[In the essay below, Stavig contends that Ford wrote 'Tis Pity She's a Whore as a burlesque of the traditional morality play, intentionally adding absurd melodramatic and satiric elements to the play in an effort to minimize his audience's reaction to the theme of incest and the closing spectacle of violence.]

After hearing a brief summary of the plot, a Caroline playgoer might expect Tis Pity She's a Whore to be a sensational melodrama with Giovanni portrayed as an all-black villain who outrageously violates all standards of decency. As an atheist, an incestuous lover, a revenger, and a murderer, Giovanni has many of the characteristics of a stage villain; but Ford chooses to develop him in a quite different way. Instead of stressing the villainy, Ford portrays Giovanni as a talented, virtuous, and noble man who is overcome by a tumultuous passion that brings about his destruction. Most modern readers, steeped in the literature of romantic love, are so impressed by the noble side of Giovanni that they respond to the play as the tragic story of two courageous lovers trapped by a transcendent passion that an inflexible society cannot hope to comprehend. According to this view, Giovanni and Annabella are victims of a situation that is largely beyond their control. When the play is read historically, this interpretation of the lovers must be seen as inadequate. If one tries to interpret the play as celebrating a Giovanni who remains throughout his troubles more noble, more courageous, and more sensitive than those in the corrupt society around him, he is forced to qualify that judgment until it has little meaning. From a traditional point of view an incestuous love would by its very nature deteriorate and end in destruction. When we see Giovanni steadily becoming more blasphemous, jealous, irrational, and vengeful, we must recognize that the traditional formula for tragedy is operating. Scholars, however, after admitting or implying that some reservations about the love may be necessary, still maintain that Giovanni's glorification of passionate love and his heroic stance in accepting his destruction make him a worthy figure, even in degradation. No doubt there is some truth in this view in that Giovanni retains his courage, his pride, and his eloquence; but my analysis of Ford's presentation of Giovanni's arguments for love and fatalism suggests to me that there is more satiric undercutting of Giovanni's position than has been realized.

According to my classification of types of character … , Giovanni is a combination of the passionate sinner and the rationalizing fool. In so far as he is ruined by his inability to control his unruly passions, we can pity him, since all men after the Fall are susceptible to beauty, quick to justify their actions, and insufficiently rational in overcoming their weaknesses. In so far as he justifies himself through twisted logic and pseudo-heroic posturing, he transforms himself into a grotesque and almost ludicrous figure who elicits our shock and at times amusement at his arguments. The exact nature of the fusion of the two types would depend in part on the way Giovanni is presented; also some in the audience would no doubt be more inclined to pity him and others to scorn him. But Giovanni never becomes a noble victim. The structure and tone of the play make clear that the pressures on him are the usual temptations of a world corrupted by the Fall and that Giovanni's moral collapse is an example of how passion can corrupt and degrade even the worthiest individual. Annabella falls too, but, in contrast to Giovanni, repents and becomes at the end of the play an example of the noble victim; unfortunately she has learned too late what proper values are and must die as a consequence of the tragic events initiated by the earlier sin.

While this traditional moral framework operates in 'Tis Pity, it would be wrong to put all of the stress there. Giovanni is a sinning and foolish everyman who must be evaluated by traditional Christian humanist assumptions, but he is also a vehicle for sophisticated, satiric comment on issues of the day. In his arguments in defense of love and fatalism, Giovanni twists various contemporary theories of love, ethics, and psychology. A Caroline audience aware of the topicality of his arguments could be expected to see that satirizing Giovanni also means satirizing the perverted arguments that he uses. In achieving such a response to Giovanni, Ford is aided by the air of melodramatic unreality that pervades the play. Giovanni is no ordinary sinner. In making him an incestuous lover, a blasphemous atheist, and a sensational murderer, Ford makes his problems so extreme that an audience would inevitably feel less emotionally involved. Ford's intention seems to have been to write an exciting entertainment that would add melodramatic and satiric elements to his basically morality-play structure. The result is a witty, ironic, often cynical appraisal of man's capacity for evil and for absurdity, all made delightfully, at times scandalously, sensational by the very outrageousness of the deeds. If we are to appreciate 'Tis Pity, we must take it on its own terms and avoid the temptation to fit it into any preconceived notion of what a play on this subject should be.

