I know Ford tackled controversial topics such as Incest ('Tis Pity She's a Whore) so his works have only recently been explored by critics, and many of Shakespeare's works were diluted by editors between 17-1800 because they were deemed too depressing for Victorian audiences (King Lear, Titus Andronicus) but were they the most popular writers of their time? Are there any that have actually become less popular in modern years and so are relatively lesser known than they would've been in the late C16th - early C17th?
The theater itself is massively popular in Tudor-Stuart England, attracting wide swaths of the population to shows. Print runs of particular books were often 500-1000 copies, while a single theater might seat 3000. Though books could each reach multiple readers (and manuscript copies could circulate independently, particularly in the case of particular verses), we can safely assume that a long-running or frequently revived play could reach a larger audience than all but the most printed texts.
BUT: particularly early in the period, many of the popular playwrights were not writing for (or were writing only secondarily for) print publication. A helpful analogy might be modern screenwriters: playwrights would often write collaboratively and might not get credit even when a play was eventually printed. I don't know how prominent a playwright like Thomas Dekker would be to the general populace, even though a great number would have seen his works.
So Jonson and Shakespeare were certainly considered major writers of their time(s). But the very idea of the popular writer of fiction (including plays) being someone that matters is one that is developing in the period, partially in response to their accomplishments.
When Jonson published his "Works" in a folio volume he is mocked by contemporaries for including popular plays. They think (or claim to think) that plays shouldn't be considered as valuable as other types of writing. Indeed, it's partially the Jonson folio, alongside the Shakespeare Folio that followed, that elevate the status of the play to something like what we now call literature.
I'm less sure about Ford; my period is earlier, and he doesn't have quite the same prominence.
One pedantic correction to your question: you're conflating the Victorian period (1837-1901) with the earlier Restoration and 18th Century. Elizabethan and Jacobean plays are cut and reshaped by dramatists (and editors) in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, in no small part because those writers think they're improving them: giving them better structure, cutting out improprieties, and making them more refined. Shakespeare, in this period, tends to be thought of as a "natural" genius with no knowledge of the "rules of art."
It's in the second half of the 18th century that the original plays begin to replace the adaptations, at various rates, as Shakespeare becomes an increasingly prominent figure of national identity.