Blake and Tis Pity

Although this site is about Anthony and Cleopatra, I'll post some of the key documents and essays for Blake/Ford too. See the bottom of this page for more updates!
Useful websites:
1. http://vimeo.com/user2729874/videos - has clips of key scenes in 'Tis Pity: watch these and re-read the text to get more familiar with it!
2. http://www.crossref-it.info/textguide/Songs-of-Innocence-and-Experience/13/0 - some great commentaries on the poems; discussion of the differences between 'innocence' and 'experience'; themes and tonnes of useful stuff.

Here's the crucial context and critical readings stuff on Blake and Ford:

Blake AO3/4

·         THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL: ·         Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires. ·         Energy is eternal delight —  Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death. —  Without Contraries is no progression. —  (Disagrees that) God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies. —  JERUSALEM: —  Dark Satanic Mills —  Bring me my Arrows of desire OTHER QUOTES FROM BLAKE: —  The outward ceremony is antichrist…The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination." Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion." —  He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sun rise. —  “There is no use in education… It is the great sin. It is the eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”

Contemporary ideas:

Rousseau “man is born free but everywhere is in chains”

Locke’s theory that the (human) mind is at birth a "blank slate

Mary Wollstonecraft – marriage is “legalised prostitution.”

John Keats – talks of art’s “negative capability” - the ability to be in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Is this how we should treat Blake? In Keat’s opinion poetry is great when “It nothing affirmeth.”

Critical Quotes

Nicholas Marsh argues that the Songs “launch an assault on the very bases of an oppressive society: capitalism, organised religion and military power... they call for fundamental change, they are revolutionary works.”

Professor John Sutherland calls Blake “the father of Marxism” whereas Billy Brag talks of Blake’s “socialism of the heart.” Sutherland also talks of Blake as a “sexual anarchist.”

James Rovira: talks of Blake’s “apparent obsesion with sex” and later works that show “guilt free incest fantasies.” (In America, the poem’s hero rapes his sister).

T. S. Eliot writes that Blake's poetry has "a peculiar honesty, which, in a world too frightened to be honest, is peculiarly terrifying."

According to Harold S Pagliaro, Blake’s poetry is terrifying as he considered the world “death-laden, filled with intimidating foes, deadly Tygers, hypocritical smiles, and constricting social and religious systems that reduce life.”

Peter Ackroyd: “Blake was the poet of eternity but he was also the poet of 18^th century London.”

·         The problem with Blake: “is he being ironic, or is he being serious?” He is also at times “maddeningly oblique”!

·         Blake sought to dramatise …”the possible deficiencies of innocence itself.”

·         On the sexual abuse of Chimney sweeps: “no doubt the young vagrants on the streets became an easy prey to those who lusted after them… a potent mixture indeed, of sex and dirt and criminality and desire embodied within the very young”

J Bronowski: “Blake was on the side of man against authority.”

Matthew Collings: “He experienced parental love as oppression.”

Northrop Frye notes the “double-edged irony” in the songs: “Songs of Experience are satires…They show us the butcher’s knife which is waiting for the unconscious lamb. Conversely, the Songs of Innocence satirize the state of experience, as the contrast which they present to it makes its hypocrisies more obviously shameful.”

Elizabeth Langland writes about the state of mind of the speakers in Songs of Experience: “All these ‘perceivers’ create the guilt by their attitude towards the situations they evaluate. The guilt, in short, is a product of their minds, not inherent in the situations that seem, if anything, innocent and pure.”

 Helen Glen also notes the “egocentric self-consciousness” of the speakers.

Alicia Ostriker finds in Blake “both a richly developed anti-patriarchal and proto-feminist sensibility… [and that frequently in his poems] heterosexual love means human destruction.”

For example, she argues that London is “Blake’s most condensed indictment of the gender arrangements in a society where Love is ruled by Law… where virtuous females are pure, modest, and programmed for frigidity, so that healthy males require whores; where whores have ample cause to curse.”

