Human Body's Significance in John Ford's "Tis Pity She's a Whore"

In his play, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, John Ford explores themes pertaining to desire, religion, incest and betrayal. The play analyses the dynamics between familial relationships, servant-master relationships and relationships of man with religion. Ford ensures that the human body is at the centre of the audience’s attention throughout the play, both through his portrayal of violent vengeance and through sexuality and desire. The play primarily focuses on the confusing, repulsive relationship between lovers and siblings, Giovanni and Annabella. Their sexual, familial relationship is at the forefront of the play, and dictates the climaxes of the plot. Elements of the human body act as symbols throughout the play, relating back to the key themes that Ford uses to tell the convoluted tale.

Annabella’s body is at the centre of the characters’ desire in the play, and as such, is at the audience’s attention. From the beginning of the play, we understand that Annabella is essentially being sold to the most eligible suitor. Her virginal virtue is essential to the male characters, and as such, her body is the trophy that each suitor attempts to attain as the play progresses. Females are seen in a sexual manner throughout the play, and they are treated as the objects of the male characters, at their disposal and easy to remove. All three of the central female characters are murdered by male characters; Hippolita is poisoned, Annabella is stabbed, and Putana is tortured and burned. Not only is Annabella’s body used as the object of desire for male characters, but in the play it is subjected to incestuous sex, pregnancy and violent murder. Her body is a vessel that carries her brothers’ unborn child, the secret of their copulation, and the promise of a marital union to her suitors.

Annabella’s body within the short play acts as a means of demonstrating the circle of life, she starts as a daughter, becomes a lover, is impregnated, and shortly afterwards is dead. Her body is the most important object of Act 3 Scene 2, Soranzo’s language, although intended to be fond, is misogynistic. He refers to Annabella as a “mistress”, using phrases such as “chaste” and “fruitless”. However, the scene of course concludes with the protagonist “begining to sicken” due to her pregnancy. The language used by Soranzo is ironic, as Annabella is everything he says she is not. Furthermore, his dialogue foreshadows the protagonist’s demise, twice in the scene he talks of his heart, claiming he is “sick, and sick to the heart”, when it is Annabella who is ‘sick’ in the scene. He also wishes Annabella could “see his heart”, yet later on in the play it is he who physically sees Annabella’s heart. Soranzo inversely mirrors Annabella.

The characters’ names in the play are significant to how the audience views them and their bodies. The fact that there is a mistress called Hippolita is symbolic, as the goddess Hippolyta in Ancient Greece was allegedly involved in an incestuous relationship with her grandfather, Zeus, and fell pregnant, like Annabella. As well as motifs, names are a subtle nuance throughout the play that allude to the aforementioned overarching themes that dictate the play’s progression. The fact that Annabella’s tutor is called Putana is of course, incredibly significant to how the audience view her. Putana in italian translates to a range of profanities, namely slut, prostitute and trollop. Two of the central female characters’ names connote incest or prostitution and thus we can denote that the female characters are not regarded with as much respect as the male characters. To a contemporary audience, the double standards are clear to see, although Soranzo is initially depicted as genuinely caring for Annabella, he bemoans her for actions he has also committed. In Act 5 Scene 3, he describes the female protagonist as a “strumpet, famous whore!” who is “adulterous”. Yet, Soranzo himself engaged in an affair with Hippolita when she was married to Richardetto. The male characters’ bodies are not judged or negated by their immoral actions. Furthermore, in Act 4 Scene 3 Putana is captured by the Banditti, with Vasques ordering them, “Come, sirs, take me this old damnable hag, gag her instantly, and put out her eyes, quickly, quickly!”. Vasques damns her for condoning this incestuous relationship and not reporting it. However, Ford shows the irony in this, as the friar, who too knew about Giovanni and Annabella’s courtship from the beginning was not punished. Vasques violates Putana’s body, disabling her, removing one of her bodily senses as punishment. The violent nature of the male characters leads the female characters to seem vulnerable throughout the play, they could be slain for their unchaste behaviour, and as such, we are constantly aware of their whereabouts and movement.

