The Role of Disruption in the Representation of Unified Identity in John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
How does desire disrupt the representation of unified identity in John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore?
Representations of sexuality in Early Modern literature reveal a variety of attitudes, but they can be characterised by the ambivalence which they display towards the subject of desire and its consequences for the self. The destructive potential of desire is revealed in John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s A Whore, widely considered to be one of the most radical works of Jacobean theatre, not only for its frank and nuanced portrayal of incest, but for its reworking of the theme of ill-fated love from Romeo and Juliet into a dark rumination on the fundamental incommunicability of desire and the impossibility of mutual understanding.
Arguably the most radical aspect of ‘Tis Pity is the degree of sympathy that Ford affords his two protagonists; unlike other Renaissance plays in which characters’ incestuous desires are portrayed as extensions of their villainy or political greed, Ford’s tragedy makes the love of a brother and sister its central subject, and could be conceived as doubly radical in that this relationship is supposedly based on mutual affection rather than the norms of economic necessity and caste which governed marriages during this era. However, over the course of the play this relationship is shown, as Ronald Huebert attests, to be a ‘fantasy of constancy’; Giovanni is unable to control his all-consuming passion, asserting his authority over his sister in increasingly patriarchal terms and finally butchering her and his unborn child in the gory coup de théâtre of the play’s denouement[1]. If Giovanni’s fantasy of possession demonstrates how the need to represent desire can distort one’s sense of self, Annabella seems to present an alternative: the possibility of fashioning one’s identity and retaining control of one’s desires. Stephen Greenblatt argues that ‘Self-fashioning is achieved in relation to something perceived as alien, strange, or hostile’, and
Representations of sexuality in Early Modern literature reveal a variety of attitudes, but they can be characterised by the ambivalence which they display towards the subject of desire and its consequences for the self. The destructive potential of desire is revealed in John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s A Whore, widely considered to be one of the most radical works of Jacobean theatre, not only for its frank and nuanced portrayal of incest, but for its reworking of the theme of ill-fated love from Romeo and Juliet into a dark rumination on the fundamental incommunicability of desire and the impossibility of mutual understanding.
Arguably the most radical aspect of ‘Tis Pity is the degree of sympathy that Ford affords his two protagonists; unlike other Renaissance plays in which characters’ incestuous desires are portrayed as extensions of their villainy or political greed, Ford’s tragedy makes the love of a brother and sister its central subject, and could be conceived as doubly radical in that this relationship is supposedly based on mutual affection rather than the norms of economic necessity and caste which governed marriages during this era. However, over the course of the play this relationship is shown, as Ronald Huebert attests, to be a ‘fantasy of constancy’; Giovanni is unable to control his all-consuming passion, asserting his authority over his sister in increasingly patriarchal terms and finally butchering her and his unborn child in the gory coup de théâtre of the play’s denouement[1]. If Giovanni’s fantasy of possession demonstrates how the need to represent desire can distort one’s sense of self, Annabella seems to present an alternative: the possibility of fashioning one’s identity and retaining control of one’s desires. Stephen Greenblatt argues that ‘Self-fashioning is achieved in relation to something perceived as alien, strange, or hostile’, and