| Summary: | John Ford 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 his works since 1869. Volume 1 contains all of Ford's poems and prose works, mostly written before he became a dramatist. Honor Triumphant and The Monarchs' Meeting (1606) celebrate a visit from the King of Denmark. Fames Memoriall (1606) is a panegyric to Charles Blount, a distinguished soldier, courtier and scholar who served both Elizabeth and James. Christes Bloodie Sweat (1613), Ford's greatest poem, is an intense meditation on Christ's Agony in the Garden, which widens out to a sharp analysis of individual and social corruption. Ford developed his characteristic fusion of Christian and Stoic ethics in two prose works, The Golden Meane (1613, here presented with passages added in the 1614 edition), and A Line of Life (1620). Th 'Uncollected Pieces in prose and verse' bring together Ford's commendatory verses to his friends and colleagues, among them Webster, Massinger, and Ben Jonson. This volume also contains two poems new to his canon, A Funerall Elegie for William Peter (1612) and the Elegie for John Fletcher (1625).
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