Throughout the play the characters offer their hearts in numerous dramatic ways. Hearts are a central motif and prop, representing love and loyalty. In his essay The Heart and the Banquet: Imagery in Ford's 'Tis Pity and The Broken Heart, Donald K Anderson Jr claims that the action of Giovanni tearing out Annabella’s heart in Act Five “is foreshadowed throughout the play, for the heart. . . appears figuratively”. Giovanni refers to himself and Annabella as sharing “one heart”, and within the same scene claims, “I’ll tell her I loue her through my heart”, concluding his speech, stating, “Rip vp my bosome, there thou shalt behold, A heart, in which is writ the truth I speake. ” It is as though he sees their hearts as being connected and so when he admits his love, it is shared, and when he murders her, he knows he will soon too die. However, the motif of the heart is not only used to connote love, but also to connote betrayal. Upon hearing of his wife’s incestuous betrayal in Act 4, Soranzo claims, “I’le ripp vp thy heart”. Many of the male characters foreshadow Annabella’s fate. It is as though she is more vulnerable, her heart is both the metaphorical and physical target of her male suitors, and the audience can gauge this. Furthermore, the heart is used for repenting the very sins that it has conjured. After confessing his sins to the friar, Giovanni is demanded to “Cry to thy heart; wash every word thou utter’st, In tears (and if’t be possible) of blood”. From the opening of the play, Ford repeats the symbol of the heart, and of blood. Giovanni’s heart is full of incestuous desire, and as such he must use his same heart to repent for his “unraged (almost) blasphemy”.

Alan Dessen, in his essay, The Raw and the Cooked in Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, recounts how during a performance of the play at Yale, the audience “burst into gales of laughter when someone in the auditorium was heard to whisper quite audibly: “My God, that’s a heart on his dagger!””. Dessen claims that this “moment risks comedy in order to confront the audience with the disjunction between imaginary and real female bodies”. Ford uses gory props and gruesome imagery to draw the audience back to the female body, in its dismembered form. Ford would have used an animal heart during the on-stage production, but this would have been a confronting, striking prop that signifies the brutal nature of the play. Ford uses the prop of blood to draw focus to the violence and sexual desire that is woven throughout the play. Blood is a very potent motif, rich in imagery, and as such contributes to the religious and sexual connotations in the play. Terri Clerico in her essay, The Politics of Blood: ‘Tis pity she’s a whore explores how “Giovanni argues that his incestuous desire of their shared blood - “Are we not therefore each to the other bound/ So much more by nature, by the links of blood”. There is a convoluted line between familial bonds, and sexual bonds in Giovanni and Annabella’s relationship, he claims their sexual encounters are inevitable due to their shared bloodline. He notes the “well-coloured veins” on his sister’s hands before he murders her, perhaps admiring in her body, what he too has in his, drawing the audience’s attention to the duality of the characters, and their two bodies acting as one. Clerico further goes on to explore how blood is figured in the play “in its literal capacity of signify the consequences of physical violence as well as in its metaphorical operations as a marker of social status and worth”. She explains how the “flow of blood negotiates the. . . circulation… of social, political and sexual values in Parmesan society”. Ford explores how blood can be used in a more social, political context, looking into how blood represents social class, and the mobility within these classes. Blood is used physically as a prop in many scenes, the murder scenes are gory and often gruesome, full of bloody violence. However, there are more subtle examples of blood in the play. It would be interesting to see how Annabella’s letter, written in her own blood would look to the audience, or how Giovanni’s sacrifice of his own blood would be performed on stage.

The human body, and more specifically, the human heart act as the centrepiece of the play, causing suspense, murders, lusty incest and strong desires. What makes the human body in Ford’s play so interesting is the way that its depictions are both metaphorical and literal. When talking about Annabella’s heart, it is both literally, individually desired, and metaphorically desired. Furthermore, Ford’s exploration of the borders of sexuality is at the front of a contemporary audience’s mind. There are many characters in this play whose lives become casualties in the quest for either love, or betrayal. Ford uses the human body as a vessel to depict the vengeful violence that has stemmed from desire.