Timothy Morton: argues that Songs of Experience contain “truths delivered from a cynical or even evil point of view.” Poems like ‘The Fly’ are marked by “the rhythm of a child but the syntax of an adult.”

A04 Historical context – (add quotes from the poems to each of the sections and ask yourself if links can be made to Ford!)

The Industrial Revolution

The industrial revolution was, for Romantics like Blake, a concern. As a Londoner he saw it as worsening the lot of ordinary people and increasing the gap between rich and poor. (Note: His talk of ‘dark Satanic mills’ can actually be seen as referring to educational establishments like Oxford which produced rational, enlightenment minds devoid of imagination.)

London was changing dramatically – it was increasingly characterized by the youthfulness of its inhabitants, and a greater number of women than men. The city’s growth (it grew from 600,000 to more than 2 million in his lifetime), meant that a massive urban sprawl overtook the open fields that once surrounded central London. Many of the Songs deal with the relationship between the rural and the urban – contrasting an idealized, Eden with urban industrialization, commercialization, poverty and the brutal treatment of children, such as chimney sweeps. Painters like William Hogarth captured the truth that 18^th century London was blighted by corruption, (child) prostitution and exploitation of innocents: his six paintings, “The Harlot’s Progress” showing a young girl’s journey from innocence to recruitment, degradation, jail and death). One historian calls Georgian London 'a vast, hostile, soulless, wicked all-devouring but also fatally attractive place that makes and breaks, that tempts, inflames, satisfies, yet corrupts and ultimately kills'.
Blake was profoundly concerned with social justice – and some of his poems address this directly – he was concerned particularly about the awful plight of children sold as young as 7 by their parents.

The Enlightenment

The 18^th century is frequently referred to as ‘The Age of Reason’:  it was an age of restraint and rational views of the world. Everything could be measured, analysed and exploited. The century saw a movement away from an understanding of truth as something which was revealed only by God. Instead, truth could be found through observation of the world and by the use of human reason.

Education

Blake did not go to school, let alone university. This must have influenced his perspectives on establishments of education. During his lifetime education became important for the masses, not just for the elite. Blake strongly opposed the imposition of adult ideas onto young minds.

John Locke

A big influence on children’s education in the period was Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632 -1704) who argued that the human mind is a ‘blank slate’ at birth. This might be seen as a way to impose adult rules on children. Blake reacted violently against the philosophy of John Locke, seeing him as an ‘agent of the devil’: instead, Blake believed that the imagination was central, since it allows humans to relate to, and express, divine reality. Blake also vehemently opposed the scientific method he saw as being embodied in Isaac Newton's work, which he believed, produced a model of the world as a mechanism to be analysed, measured and regulated.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Blake was more akin to Rousseau - the first philosopher of Romanticism, valuing feeling and innocence highly whilst downplaying the role of intellect. He said that: ‘Man was born free but everywhere is found in chains.’ Rousseau also held that children were born good and had an in-built capacity to learn through experience. Formal education distorted the child’s creativity, imagination and freedom to develop. Blake agrees with Rousseau that man's lack of freedom, his "manacles" are "mind-forg'd."

The French Revolution

The French Revolution (1789) had an enormous impact in Britain – in particular in producing more legislation, an atmosphere of censorship and a suspicion of thinkers like Blake whose views of social change were seen as potentially dangerous. The word ‘terrorist’ was coined in England, to describe supporters of the French Revolution. Interestingly, Songs of Innocence was published in 1789, whereas Experience was published during the height of the Terror  (1794); the French Revolution left its mark on the second book. Some critics, for example, argue that ‘The Tyger’ is a political allegory of the French Revolution.

