FORD, JOHN, the dramatist, descended from a highly respectable family in the north-west of Devonshire, was the second son of Thomas Ford of Ilsington in that county. The exact date of his birth is not known, but Malone's industry has fixed his baptism at April 17, 1586, as appears from the parish register of Ilsington.
His family having some connection with Popham, the chief justice, Ford was designed for the bar, and entered at the Middle Temple, November 16, 1602; four years after which time he produced his first poem, Fame's Memorial,' an elegy on the death of the Earl of Devon shire, dedicated to his countess, the beautiful sister of the favourite Earl of Essex. This poem adds nothing to the author's present reputa tion, and all we gather from it are some hints of a disappointment in love, for the cure of which he had recourse to writing. In addition to this mode of mental relief, he applied himself to a practice then common, that of assisting in the composition of plays, but he did not appear as an independent writer till 1629, when he published The Lover's Melancholy,' which was followed four years afterwards. by "Tie Pity She's a Whore," The Broken Heart,' and Love'e Sacrifice.' The next year produced Perkin Warbeck ; ' and in 1638-39 be published two serious comedies, called The Fancies Chaste and Noble,' and The Lady's Trial.' Besides these, he wrote in conjunction with Decker ' The Sun's Darling,' a moral mask, which was not printed till 1657 according to Langbaine, or 1658 according to Gifford.
Nothing more is known of Ford ; but from some obscure traditions it has been supposed that soon after 1638 he retired to his native place of Ilsington, and there spent the remainder of his days.
Ford's plays contain many fine thoughts, and numerous specimens of harmonious versification, apparently the result of considerable labour. One fault into which he has fallen in common with others of his contemporaries, that namely of killing off all his dramatis penance at the end of the fifth act, appears to arise from an overstrained desire of completing and perfecting the action of the play. Forgetting that the end of every drama is to represent a certain crisis in the affairs of one or more of the principal agents, he endeavours to make the fortunes of almost all the inferiors converge to the same point, and accordingly involves them in a similar ruin. Ford's great strength lies in his love scenes and tho passages of deep pathos ; in his comic characters there is nothing of nature or oven of genial humour. His best work is, we think, ' Perkin Warbeck: It has an air of repose throughout which we do not see in Ford's other plays ; but if the characters of Annabelle and Giovanni bad been more fully sustained throughout, "Tie Pity She's a Whore' would probably have been Ford's most perfect tragedy.