The Collected Works of John Ford

John Ford (1586-1640?) was one of the leading playwrights of the generation following Shakespeare, best known for such plays as The Broken Heart, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, and Perkin Warbeck. This is the first collected edition of John Ford's works since 1869. The edition includes several plays which have never before been included in his works, one sole-authored: The Queen, and four co-authored: The Welsh Ambassador (with Dekker), The Fair Maid of the Inn (with Webster and Massinger), The Spanish Gypsy (with Middleton, Rowley, and Dekker), and The Laws of Candy (with Rowley?). All texts have been freshly edited from the original Quarto editions, which have been collated to identify press corrections. Two texts are edited from manuscripts. A full commentary is provided for all texts, giving historical explanations of the vocabulary, parallel passages in other works by Ford, and theatrical annotation (where relevant). The edition is arranged largely in chronological order.

Volume 1 contains all of Ford's poems and prose works: Honor Triumphant and The Monarch's Meeting, an opportunistic celebration of a royal visit and the amorous-chivalric contests; Fame's Memoriall, a panegyric to Charles Blount; two poems newly ascribed to Ford, Funerall Elegie and the Elegie for John Fletcher; his greatest poem, Christes Bloodie Sweat; the didactic prose works The Golden Meane and A Line of Life; and Uncollected Pieces, commendatory verses prefixed to plays or other works by friends of Ford, and of undisputed authenticity. There is also an introduction dealing with Ford's biography.

Prior to his retirement Gilles Monsarrat was Professor of English, Universite de Dijon (now University de Bourgogne). He is the author of Light From the Porch: Stoicism and English Renaissance Literature (Didier-Erudition, 1984). He was co-general editor, then general editor, of William Shakespeare, OEuvres Completes, (a bilingual edition with the 1986 Oxford Text, ed. S. Wells and G.Taylor), 8 volumes (Robert Laffont, 1995-2002).

Professor Sir Brian Vickers is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, London University, Fellow of the British Academy, and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He serves on the editorial boards of Annals of Science and Early Science and Medicine.


R.J.C. Watt is an Honorary Research Fellow in English at the University of Dundee, where he was formerly Senior Lecturer and Head of Department. He has published on Renaissance literature and 19th- and 20th-century poetry, particularly on textual problems in Shakespeare and the poetry of Gerard Hopkins. He is the author of the text analysis software Concordance which is used in more than 60 countries worldwide. He is a Fellow of the English Association.