The brilliant opening scene in which Giovanni boldly but illogically defends atheism and incest to the shocked but understanding Friar Bonaventura does much to shape our reaction to Giovanni's love. Scholars who view the friar as a muddled, narrow-minded moralist should notice that Ford carefully associates him with the virtues of Giovanni's former life. It is the friar who as Giovanni's tutor over a long period shaped him into "that miracle of Wit, / Who once within these three Moneths wert esteem'd / A wonder of thine age, throughout Bononia" (B1^v;I, i). It is the friar to whom Giovanni naturally turns in his trouble, and the references to him as "Gentle Father" (B1; I, i) and "deare Confessor" (B1^v; I, i) seem to indicate that he does so with great respect. Giovanni, far from regarding his advice as narrowly dogmatic, twice refers to his counsel as life-giving; he also notes the "pitty and compassion" (B1^v; I, i) in the friar's eyes. But the friar, despite his sympathy for Giovanni's plight, is completely opposed to Giovanni's clever but perverted arguments. He insists that the course Giovanni is following can only lead to death and destruction: "hast thou left the Schooles / Of Knowledge, to converse with Lust and Death?" (B1v; I, i). His life-giving counsel is that Giovanni's only hope is to "Begge Heaven to cleanse the leprosie of Lust / That rots thy Soule" (B2; I, i). In his simple refutation of Giovanni's involved arguments the friar states that Giovanni is forgetting or ignoring that in the Christian scheme the order of nature and the order of grace are fused. Certainly man should reason (and we should remember that it was the friar who taught Giovanni his philosophy), but man's reason, according to the friar, is misguided unless it is directed by God. If you depend upon reason alone, you are apt to fall into perversions of right reason:

             wits that presum'd
On wit too much, by striving how to prove
There was no God; with foolish grounds of Art,
Discover'd first the neerest way to Hell.
                                          (B1; I, i)

The friar, by implication here and explicitly later (E1; II, v), goes so far as to admit that incest could be defended according to the natural law, but he is emphatic in stressing that that proves only that the opposition to incest is based on the divine law.

Ford's contemporaries, aware of the Platonic fashions of the time, would recognize Giovanni and the friar as studies of Platonists of different types. They would understand the logic of the friar's suspicion that it is Giovanni's perverted love that has twisted his reasoning on religion as well. Instead of worshiping God, he has substituted an earthly "Idoli" (B2; I, i), his sister. Giovanni has learned his lessons on Platonic love imperfectly; instead of proceeding from the admiration of earthly beauty to the worship of God, Giovanni inverts this natural order and even suggests that the gods would bow down to Annabella if they had the chance:

      Must I not praise
That beauty, which if fram'd a new, the gods
Would make a god of, if they had it there;
And kneele to it, as I doe kneele to them?
                                              (Bl; I, i)

Although the friar does not go into a long explanation, his attitude is clear. Proper love is always beneficial, but Giovanni's passion can never find fruition in marriage and will lead him inevitably into mortal sin.

The friar remains sympathetic to Giovanni's plight because he recognizes that Giovanni is suffering from what Burton calls love-melancholy and that Giovanni's illogical rationalizations are indications of a mind twisted by passion. The indications of passion are unmistakable. When Annabella first sees Giovanni cross the stage her description of him stresses his unhealthy appearance:

       This is some woefull thinge
Wrapt up in griefe, some shaddow of a man.
Alas hee beats his brest, and wipes his eyes
Drown'd all in teares: me thinkes I heare him sigh.
                                                 (B4; I, ii)

Giovanni's later description of his love reveals the symptoms of heroical love:

I have too long supprest the hidden flames
That almost have consum'd me: I have spent
Many a silent night in sighes and groanes.
                                        (C1^v; I, iii)

