Summary: 'tis Pity She's A Whore | 9780713650600 | John Ford, et al

Read the summary and the most important questions on 'Tis pity she's a whore | 9780713650600 | John Ford ; edited by Martin Wiggins.

• 1 Context

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• When did Ford write? What do many scholars consider him as?

  During the reign of King Charles = Carolinian period. Many scholars consider him as the last major dramatist of the renaissance. 

• Where and when was he educated and who did he write for?

  Exeter College, Oxford in 1601

  He wrote for theatrical companies 

• Why was he interested in aberrant psychological figures?

  Promoted dignity, courage and endurance in the face of suffering

• Why did Ford choose such a forbidden subject?

  Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences had become jaded to the dramatic conventions of the time. Ford presented bolder plots and characters in a daring, immoral, unnatural subject matter.

  It also allowed him to explore the dark and dangerous depths of human psyche. 

• Some say the play is a controversial workings of familiar plots. Give reason for this.

  -The accidental murder of Bergetto is reminiscent of Hamlet's accidental murder of the foolish Polonius instead of Claudius.

  -Many critics feel that it is an incestuous retelling of Romeo & Juliet - young lovers, forbidden love, meddling nurse and friar, tragedy all around

• What does Paul Cantor say about the play?

  The play is a "hackneyed theme of star-crossed lovers" and "love that will not have the endorsement of society"

• What does Oliver say about the differences between Jacobean and Elizabethan audiences?

  "inquiry , analysis - these interest the Jacobean writers, rather than the incident"

• What can be said about the hobbies of young, respectable women of the Carolinian time? How does this relate to Annabella?  

  [Putana passes her a piece of needle work] - Annabella pretends to be doing the hobbies of a young respectable woman when her father walks in - before she was telling Putana how she had sex with her brother

• When was the play first printed? When was this in relation to Shakespeare and Chaucer?

  First printed in 1633 - 30 years after Shakespeare and 2 centuries after Chaucer

• What is the play about and how does it end? 

  It is a tale of incestuous love, vengeance and greed (Ford explores the power of lust) = ends in disaster and death