'Tis Pity She's a Whore (New Mermaids)

by Martin Wiggins (Author), Martin Wiggins (Author), John Ford (Author)

• Used

  Illustrated
  2003

  $3.38

  Like Shakespeare's Juliet, Annabella, accompanied by her down-to-earth nurse, is introduced to a series of suitors to her hand. Like Juliet, she finds all of them unsatisfactory - and rightly so, for the audience know that the nastiest of them is having an affair with her domineering aunt. Like Juliet, Annabella is wooed by a sensitive and passionate young man whose love she returns - but this young man happens to be her own brother, Giovanni. When they consummate their love and she, to avoid the scandal of extramarital pregnancy, agrees to marry her aunt's lover, the tragic outcome is inevitable. John Ford, writing his psychologically powerful and intellectually challenging tragedies in the early years of King Charles I's reign, is a playwright of the first rank, as 20th-century directors have shown both in the theatre and on film.

• Used

  Paperback
  1968

  $3.24

• New

  Paperback
  1983

  $18.01

  The central situation of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore is an incestuous love between brother and sister, and it is hardly surprising that critics have differed widely in their interpretation of the exact meaning and significance of the play...All the love affairs in the play end in disaster ...it would even be possible to read the play as a series of warnings against the destructive effects of passion. -from the introduction by N. W. Bawcutt