Posted by
Riklaa on July 6, 2009 at 6:03am
John Ford - 'Tis a Pity She's a Whore
BBC Radio 3: The Sunday Play
Broadcast: Sunday 4th February 2001 @ 7:30 p.m.
Poor Annabella has a number of suitors, but when the quiet, studious, Giovanni declares his brotherly love their lives would seem momentarily to have found a secret, blasphemous resolve. However, her father is determined to marry her, if not to the clownish Donaldo then to Soranzo, the elegant Parmisan with a mysterious past. When it emerges Annabella is pregnant by her brother the story descends inevitably into tragedy.
Adapted by David Lan from John Ford's tragedy. "'Tis a Pity She's a Whore", written in 1633.
Giovanni ...................................... Jude Law
Annabella ..................................... Eve Best
Soranzo ..................................... Lloyd Owen
Putana ................................. Annette Badland
Friar ...................................... Des McAleer
Vasques .............................. Philip Whitchurch
Philotis .............................. Catherine Bailey
Richardetto / Donato ...................... Tim Hodgkins
Bergetto / Cardinal / Grimaldi ....... Christopher James
Hippolita ................................. Penny Downie
Florio ...................................... David Lyon
Music composed by Jonathan Dove.
Directed by David Lan
Re-broadcast on Sunday 28th October 2001 @ 6:30 p.m. on BBC Radio 3: The Sunday Play
Time: 2 hr. 17 min. 57 sec. (Stereo)
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John Ford's "'Tis Pity She's a Whore" was first published in 1633 but so close are its affinities with Jacobean revenge tragedy that critics have often wondered whether it had not in fact been written much earlier; there is, however, no firm evidence for this. The “whore” of the title is a young woman called Annabella who lives in Parma, Italy, with her brother Giovanni and her father Florio. Her mother is dead and Annabella's sole source of moral guidance is her “tut'ress”, Putana, whose name ominously translates as “whore”. When the play opens, Annabella's brother Giovanni has just returned from his studies at the renowned Italian university of Bologna (it was particularly famous for its classes in anatomy, which may be of some interest given what transpires). He is accompanied by his tutor, Friar Bonaventure, and together Annabella, Giovanni, Bonaventure and Putana form an ironic reprising of Romeo, Juliet, Friar Lawrence and the Nurse, because, when the play opens, Giovanni has just revealed to Bonaventure that he is incestuously in love with his own sister, Annabella. Bonaventure is naturally horrified, but Giovanni protests that his love is perfectly natural. Later he will invoke the classical precedent of Juno and Jove, king and queen of the gods, who were both brother and sister and husband and wife, and Ford perhaps means us to remember that incest, or something very close to it, has traditionally been tolerated in ruling families as a way of consolidating power within them. It was institutionalised amongst the Ptolemaic pharaohs of ancient Egypt - Shakespeare's Cleopatra is the widow of her own brother - and not unknown in the English royal family: Henry VIII not only married his own brother's widow, much later deciding that the marriage was incestuous, but he also seriously proposed marrying his own legitimate daughter, Mary, to his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy. Most notably, perhaps, close intermarriage was widespread among the Habsburg family, and at the time when Ford seems to have set his play the Farnese family, rulers of Parma, owed much of their position to a marriage with an illegitimate Habsburg, Margaret of Parma. Perhaps the real problem with the liaison of Giovanni and Annabella, then, is that they are not only incestuous, but incestuous and middle-class - Hippolyta, the cast-off mistress of Annabella's suitor Soranzo, scornfully terms her rival “your goodly madam merchant”.
No sooner has Giovanni announced his passion to the friar and to the audience than we meet Annabella, symbolically occupying the upper-stage space of the balcony while she and Putana discuss her various suitors. Putana favours a nobleman called Soranzo, whose name suggests a Venetian origin (a suggestion which later seems confirmed when Soranzo recalls Sannazaro's encomium on Venice); there is also a Roman nobleman, Grimaldi, a relative of the Cardinal who is the local magnate, and the foolish Bergetto, whose courtship is being promoted by his uncle Donado, friend of Annabella's father Florio. (Bergetto and his servant Poggio closely reprise the Ward and Sordido of Middleton's play Women Beware Women.) Annabella, however, shows no interest in any suitors until Giovanni appears on the lower stage. She appears not to recognise him, perhaps because of his long absence in Bologna, but is obviously strongly attracted. When Giovanni finds her alone and tells her of his passion for her, she at once confesses that she reciprocates it, and they embark on an affair.
