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

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 firstrank as 20th century directors have shown both in the theatre and on film.

Ford's tragedy originally printed in 1633 was the first major English play to take as its theme fulfilled incest between brother and sister.

John Ford, Martin Wiggins (Editor)