The Collected Works of John Ford

Volumes II and III

Edited by Brian Vickers

Collected Works of John Ford

Detailed commentary provides historical explanations of the vocabulary, parallel passages in other works by Ford, and theatrical annotation
Present Ford's works in the form that his first readers would have experienced them
The only edition of several of the included works

The Collected Works of John Ford

Volumes II and III

Edited by Brian Vickers

Description

Volumes II and III of The Complete Works of John Ford contain the six plays that Ford wrote at the beginning of his theatrical career in collaboration with other dramatists: The Laws of Candy (1619-20) with Massinger, The Witch of Edmonton (1621) with Dekker and Rowley, The Welsh Ambassador (1623) with Dekker, The Spanish Gypsy (1623) with Dekker, Rowley, and Middleton, The Sun's Darling (1624) with Dekker, and The Fair Maid of the Inn (1626) with Massinger and Webster. This is the first time that Ford's co-authored works have been collected. In Volume II the General Editor, Sir Brian Vickers, contributes two introductions, "Co-authorship in Jacobean and Caroline Drama," and "Identifying Co-Authors." In the first he reviews collaborative authorship (practiced by every dramatist of this period), in terms of theatrical conditions, the competing companies, the need for new repertoire, the process of assigning individual contributions and assembling the whole play. In the second he discusses the methods that have been applied over the last two centuries to identify co-authors. He then provides separate discussions of the authorship problem in each play, evaluating previous attributions and bringing new evidence to bear. A special feature of this volume is the introduction of a new methodology, based on computer software programs that identify student plagiarism. Used in combination with high-speed search engines and a large electronic database of contemporary plays, this method permits for the first time accurate identification of each co-author's contribution.

The Collected Works of John Ford

Volumes II and III

Edited by Brian Vickers

Collected Works of John Ford

Preface
Part I: Introductions
Co-authorship in Jacobean and Caroline Drama
Identifying Co-Authors
Authorship Introductions and Commentaries
Part II: The Plays
The Laws of Candy (1619-20), with Massinger
The Witch of Edmonton (1621), with Dekker and Rowley
The Welsh Ambassador (1623), with Dekker
The Spanish Gypsy (1623), with Dekker, Rowley, and Middleton
The Sun's Darling (1624), with Dekker
The Fair Maid of the Inn (1626), with Massinger and Webster

The Collected Works of John Ford

Volumes II and III

Edited by Brian Vickers

Collected Works of John Ford

Author Information

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 has published extensively on Shakespeare, Elizabethan drama, Francis Bacon, classical rhetoric, Greek tragedy, and Jonathan Swift. His recent publications include three books devoted to authorship attribution in early modern drama and poetry.

Contributors:

Brian Vickers, Rowland Wymer, Nigel Bawcutt, Christopher Adams, Martin Wiggins, and Eleanor Lowe

The Collected Works of John Ford

Volumes II and III

Edited by Brian Vickers

Collected Works of John Ford

Reviews and Awards

"The Collected Works of John Ford is shaping up to be a magnificent achievement. Its annotation is outstanding, the introductions are comprehensive, and the computer-aided corpus linguistics used for attribution is state of the art." -- Bart Van Es, Times Literary Supplement

"Volume II offers a generous, detailed, and scholarly introduction to Volume III, which is a phenomenal resource in its own right ... The introductions are concise but comprehensive, giving readers factual information about original date of composition, performance, and publication, sources, generic conventions, and the main themes and concerns explored in the plays. The texts of the plays are generously laid out and accompanied by a level of textual and commentary notes in-keeping with the priorities of a hard back, old-spelling edition that is primarily aimed at fellow scholars and advanced students ... [a] magnificent project." -- Sonia Massai, Review of English Studies

"At their strongest, then, I valued the two new volumes of the Collected Works for their willingness to allow contingency, to acknowledge openness, and to encourage attention to the plays themselves, which together are ample encouragements in the anticipation of Volumes IV and V still to come." -- Tom Lockwood, The Library