Meanwhile their father Florio continues to negotiate for Annabella's marriage. He encourages Donado to hope that he will favour Bergetto, but really plans to marry Annabella to Soranzo, though the latter is encumbered by his mistress Hippolyta, who has not accepted his rejection of her and threatens vengeance, breaking past Soranzo's faithful Spanish servant Vasques to do so. Matters are further complicated by the presence on the scene of Hippolyta's husband, Richardetto, who is rumoured to have died on a journey to Leghorn (Livorno) to collect his orphaned niece Philotis, but who has really returned to Parma in disguise as a doctor to observe events, accompanied by Philotis. Philotis is introduced to Annabella, and also becomes acquainted with the foolish Bergetto, with whom she strikes up a friendship.
Matters come to a crisis when Soranzo arrives to pay court to Annabella. After initially rebuffing his advances, she is suddenly taken ill, and Putana at once realises that she is pregnant. Giovanni informs Friar Bonaventure, who advises that Annabella should accept Soranzo. He paints a terrifying picture of hell which induces her to agree to this and to breaking off relations with Giovanni. Appalled to hear that her lover is to marry, Soranzo's cast-off mistress Hippolyta plots with Vasques to murder the couple, but Vasques betrays her and she herself unknowingly drinks the poisoned cup she had brought to the wedding, and dies. Grimaldi, equally offended that Soranzo rather than he has won Annabella, attempts to ambush Soranzo by night but mistakenly kills Bergetto instead. Bergetto's faithful servant Poggio and Philotis, who had hoped to marry Bergetto, movingly lament him, and Richardetto advises Philotis that the best thing for her to do now is go into a convent. Grimaldi, meanwhile, escapes to the house of his kinsman the Cardinal, who in a scene which shows the literal and metaphorical boundaries of the competing authorities of church and court refuses to surrender the murderer and orders the outraged citizens, headed by Florio and Bergetto's uncle Donado, to leave.
Further trouble strikes when, shortly after their marriage, Soranzo realises that Annabella is pregnant by another man. Determined to discover the father, he is rough with her, but she defies him, telling him, in a scene which daringly echoes the Virgin Mary's traditional answer to Joseph, that an angel fathered her child. Putana, however, is induced to confess the truth to Vasques, who promptly blinds her (the punishment which Oedipus inflicted on himself for his incest) and imprisons her. Annabella too is incarcerated while Soranzo plots to invite Giovanni and Florio to a banquet, ostensibly to celebrate his birthday, and murder them. Returning once more to the symbolic upper stage which she left when she first saw Giovanni, Annabella repents, and is rewarded by the appearance of Friar Bonaventure, to whom she gives a letter of warning written in her own blood. Having delivered this to Giovanni, the friar then washes his hands of the whole affair and leaves. Giovanni, however, is less concerned about the danger than about his jealousy of Soranzo. He and Florio duly arrive for the birthday banquet and Giovanni is allowed to see his sister alone; she urges him to plan his escape but he first reproaches her, calling her unfaithful and inconstant, and then stabs her to death. We see him next at the banquet, and he has Annabella's heart impaled on his dagger. This shocking scene is obviously intended as both a reflection on the metaphorical formulation that truth is to be found in the heart and as an emblematic stage picture, but to those on stage it causes nothing but horror and incomprehension. When Giovanni finally explains what he has done and why, Florio dies of shock and Soranzo attacks him. Giovanni kills Soranzo but is in turn finished off by Vasques. Vasques explains matters to the Cardinal, who is a guest at the banquet and who pronounces his society's final, flippant judgement, “Of one so young, so rich in nature's store, / Who would not say, 'tis pity she's a whore?” The audience, however, are likely to feel that the blame for events cannot be so easily offloaded onto Annabella alone, and that just as Giovanni has anatomised his sister's body, so the play has anatomised the society it shows us - but even when we have seen its heart, a mystery remains.Ford,John - 'Tis pity she's a whore (R3 2001-02-04).mp3
Replies
I love these background notes with the plays. This is a really fascinating story.
Thanks, katy