GILLES MONSARRAT, BRIAN VICKERS, and R. J. C. WATT (eds), The Collected Works of John Ford, Volume I

Abstract

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, Brian Vickers begins his Introduction with an understatement: ‘readers who only know Ford’s plays may be surprised at the nature and extent of this volume’. This is understandable. A convenient edition of the non-dramatic works only became available in 1991. Sadly, it may also be said that—apart from ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore—many students graduate without a knowledge of the range of Ford’s dramatic achievements. Coverage of playwrights declines rapidly after the death of Shakespeare. Dryden dismissed Jonson’s later plays as his ‘dotages’, and twentieth-century criticism has often labelled the work of the period as ‘decadent’. The appearance of a ground-breaking study of Caroline Drama by Martin Butler in 1984 should have changed all this but, despite a major collection of essays on Ford published in 1986 and Revels editions of nearly all the single-authored plays being available, exploration of Ford’s contribution to the London theatres after 1625 remains a minority pursuit. Critical appreciation has slowly been growing over the past two decades, however, and this project is a textual landmark that cannot be ignored by anybody with an interest in English Renaissance drama.