Blake’s initial support of the French Revolution was later tempered by his abhorrence of the violence it involved. He was also appalled to see that the revolutionaries quickly became tyrannical oppressors in their turn

Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man

The French Revolution spurred the publication of Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man, In this work, Paine advocated equal political rights, laws favourable to working people and proposed that all men over twenty-one in Britain should have the vote. The book was immediately banned. Paine also produced The Age of Reason, attacking the claims of Christianity. He criticised the Old Testament as being untrue and immoral and claimed that the Gospels were contradictory. This lost him popularity with many of his earlier supporters, including Blake.

Religion

Ackroyd calls Blake ‘the last great English religious poet.’ Blake’s rejected many conventional beliefs about organised religion, (“there is no natural religion”), although the Songs are full of Biblical imagery. He was initially influenced by the theologian Swedenborg who argued that Jesus alone, the ‘Divine Human,’ was God. Blake objected to the established Church imposing its rules on individuals (‘State religion is the source of all cruelty’). He believed that it was the suppression of desire, not the enactment of it, that produced negative results. Just as unacceptable to him was the Doctrine of the Fall, which asserts that every human being is born in a state of sin. Original sin was the common teaching of the Church as was the belief in predestination: that the ‘chosen’ will be saved and the remainder damned.

Blake’s own religious system was utterly personal – just as he rejected the notion that man’s instincts are fallen, so he rejected a tyrannical God in favour of Satan’s passion and energy; he also rejected the salvation anxiety associated with predestination. For him, all human’s are capable of reaching the infinite, God.

Deism

Influenced by the dominance of reason and science, many key thinkers of the period started to regard God in a way described as Deism:

·         Deists believed that reason required the existence of a creator but did not require his continued involvement with his creation.

·         A popular Deist description of God was as a clockmaker: responsible for creating the complex mechanism, or clock, of the universe. Once in existence, however, it has no further need of its creator’s involvement

For Blake, the deist approach rendered the world dead, barren and devoid of the active presence of creative divine power (in which creative power human beings participated when they employed their own imagination). For Blake, religion should be resplendent and dynamic – not ‘distant.’

Romanticism

Blake is a forefather of the Romantic movement – a reaction against Enlightenment and its emphasis on the rational mind. Key ideas of Romanticism include the emphasis on the imagination; the sublime (a sense of wonder at the natural world); a desire to go beyond the ‘rules’ in favour of experimentation and a stress on the thoughts and feelings of children to be of the greatest importance.

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A03/4:  ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore

1.  Context

Ford ‘s play was first performed in 1633 in an increasingly troubled society in the run up to the English Revolution. This was a turning point in English history, when for the first time a king would be executed. The play was written for performance by the Queen’s Men, at the private Phoenix theatre. The Queen, Henrietta was a French Catholic who openly practiced her religion to the indignation of the Calvinist Puritans. Ford’s play is notoriously difficult to pin down – its depiction of a corrupt power system might be a veiled attack on the court of Charles I; alternatively, he might have been appealing to the royalty because like the lovers, Charles’ isolated court was surrounded by a society hostile to its value, cornered and desperate.

One might argue that the play is distinctly modern in its depiction of a broken society. Perhaps the play’s decadence reflects Caroline theatre’s extreme pessimism (compared with Elizabethan tragedy, which normally had at least a hint of reconciliation at the end); alternatively, its decadence might have appealed to or even attacked the privileged, wealthy audience at the Phoenix theatre. Afterall, the play is full of references to money and commerce.

Modernist T.S.Eliot criticised the play for not being universal in its themes – “the play lacks general significance.” Another criticism might be that, unlike Blake, there are no redeeming values in the play, no humanity. Little is known about Ford, although one contemporary wrote this couplet about him: “Deep in a dump alone John Ford was gat, With folded arms and melancholy hat.” Perhaps, Ford’s personal pessimism is reflected in the play’s nihilistic ending.

 However, according to Laurel Amtower, the redeeming humanity is provided in the love between Giovanni and Annabella: “in turning toward each other, they provide for the other the only other ‘good’ member of society.” Some critics, like Charles Lamb, go further and argue that there is something visionary “an improvable greatness” in the siblings’ love.

