Ford 'Tis Pity She's a Whore

Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics)
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78001-390-9
Verlag: Nick Hern Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

Reihe: NHB Drama Classi

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price The tragic story of incestuous love between Giovanni and his sister Annabella. When Annabella is found to be pregnant by her brother, she agrees to marry her suitor Soranzo. But when the lovers' incestuous secret is discovered, vengeance and bloody murder follow. John Ford's play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore was first performed in London between 1629 and 1633, and was first published in 1633. This edition of the play, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is edited and introduced by Lisa Hopkins.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ford, John

Leseproben

Introduction

John Ford (1586–?)

Infuriatingly little is known about Ford’s life. He was born in Ilsington, Devon, in 1586, and went first to Exeter College, Oxford and then, like many other young Elizabethan men of good family, to study law at the Middle Temple in London, one of the Inns of Court. Unusually, he seems to have stayed there for the rest of his life, though he was never called to the bar. Since he was a younger son rather than the heir, he would have had to earn his living somehow, and it is usually thought that he must have done some kind of legal work. Some phrases in the dedication of ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore suggest that he may also have travelled abroad, probably in the mid 1620s. He never married, and although his early poetry refers to his love for a woman called Lycia, this is clearly a made-up name, so perhaps the woman herself was equally fictitious.

Although he published a few poems and prose works as a young man, Ford did not start writing plays until late in life, first in collaboration with other, established playwrights such as Dekker, Rowley, and Webster, and finally on his own. ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, which he refers to in the dedication as ‘these first fruits of my leisure’, was published in 1633; we do not know when it was first written and performed, but some time in the later 1620s seems the likeliest, making Ford at least forty years old. He went on

to write six more plays. Three were tragedies, like ’Tis Pity; one revived the long defunct form of the chronicle history play; and the final two were tragicomedies, though comedy was never Ford’s forte and both contain some very weak scenes. After the publication of his last known play, The Lady’s Trial, in 1638, nothing further is heard of him.

The writer Gerard Langbaine, writing not long after the last known mention of Ford, declared that he had been friendly with all the major literary figures of the age. The only other contemporary hint about him comes from Heminges’ Elegy on Randolph’s Finger, where we find the couplet ‘Deep in a dump Jack Ford alone was gat / With folded arms and melancholy hat’, and this would certainly tie in with the dark tone of his work and his deep interest in troubled personalities and disordered mental states.

’Tis Pity She’s a Whore: What Happens in the Play

The play is set in the Italian city of Parma. Giovanni, the hero, has just returned home from university at Bologna, accompanied by his tutor, Friar Bonaventura. During the opening conversation, Giovanni reveals to the friar that he is in love with his own sister, Annabella. The friar is horrified and tells him he must conquer his passion. In the next scene, we are introduced to some of the other suitors for Annabella’s hand, Grimaldi, a Roman nobleman, and Soranzo, an important local gentleman, who are bitter rivals; we also meet Florio, father of Giovanni and Annabella. Finally, we meet Annabella herself, and her companion, the ominously-named Putana (it is Italian for ‘whore’), who, in one of the play’s many parallels with Romeo and Juliet, are standing on the balcony, the upper stage space. Putana wants to know which of her suitors Annabella prefers, and points out another of them, the idiotic Bergetto, who enters briefly with his rather wiser servant Poggio; Annabella, however, shows no interest in any man until Giovanni appears below. At first she appears not to recognise him (perhaps because he has been away at university) and asks who this handsome but unhappy-looking man can be; then, when Putana points out that it is Giovanni, Annabella joins him – symbolically going down from the balcony as a sign that she is about to make a moral as well as a literal descent – and asks him what is the matter. Giovanni confesses his love and Annabella replies that she loves him just as much. Having sworn fidelity to each other, they exit to consummate the relationship. Florio meanwhile is still occupied with the question of Annabella’s marriage, and although we know that he has already promised her to Soranzo, he is also negotiating with Donado, uncle of the foolish Bergetto.

