'Tis Pity She's a Whore

Like Shakespeare''s Juliet, Annabella, accompanied by her down-to-earthnurse, is introduced to a series of suitors to her hand. Like Juliet,she finds all of them unsatisfactory - and rightly so, for the audienceknow that the nastiest of them is having an affair with her domineeringaunt. Like Juliet, Annabella is wooed by a sensitive and passionateyoung man whose love she returns - but this young man happens to be herown brother, Giovanni. When they consummate their love and she, toavoid the scandal of extramarital pregnancy, agrees to marry her aunt''slover, the tragic outcome is inevitable. John Ford, writing hispsychologically powerful and intellectually challenging tragedies inthe early years of King Charles I''s reign, is a playwright of the firstrank, as 20th-century directors have shown both in the theatre and onfilm.>

About the author

John Ford (1586-1639) was an English playwright whose works have often been cited as examples of the 'decadence' of Caroline Drama. In the 19th century he was admired by Charles Lamb but attacked by William Hazlitt and others, who accused him of lacking a sense of morality. However, many 20th-century critics have praised his insight into character and his skill in writing dialogue

His best known play is the bloody tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1627). Other works inlcude Love's Sacrifice (1627), the tragicomedy The Lover's Melancholy (1628), and Perkin Warbeck (1634), described by T. S. Eliot as "one of the very best historical plays in the whole of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama".

Product details

• Authors: John Ford
• Assisted by: Martin Wiggins (Editor), Wiggins Martin (Editor)
• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 29.08.2003
• EAN: 9780713650600
• ISBN: 978-0-7136-5060-0
• No. of pages: 176
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 198 mm x 48 mm
• Series: New Mermaids; New Mermaids
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; English, DRAMA / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary studies: general, Plays, Playscripts, Literary studies: plays and playwrights