Tis Pity She's a Whore: By John Ford (The Revels Plays) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0719088437 ISBN 13: 9780719088438

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2024

Synopsis

John Ford's tragedy, first printed in 1633, is the first major English play to take as its theme a subject still rarely handled: fulfilled incest between brother and sister. This Revels Plays edition is a scholarly, modern-spelling edition of one of the most studied and performed of all plays of the period. White’s critical introduction explores the textual and theatrical histories of the play, exploring closely its relationship to the particular stage and audience for which it was written. This Revels edition allows the modern reader to become, in Ford’s words, an ‘actor that but reads’.

About this title

About the Author

Martin White is Professor of Theatre at the University of Bristol

From the Back Cover

This is the first scholarly edition of ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore to reproduce Ford’s use of emphatic italics and capital letters from the first printed text. It demonstrates that such ‘emphatic’ topography is an essential guide for readers and actors to recreate the expression of intense emotions that drive this explosive tragedy.

The Introduction explains clearly how the stage action is informed by early modern cultural understandings of incest, melancholy, religious and social difference. Analysing the play chronologically, White explores how, in each act and scene, Ford exploits the physical structure and spatial dynamics of the playhouse. This alerts readers to the script’s theatrical innovations. Tis Pity’s juxtaposition of violent grotesque tragedy and comedy, often the subject of adverse critical responses, is rigorously defended. The edition pays valuable attention to the Bergetto subplot and its essential contribution.

A selective but important history of the play on stage and screen features many new insights. After noting how modern critical interest and stage revival started in France (1894), White’s choice of productions from 1961 to 2024, showcases a range of interpretations. Unique features are private communications with director Jonathan Munby whose production sparked public controversy (2011); the actor Jonathan Cullen, who played Giovanni (RSC 1991); and the editor’s own expertise on the use of original lighting in staging at the Sam Wanamaker Theatre (2014). In this edition, new discoveries about the playtext in the printing house, as well as those by theatre practitioners, prove how Tis Pity continues to surprise us.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719088437
• ISBN 13: 9780719088438
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312
• Editor: White Martin