Lastly, after the 1660s the play was unperformed for 250 years. Not just because of its shock factor, critics felt the work was “useless.” Why do you think it has gained favour with modern audiences?

2.  Genre

Firstly, the play is a tragedy. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that tragedy should evoke both ‘pity’ and ‘fear.’ One of the most shocking aspects of Ford’s play is simply his title – the decision to pair the word ‘pity’ with ‘whore’ is arguably anti-Aristotelian because it challenges audiences to engage with passions that would not have been regarded as worthy of pity. This is one way in which we can regard Ford as a radical writer: perhaps the emphasis in the title and concluding line of the play should be on the second word rather than the last – Ford’s invitation to “pity” the whore as a victim.

Revenge Tragedy

The theme of retribution was hugely popular in early modern drama. Jacobean philosopher Sir Francis Bacon famously called revenge, “a kind of wild justice,” showing the ambivalence society felt towards it. This ambivalence is reflected in the fact that in the genre revengers usually die. By 1633, the revenge tragedy genre was becoming hackneyed – there was little to surprise audiences anymore. Yet, clearly there was still a fascination with the relationship between personal acts of vengeance and social disorder. Interestingly the word “justice” is repeated throughout the play. Lisa Hopkins argues “the actions of the Cardinal reduce ‘justice’ to nothing but an empty word.” Parma’s lawless society is chaotic mostly because there is nothing to regulate the blood-lust that ensues from vendettas. Michael Pallier argues that although incest breaks a strong social taboo, it is “the blood lust at large in Ford’s Parma” that is most threatening for audiences.

The play also differs from most revenge tragedies with its sheer number of revengers (in Hamlet, for example, the title character is the only revenger). There are five separate revenge subplots, with an emphasis on civic rather than courtly corruption, all of which reflects badly on Parma - a violent and lawless urban setting.

Revenge is also given a religious spin. Gillian Woods argues that the play depicts “God as primary revenger”, much in the vein of an Old Testament tyrant, voiced through the Friar’s threats of hellfire and damnation. She goes on to point out “a tension running throughout the play: is God the author of, an actor in, or simply absent from this tragic universe?”

An interrogative play

With revenge tragedy running out of ideas, Caroline theatre also became a site for moral experiment asking difficult questions of its audience. This ambiguity and ambivalence make Ford’s a very modern play, and perhaps his experience in the Inns of Court gave him an interest in problems that lack easy solutions.

"What strange riddle is this?" says Vasques at the end of the play. Perhaps it sums up well the what Catherine Belsey means when she calls the play “interrogative” – it  invites its audience to question ideological positions, whilst the author’s views remain elusive (even more so than Blake?). This ambiguity might be a reaction against Caroline state regulation which was enforced through pamphlets, books and sermons that took a SINGLE moral position. Ford, on the other hand, publically interrogates his audience’s set positions on religion, social justice and sexual taboos.

A key question is whether Ford is criticising the siblings’ incestuous relationship? If so, then perhaps as Blake said of Milton, he is “of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” For T.F. Wharton: “the play explores the possible existence of a kind of moral innocence unconnected with traditional ethical qualities… by making incest his subject matter, and by exploring the very possibility that it could be seen in any way as innocent, Ford signals his interest in exploring absolute moral standards.” At least, unlike the other characters, Giovanni and Annabella are not driven by greed or desire for social status. Unlike other revenge tragedies, their incest is not linked to lust for power: does this give them a kind of relative innocence? Is their love justifiable?

Confusing isn’t it. As a result Ralph Cohen argues “the play victimises its audience” – by forcing it to adopt take sides with the incestuous lovers or by killing off the play’s comic figure Berghetto.