The friar has been criticized for his practical approach to solving Giovanni's problem, but his dual remedy of prayer and practical cure is exactly what is recommended by Burton to cure love-melancholy. The friar tells Giovanni to pray but that if prayer is unsuccessful "I'le thinke on remedy" (B2; I, i). Burton says: "we must first begin with prayer, and then use physick; not one without the other, but both together" (AM [Anatomy of melancholy], II, 9; 2, 1, 2). The friar's advice throughout the play is invariably that of a wise Burtonian spiritual counselor who realizes that Giovanni's love is a passion that is corrupting him morally and physically and that demands immediate cure if disaster is to be avoided. One possible criticism of the friar in this first scene is that his advice to Giovanni to satisfy his passion with another woman is immoral. But the friar does not defend such a course as right: "Leave her, and take thy choyce, 'tis much lesse sinne, / Though in such games as those, they lose that winne" (B2; I, i). His point is the practical one that it is far better to put down his concupiscence with any woman of the streets than to involve his whole being in a serious affair that is justifiable only through open revolt against God's moral law. The difference is the same as that in the Catholic distinction between venial and mortal sin, and the charge that the friar is being legalistic overlooks an important Renaissance theological distinction. Another charge is that the friar advocates a kind of divine magic in prescribing Giovanni's regimen of prayer. But what the friar suggests is a program of disciplined meditation that follows a general pattern widely accepted in the Renaissance.

Even though Giovanni's love might be described as a kind of disease, a Caroline audience would have been suspicious of his fatalistic defenses of his actions since a common view of the time was that prayer and planning can effect cures even in the most difficult cases. As Burton says: "It may be hard to cure, but not impossible, for him that is most grievously affected, if he be but willing to be helped" (AM, II, 5; 2, 1, 1, 1). But Giovanni glorifies his condition instead of trying to overcome it. His fatalistic speech at the end of the first scene is not a legitimate defense but an abdication of his moral responsibility:

All this I'le doe, to free mee from the rod
Of vengeance, else I'le sweare, my Fate's my God.
                                                         (B2; I, i)

He has told the friar that he realizes the need for moral striving, but he appears to have given up hope; he is going to pray only to satisfy God that he has tried but is incapable of conquering his desire. This rationalizing fatalism is to be Giovanni's excuse throughout the play. Some have argued that the fatalistic arguments of Giovanni and of various other characters in the tragedies are an indication of Ford's sympathy for the stoical argument that adversity is the common lot of man and that man can do nothing but accept and endure whatever befalls him. Ford in The Golden Mean states in direct opposition that man should endure if he is guiltless but repent and reform if he is guilty. Burton, as we have seen, also opposes Giovanni's view. More important, in the play itself, Giovanni's fatalism is presented in a way that stresses his lack of logic and his submission to passion.

A good example is his soliloquy just before he reveals his love to Annabella. When the speech is studied carefully the contradictions become apparent. He has attempted to repent, but his description suggests that reason and sincere sorrow for sin were perhaps less apparent during the period of prayer and fasting than his passionate assurance that his case was hopeless and that fate controlled his destiny. He still wants to make love his God:

O that it were not in Religion sinne,
To make our love a God, and worship it.
                                    (B4-B4^V; I, iii)

Giovanni is aware of his sin and seems to realize that the inevitable result will be his destruction; but instead of continuing to struggle he capitulates. Recognizing that he must choose between God and Annabella, he argues illogically that since God has not cured him Christianity has no validity; hence he is free to love Annabella and blame fate for what he seems to realize will be a tragic end: "tis not I know, / My lust; but tis my fate that leads me on" (B4^V; I, iii). Atheism and the belief that man cannot control his actions go together in Giovanni, and we see that his atheism and his fatalism are the result, not of a dispassionate search after truth, but of passionate lust which has over-come his reason. Giovanni is a sick, confused, and irrational sinner rather than a rational rebel.

In these first scenes Ford seems to be striving to get the full shock effect of Giovanni's outspoken but troubled immorality. In the courtship scene with Annabella, we see a new Giovanni—a courtly lover who has cast aside all his uncertainty and has determined to act courageously even if it leads to the destruction he expects. Now the troubled melancholic appears as the exultant lover, and the Platonic theories, stated in the first interview with the friar, are translated into the glowing full-blown language of romantic courtship. Giovanni is not to be an ordinary melancholic lover. In this scene we see that Ford is going to combine his Burtonian analysis with a treatment of the same Platonic themes found in the Cavalier drama. Although there is a connection between melancholy and Platonism in that the victim of love-melancholy is apt to launch into effusive praise of his loved one, Ford in this scene seems more interested in the contemporary fashion of Platonic love than in illustrating Burtonian theories. Professor Sensabaugh in his book on Ford [The Tragic Muse of John Ford] is right in showing that Giovanni's case must be seen in light of the current furor over Platonic love, but … he is wrong in his conclusion that arguments like Giovanni's would be approved by the love cult. At one time or another during the play, Giovanni does base his arguments on all of the theorems that Sensabaugh describes as the coterie's system of love: "Fate rules all lovers. … Beauty and goodness are one and the same. … Beautiful women are saints to be worshiped. … True love is of equal hearts and divine. … Love is all-important and all-powerful. … True love is more important than marriage. … True love is the sole guide to virtue. … True love allows any liberty of action and thought. " But the audience would be apt to criticize such positions just as they probably did the arguments of the perverted Platonists. … As the friar and presumably the audience realize, Giovanni is simply not a good Platonist. In his theories of love he has forgotten the most important point—that love must be rational and moral.

