SOURCE: Ward, Adolphus William. “John Ford.” In A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne, Vol. III, pp. 71-89. London: Macmillan, 1889.

In the following essay, originally published in 1875, Ward praises the harrowing intensity of Ford's tragic figures, but contends that the tragic outcome in his plays is often insufficient in that it fails to give spectators catharsis.

In Ford it needs but little power of judgment to discern an author who by the most striking features of his genius is entitled to an entirely distinct place among our most gifted dramatists. Some of his defects, indeed, he shares with others; but even here he may almost be said to make comparison difficult. Of comic power he is on the whole signally devoid, and the gross under-plots by which he thinks it necessary to disfigure most of his works, and the utter brutality with which...