A re-write of Romeo and Juliet

The parallels between Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet are obvious: both plays feature young lovers, forbidden love, a meddling nurse and friar, and a tragic ending.  Giovanni, like Romeo (who famously cries “O I am fortune’s fool!”), believes “'tis my fate that leads me on.” However, he is cast as a more transgressive version of Romeo when he declares “I’ll swear my fate’s my God”: he is conveniently rejecting religion to selfishly justify his ‘destiny’ to love his sister. (Ford’s play is also influenced by Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Like Marlowe's Faustus, Giovanni is a brilliant scholar who exhibits fatal intellectual pride).

Like Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, in which the poems from each book seem to be in conversation with each other (and with the illuminations) the play is dialogical – it is in a curious dialogue with Shakespeare’s tragedy. The audience's memory of previous plays makes it too an active participant in Ford's dramatic strategies. This means the audience often finds it hard to decide if it is supposed to admire or condemn a character. The most flagrant example in ‘Tis Pity is where the incestuous lovers use lovers’ rhetoric (deriving from 'Romeo and Juliet') that we are trained to hear ‘positively’: we can’t help but hear this positively even when Giovanni and Annabella are doing the most appalling things. We project memories of innocent love and apply it to incestuous love – arguably making us accomplices... The lovers remain hero and heroine despite incest and murder.

The ghost of Romeo and Juliet is raised by Ford so that we can also see the differences between the two plays. Structurally, the echoes are straight-forward: Romeo-Giovanni, Juliet-Annabella; Nurse-Putana, Friar Laurence, Friar Bonaventura. Ford then rings changes upon the old model: Giovanni's visits to his Friar always end with his rejecting the teacher's counsel; Putana's furtherance of the lovers becomes grossly inappropriate (note her role is as tutoress, not nurse); and, of course, all the time we witness the attractive lovers onstage we are aware of the extremity of the taboo that they are violating. For the sophisticated courtiers of Charles I, transgressive love no longer could be represented by two ardent and innocent young lovers separated by family vendetta.

Although Romeo and Juliet ends in tragedy, there is a sense that the Montagues and Capulets will learn from the needless deaths. Even the Prince declares “Some shall be pardon’d.” The final word in Ford’s tragedy, however, is the Cardinal’s troubling words “Tis pity she’s a whore.” What do these lines mean to you? How do they affect the way we feel at the play’s close?

A city tragedy

In the Renaissance the ‘city’ was regarded as the ultimate measure of man’s potential as a social creature. In this sense, Parma is an abject failure. Note that most critics agree that despite its Italian setting, the play is based on Caroline London.

Corinne Abate argues “Parma is the real whore of the tragedy”; a whorish dystopia in which dysfunctional relationships are the product of social conditioning. Besides the newly established middle class merchant Florio, the rest of the townspeople are out of control, obsessed with money and vengeance. Abate calls it a city that promotes “unbridled individualism.” Dowries, social status and monetary greed dictate behaviour. The only civil authority is the Cardinal (there are no dukes, counts or kings – making the church even more blameworthy than other early modern tragedies), who is a despot.

Sonia Massai emphasises that by living according to the revenge ethic, by the end of the play, Parma is “a fallen city.”

The play exposes bourgeois sins of greed, social aspiration although in its ending, does it affirm the social order? Either way, the play is acutely aware of the Caroline class system. As Julie Sanders writes, “Giovanni and Annabella suffer  not because of their sins, but because of their lower social position.”

3.    Language/Imagery/Structure

The play has been criticised for lacking the complex imagery of Shakespeare or Marlowe. However, many critics praise his use of structure – multiple plots revolving around revenge and a comic subplot, which serve to modify harsh judgements on Annabella and Giovanni; and the symbolic use of confession as a structural motif (a way to dramatise a meeting point between ideological differences); and celebrations and feasts to demonstrate the failure of communal living (social events that end up as bloodbaths!).

