This selection contains the three finest plays of the Stuart dramatist John Ford. The Broken Heart is a classical tragedy of suffering; 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Ford's best-known play and one still frequently performed, is a tragic story of limitless ambition and social rivalry expressed in sexual terms; Perkin Warbeck is the last great successor to the history plays of Shakespeare. Together they exemplify the unique tone of Ford's drama, in which passion and gravity are united by a playwright with a poetic sense of theatre. This is the only one-volume selection of Ford's plays now available. The texts are modernised and equipped with notes explaining unfamiliar language and historical references. A general introduction gives a brief biography and bibliography; individual introductions deal with the sources and stage history of each play. Longer notes at the back of the book discuss points of staging and interpretation, and there is a full textual apparatus which makes this edition useful for the scholar as well as the student.

Ford's tragedy, originally printed in 1633, was the first major English play to take as its theme fulfilled incest between brother and sister.

The last decade has seen a revival of interest in John Ford and especially 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, his tragedy of religious scepticism, incestuous love, and revenge. This text in particular has provided a focus for scholarship as well as being the subject of a number of major theatrical productions. Simon Barker guides the reader through the full range of previous interpretations of the play; moving from an overview of traditional readings he goes on to enlarge upon new questions that have arisen as a consequence of critical and cultural theory.

John Ford's classic films—such as Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, The Quiet Man, and The Searchers—have earned him worldwide admiration as America's foremost filmmaker, a director whose rich visual imagination conjures up indelible, deeply moving images of our collective past. Joseph McBride's Searching for John Ford, described as definitive by both the New York Times and the Irish Times, surpasses all other biographies of the filmmaker in its depth, originality, and insight. Encompassing and illuminating Ford's myriad complexities and contradictions, McBride traces the trajectory of Ford's life from his beginnings as “Bull” Feeney, the nearsighted, football-playing son of Irish immigrants in Portland, Maine, to his recognition, after a long, controversial, and much-honored career, as America's national mythmaker. Blending lively and penetrating analyses of Ford's films with an impeccably documented narrative of the historical and psychological contexts in which those films were created, McBride has at long last given John Ford the biography his stature demands.

This radical re-reading of Ford's work studies his films in the context of his complex character, demonstrating their immense intelligence and their profound critique of our culture.

Volume IV of the Collected Works of John Ford is the first of two volumes in the series to contain his sole-authored plays. It contains three of his most celebrated plays: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1622), The Lovers' Melancholy (1628), and The Broken Heart (1629), as well as the less well-known The Queen (1629). The volume opens with a general introduction to Ford's work as a sole author by Sir Brian Vickers and each play is given a detailed introduction emphasizing Ford's linguistic creativity and his effective use of the indoor private theatres. Authoritative old-spelling texts, freshly edited from the original quartos with full textual collations, are accompanied by a full commentary on all aspects of the plays, from archaic or obsolete words to classical allusions and historical references to people, places, and social customs.

Originally published in 1988, John Ford: Critical Re-Visions offers a wholesale reconsideration of the reputation of a major Caroline playwright. The volume takes an historical perspective and offers a better understanding of Ford's achievement in the light of the theatrical and social conditions of his own day. The collection of essays was assembled for the 400th anniversary of the playwright's birth. The contributors, well known scholars in the field, work from a variety of critical positions: insights associated with a new historicist, feminist, structuralist and post-structuralist theory are represented, together with more traditional approaches. The essays range from detailed readings of the individual plays, including 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Perkin Warbeck, Love's Sacrifice and The Lady's Trial to more wide-ranging studies of imagery and theatrical convention; several help to illuminate our understanding of Ford's plays in the theatre of his own time, while another offers a detailed account of post-war stage, film and television productions.

John Ford and John Wayne, two titans of classic film, made some of the most enduring movies of all time. The genre they defined—the Western—and the heroic archetype they built still matter today. For more than twenty years John Ford and John Wayne were a blockbuster Hollywood team, turning out many of the finest Western films ever made. Ford, known for his black eye patch and for his hard-drinking, brawling masculinity, was a son of Irish immigrants and was renowned as a director for both his craftsmanship and his brutality. John “Duke” Wayne was a mere stagehand and bit player in “B” Westerns, but he was strapping and handsome, and Ford saw his potential. In 1939 Ford made Wayne a star in Stagecoach, and from there the two men established a close, often turbulent relationship. Their most productive years saw the release of one iconic film after another: Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. But by 1960 the bond of their friendship had frayed, and Wayne felt he could move beyond his mentor with his first solo project, The Alamo. Few of Wayne’s subsequent films would have the brilliance or the cachet of a John Ford Western, but viewed together the careers of these two men changed moviemaking in ways that endure to this day. Despite the decline of the Western in contemporary cinema, its cultural legacy, particularly the type of hero codified by Ford and Wayne—tough, self-reliant, and unafraid to fight but also honorable, trustworthy, and kind—resonates in everything from Star Wars to today’s superhero franchises. Drawing on previously untapped caches of letters and personal documents, Nancy Schoenberger dramatically narrates a complicated, poignant, and iconic friendship and the lasting legacy of that friendship on American culture.