Act Two begins with Giovanni and Annabella emerging from the bedroom, teasing each other about what they have done. Giovanni takes his leave. Putana comes on and expresses no disapproval of the incest, but then Florio arrives with a new visitor: a supposed doctor called Richardetto, and his niece Philotis. Richardetto, we soon learn, is the husband of Hippolita, a woman who was seduced by Annabella’s prospective husband Soranzo; he is so ashamed by this that he has disguised himself and let it be supposed that he is dead. Indeed we meet Hippolita in the next scene, angrily confronting Soranzo about his desertion of her and his proposed marriage to Annabella. She is eventually calmed by Soranzo’s servant Vasques, who pretends to go along with her plans for revenge on Soranzo. We then see Richardetto reveal his true identity in conversation with Philotis and, in pursuance of his own plan to be revenged on Soranzo, warn Grimaldi that it is Soranzo who is Florio’s preferred suitor for his daughter. He offers to poison Grimaldi’s rapier so that he can kill Soranzo. Meanwhile Bergetto meets Philotis after a brawl in the street and decides that he much prefers her to Annabella; Giovanni confesses to the horrified friar that he has slept with his sister; and Florio tells Annabella that he intends her to marry Soranzo.

Act Three sees Soranzo’s first attempt to court Annabella, secretly observed by the jealous Giovanni. She rebuffs him, but then she faints; Putana reveals to Giovanni that she is pregnant. Florio consults Richardetto and Giovanni consults the friar, who both advise immediate marriage, and the friar terrifies Annabella into agreeing by warning her that otherwise she will go to hell. Meanwhile Bergetto and Philotis have sneaked away to be married, but Bergetto is killed by Grimaldi, who, in the darkness, mistakes him for Soranzo. Grimaldi is shielded by his relative the Cardinal.

Act Four begins just after the wedding of Annabella and Soranzo. Hippolita arrives diguised and tries to poison Soranzo, but is prevented by Vasques, who tricks her into drinking the poison herself. Appalled by everything that has happened, Richardetto advises Philotis to become a nun; she agrees and is not seen again. Soranzo discovers Annabella’s pregnancy, but, though he threatens her, she will not reveal who the father is; however, Vasques tricks it out of Putana, and then gets his hired banditti to blind and imprison her.

Act Five opens with Annabella repentant, standing once more on the balcony from which she had descended into incest. She is found by the friar, who blesses her and agrees to take a letter to Giovanni urging him to repent. Soranzo, planning revenge, invites Giovanni and Florio to celebrate his birthday, and a defiant Giovanni agrees. On arriving at Soranzo’s house, Giovanni goes first to see Annabella, and kills her. He then appears at the birthday feast with her heart impaled on his dagger. Florio drops dead. Soranzo calls for his banditti, but Giovanni manages to kill him, before being himself finished off by Vasques. The Cardinal is left to pass judgement on those who survive; he banishes Vasques and confiscates all the money and property of the deceased.

The Title

John Ford took trouble with the publication of his plays, procuring commendatory verses from his friends and devising an anagram (Fide honor; honour through faith) of Iohn Forde, one form of his name, to go on the title-pages of the later ones (though not of this). Probably as a result, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore is unusually free of errors or textual difficulties for a Renaissance play. There is, however, one notorious ambiguity. Towards the close of the play, the Cardinal orders,

Peace!-First this woman, chief in these effects:
My sentence is, that forthwith she be ta’en
Out of the city, for example’s sake,
There to be burnt to ashes.

When he says ‘this woman, chief in these effects’, the Cardinal must be talking either about the dead body of Annabella or about Putana. In either case, his sentence may well appear unnecessarily vindictive. Annabella has already been stabbed and butchered, and Putana has been blinded – the traditional punishment for incest, as in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Surely both have suffered enough.

We may, moreover, question what right the Cardinal has to pass sentence at all. As in so many of the plays of Protestant Renaissance England, it has already been made quite obvious that the Catholic church is venal and corrupt, and that the opinions of its highest officers are for sale. While the Friar has struggled, however unsuccessfully, to do his best by all concerned and to bring spiritual advice and comfort whenever he can, the Cardinal has been busy perverting the course of justice by shielding his relative Grimaldi, even though he knows that the latter has murdered the entirely innocent Bergetto. Whichever woman the Cardinal means, therefore, we are not necessarily likely to agree with him.

However, that does not mean that the ambiguity is unimportant. Although on stage it could be resolved easily enough by having the Cardinal actually point at Putana, or gesture offstage towards where the corpse of Annabella may be presumed to be, perhaps it would be more useful to allow the audience to wonder for a moment who actually is ‘chief in these effects’. In short, whose fault is it? The Cardinal has no trouble finding someone to blame and summing up events, glibly tossing off the concluding couplet,...