Critics also note lexical patterns in the play, such as the words “heart” and “blood” which recur in the play frequently, as do words such as: “charity/confusion/fate/lust/mercy/repentance”.

The Christian or Petrachan emblem of the 'heart' is repeatedly invoked and questioned throughout the play. Ford puts both Petrachan and neo-Platonic language into the mouths of his characters, but subverts rather than celebrates them - showing how this now clichéd language leads to confusion and chaos.

Giovanni, says the Friar, has “left the schools/Of knowledge to converse with lust and death.” An Oxford graduate, Ford seems interested in the role of education in the play. The word “know”, or forms of it, is also repeated 76 times in the play. Lisa Hopkins calls this “a tragedy of knowledge.” The play starts with an intellectual debate, unlike Romeo and Juliet which starts with a street fight. Knowledge also links to the play’s fascination with confession and confusion – the play challenges what the audience knows about moral themes; the word “know” is used in the Bible as a substitute for sexual intercourse. Lisa  Hopkins argues that epistemology (the study of knowledge) becomes part of the play’s “thematic structure.” One definition of ‘experience’ is ‘accumulated knowledge’ – can you find a link to Blake here?

Rather than imagery, one way in which Ford signals the importance of the theme of salvation anxiety (and to highlight the obsession with climbing social status) is through his use of space. Annabella is consistently associated with the upper stage: she first appears on the balcony, sees Giovanni, then descends. Later she repents and reascends to the balcony: “the heaven/hell polarity is established from the outset.” (Lisa Hopkins). No character is physically borne off to hell, as in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, but the theme of damnation is relentless in this play. So is the theme of repentance. For Sonia Massai, it is on the upper stage that Annabella refashions herself “from whore… to a tragic, elevated character.”

4.  Sexuality

Early modern scholar Robert Burton saw lust as a physical disease. The tragic flaw in many of Ford’s characters is the failure of mind to tame extreme passions. Giovanni’s failure is exactly this. As in today’s society, the heart was symbolically seen as the seat of passions.

Early moderns regarded incest as a monstrous sin. Incest was also a taboo in Ford’s time, although he would have been well aware of incestuous rumours concerning papal families such as the Borgias. Incest, therefore, in Jacobean/Caroline theatre was always symbolic of deep corruption. Arguably, Ford presents the incestuous siblings sympathetically and is harsher towards the patriarchs of Parma.

Giovanni and Annabella’s love threatens “a patriarchal social order” argues Michael Pallier. As in Verona, where the Capulet’s arrange for Juliet to marry Paris, marriage is about money and status: it is a way to consolidate family status. Marriage was also seen as a way to transmit Christian beliefs to the next generation. Clerico argues that in Parma “incest is a defensive act, reflecting social anxieties about alliances between social classes.” For Martin Butler, the play is a “critique of royal absolutism in the Caroline period.” Charles I passionately defended the absolute divine right of kings: in other words, simply because he was the son of James I, God had chosen him to rule. This absolutism, and carefully arranged political marriages between the ruling families of Europe, might almost be seen as incestuous.

In early modern England, Stevie Simkin writes, ‘women’s sexuality, once let off the leash, [was] seen as potentially catastrophic for social infrastructure.’ Ford’s era was misogynistic (remember, characters like Annabella and Philotis would be played by boy actors). Annabella is constructed as a figure of desire and her character undergoes transformations form virginity, to pregnancy, from wife to whore – innocent to sinner to penitent. In this way, she is a more fluid character than the static men in the play. Yet, like any revenge tragedy female who takes control over her sexuality, she is brutally punished. This is also a society in which women’s choices are controlled by men – in Ford’s dystopia they are controlled through the mutilation of their bodies.

