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Ford, John c.1586-c.1640
English dramatist

Born in Ilsington, Devon, he studied for a year at Oxford and entered the Middle Temple in 1602. He was expelled for debt but readmitted. He was greatly influenced by Robert Burton, whose Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) turned Ford's dramatic gifts towards stage presentation of the melancholy, the unnatural and the horrible in The Lover's Melancholy (1629), 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633), The Lady's Trial (1639), and others. He also wrote a masterful chronicle play, Perkin Warbeck (1634). Ford often collaborated with Thomas Dekker, William Rowley and John Webster.

Bibliography: D Anderson, John Ford (1972)