Tis Pity She's a W by John Ford | Characters, Summary, Analysis

John Ford was an English playwright during the Jacobean and Caroline age of English literature. John Ford was born in 1586 and he died in 1639. He collaborated with Thomas Dekker, John Webster, William Rowley, Philip Massinger, and others during the Jacobean era and emerged as an influential and successful playwright during the Caroline age.
John Ford is a noteworthy playwright because of the subject of his dramas which often remained the conflict between individual passion and conscience and the morals and laws of society. His characters often expressed strong abnormal psychology.
John Ford was highly influenced by Robert Burton’s work The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621. Many of his dramas were influenced by the matter of this book. One such Ford’s play was Tis Pity She’s a Whore which is a tragedy and was first performed in 1629.
This play has a very unusual subject. It talks about an incestuous relationship between a talented brother and his beautiful sister. Despite such a controversial subject, the play was very much liked by people and King Charles I himself.
John Ford doesn’t depict the brother as some villain, rather he presents him as the tragic hero, a talented, virtuous, and nobleman who is overcome by a tumultuous, unavoidable passion that led him to his destruction.
John Ford often raised such controversial issues of passion and morals in his plays. In this play, he presents Giovanni and Annabella in such a manner that the audience may feel sympathy towards them. His other play The Lover’s Melancholy was also inspired by Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.
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