Critic Marion Lomax also emphasises the way women are excluded from deeper education in the play. Education, as well as violence, is what separates the male and female characters of the play. Giovanni rejects the Friar’s arguments “because is suits him to do so” and Soranzo “twists religious arguments to make threats against Hippolita and exonerate  his own behaviour.” Men “assume the authority to challenge laws” but women lack “the education which invites reasoning and intellectual challenge.” Therefore, Annabella lacks the social freedom of Giovanni and cannot simply dismiss his advice to marry (and repent). Corinne Abate argues that “the play’s hostility towards female sexuality reduces all women to whores or to potential whores.”

The church controlled sexuality in Caroline England. Anyone engaging in sexual conduct outside of a marriage was threatened with divine punishment. Annabella ultimately submits more to sexual regulation than Giovanni who according to Angela Carter sees himself “as a kind of Adam and she is unavoidable and irreplaceable Eve.”  

Giovanni’s opening dispute with the Friar enacts the tension between a repressive religion and sexual desire. As Gillian Woods argues: “This first confession stages the play’s central conflict between will and repression (and between God’s prohibitions and Nature’s sanctions).” Some critics are even convinced by Giovanni’s arguments. Brian Morris argues “society is shown as corrupt, and incestuous love as a relationship capable of deep and fragile beauty.” T.S.Eliot, on the other hand, has little sympathy for the lovers with Giovanni “a monster of egotism” and Annabella “pliant, vacillating and negative.”

5.  Religion

Ford lived in a time of religious conflict with different groups vying for authority in post-Reformation England. Ford's own religious persuasion is tantalizingly ambiguous. Christ's Bloody Sweat, an early poem of  Ford's, is arguably anti-Catholic insofar as it makes reference both to "the Anti-Christian throne ... Propt up with scarlet robes ", and to the Jesuits " who "make the name of Jesus the disguise / Of countenancing impudence and lies". In general Catholics would not have been trusted, although conflict arose since many (including the king) harboured nostalgia for Catholic ritual.

But did Ford have a hidden pro-Catholic agenda? Lisa Hopkins argues that the play demonstrates “Catholic sympathies” and, with Giovanni’s skewering of his sister’s heart, “exposes what happens when ‘Protestant literalism’ is applied to Catholic metaphor.” She argues that the Catholic symbol of the ‘sacred heart’ - an emblem of divine love – is literalised by Giovanni. However, one could equally argue that he is literalising the clichéd Petrachan image of being lovesick.

More likely, Ford might have been opposed to the crypto-Catholic decadence of the Anglican church. The play is set in Italy, typically a location used in the theatre to dramatise anti-Papal sentiment. Giovanni’s behaviour and the motif of confession used in the play might symbolise Catholic corruption, especially in the light of the Pope’s “nuncio”, the Cardinal who protects the murderer Grimaldi because he is a nobleman, has Puttana burnt alive and confiscates Florio’s property for the use of the church. The Friar, similarly, is bound by the confidentiality of confession – a practice much criticised by Protestants. Evidence for Ford’s sympathy for the Friar might be seen in the cast list, where the Friar’s name is above the Cardinal, reversing the normal hierarchy of status – ultimately the Friar is more difficult to determine as a sympathetic or unsympathetic character, although his lurid threats of Hell and his ill-advised and spineless advice to Annabella to marry Soranzo perhaps make him more dangerous than Shakespeare’s Friar Laurence.

Although Ford arguably presents the siblings favourably, critics point out that much of the Friar’s hellfire speech to Annabella is taken from Ford’s own religious poem ‘Christ’s Bloody Sweat.’ Does this mean that Ford supports this terrifying vision of damnation? Michael Pallier also argues that Ford was influenced by neo-Stoic Christianity – which believed that passions, but passions should be controlled by reason.

For Gillian Woods the drama of the play is not incest but “whether the siblings will choose to reject this love and opt for repentance over romance.”

Some Extra ideas to look at:
#1 The Schoolboy

Go to http://www.blakesongsettings.co.uk/index.php/the-poems/79-the-school-boy and read up on this important poem - can you make any links between it and Ford's depiction of education/knowledge?