle for Calm: The Dramatic Structure of The Broken Heart," in English Renaissance Drama: Essays in Honor of Madeleine Doran & Mark Eccles, edited by Standish Henning, Robert Kimbrough, and Richard Knowles, pp. 155-68. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976. (Explores the dramatic effect of the characters' attempts to remain composed in The Broken Heart, concluding that “the strange pattern of violence avoided can be seen to constitute the chief meaning of the tragedy.”)
  • Weber, Henry, "Introduction," in The Dramatic Works of John Ford, pp. vii-xlviii. 2 vols. Edinburgh: George Ramsey, 1811. (Provides one of the first in-depth assessments of Ford's life and literary career.)
  • Winstanley, William, "John Ford," in The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets, p. 114. 1687. Reprint. London: H. Clark, 1963. (Brief notice of Ford, mentioning that his plays proved to be financially successful for his theater.)

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Ford, John (Literary Criticism (1400-1800))
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