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20 results

Christopher Marlowe in Context
  • Edited by Emily C. Bartels, Emma Smith
  • Published online:
    05 July 2013
    Print publication:
    11 July 2013
  • A contemporary of William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe was one of the most influential early modern dramatists, whose life and mysterious death have long been the subject of critical and popular speculation. This collection sets Marlowe's plays and poems in their historical context, exploring his world and his wider cultural influence. Chapters by leading international scholars discuss both his major and lesser-known works. Divided into three sections, 'Marlowe's works', 'Marlowe's world', and 'Marlowe's reception', the book ranges from Marlowe's relationship with his own audience through to adaptations of his plays for modern cinema. Other contexts for Marlowe include history and politics, religion and science. Discussions of Marlowe's critics and Marlowe's appeal today, in performance, literature and biography, show how and why his works continue to resonate; and a comprehensive further reading list provides helpful suggestions for those who want to find out more.

  • 19 - ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore: the play of intertextuality

  • from Part II - Readings
  • Edited by Emma Smith, University of Oxford, Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Tragedy
    Published online:
    28 November 2010
    Print publication:
    12 August 2010, pp 249-260

  • Summary

    At the very end of John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (c. 1633), a Cardinal steps forward to sort through an extraordinary story of incest and murder 'strangely met' (5.6.158) and to impose closure on the resulting spectacle of slaughter. Gesturing, we might imagine, to the disembodied and impaled heart of Annabella, the woman loved and killed by her brother, the Cardinal poses a stunning rhetorical question: 'Of one so young, so rich in nature's story, / Who could not say, 'tis pity she's a whore?' (5.6.159-60). The play's title clearly anticipates and emphasises the final tag. Also in their placement, these lines stand out as the provocative capstone of the complex and perplexing drama which precedes.

    And yet, while the Cardinal's remark presumes and so precludes a response, that response is itself highly questionable. Where the Cardinal asks 'who could not say, 'tis pity she's a whore', we might well ask who could or indeed would? Annabella, the 'she' in question, is indictable on many fronts: she has engaged in an incestuous affair with her brother and, to cover her resulting pregnancy, she has married and deceived an unsuspecting nobleman, Soranzo. Upon learning her secret, Soranzo condemns her as a 'whore of whores' (4.3.20), as well as a 'strumpet', a 'rare, notable harlot', and an 'excellent quean', which all add up to the same thing (4.3.1, 4, 25). Otherwise, and even so, the charge of 'whore' seems at once to underplay Annabella's incestuous actions and to overplay her breach of marital fidelity.