The atmosphere of the proposal scene is shrewdly designed to reveal the absurd quality of Giovanni's courtship. Using a series of formulistic images and phrases, Giovanni eulogistically praises Annabella's beauty. At the start he seems to be only half serious; but, although he instinctively falls back upon an ironic tone when speaking in this exaggerated way, he is unable to direct this sense of the ridiculous to the arguments themselves. Baffled by his uneasy self-consciousness, Annabella is unsure as to whether he is joking. If we are to judge by her reaction to Soranzo's similar courtship later, she is not used to taking such extravagance seriously, and it is probably even more surprising to her to have these praises come from her virtuous brother, Giovanni. This is not the way a brother should talk to his sister. But is soon becomes apparent that Giovanni is serious, and Annabella's own passionate love for Giovanni prompts her to respond in the same way. The result is an extended celebration of their mutual love that culminates in the pseudoreligious ritual of their exchange of vows at the end of the scene. In their worship of each other and of their love both have forgotten the basis of moral order. Earlier in the scene Giovanni went so far as to lie in claiming that the friar has approved their love:

I have askt Counsell of the holy Church,
Who tells mee I may love you, and 'tis just,
That since I may, I should; and will, yes will.
                                          (CI^V; I, iii)

At the end of the scene the ultimately physical basis of their love is stressed by their passionate kiss and their nottoo-subtle declaration that they are off to an incestuous bed.

One device Ford uses to accentuate the perversion of their love is to have the amoral Putana comment on what is happening. When Giovanni in the proposal scene asks Putana to leave, the idea of an affair between them is unthinkable even to her depraved mind: "If this were any other Company for her, I should thinke my absence an office of some credit" (B4^V; I, iii). In their next appearance at the beginning of Act II, Giovanni and Annabella are the honeymooners fresh from bed, jesting bawdily about their love and feeling no guilt. To accentuate the perversion that the lovers are forgetting Ford brings in Putana to comment crudely on the inconsequence of kinship when love is involved: "and I say still, if a young Wench feele the fitt upon her, let her take any body, Father or Brother, all is one" (C4; II, i).

In his next scene with the friar, Giovanni seems to be flaunting his immorality. It can be argued that his irrational logic is the product of his disordered mind, but he is too flippant in his manner and too deliberately outrageous in his arguments to justify the claim that he expects his arguments to be taken seriously. Rather his passion has made him so reckless that philosophy itself seems like so much useless casuistry that may be true but is inconsequential when compared with the overpowering transcendence of his love. The arguments he does use are filled with twisted Platonic jargon:

It is a principali (which you have taught
When I was yet your Scholler) that the F[r]ame
And Composition of the Minde doth follow
The Frame and Composition of [the] Body:
So where the Bodies furniture is Beauty,
The Mindes must needs be Vertue: which allowed,
Vertue it selfe is Reason but refin'd,
And Love the Quintesence of that, this proves
My Sisters Beauty being rarely Faire,
Is rarely Vertuous; chiefely in her love,
And chiefely in that Love, her love to me.
If hers to me, then so is mine to her; Since in like Causes are effects alike.
                                        (D4^v-EI; II, v)

Giovanni's reasoning in this speech is a good example of the perversion of sound doctrine that Ford parodied in Honor Triumphant. The third position of Honor Triumphant is that "Faire Ladie was never false, " and it opens with the same argument that Giovanni cites: "The temperature of the mind follows the temperature of the bodie. Which certaine axiome (sayes that sage Prince of Philosophers Aristotle) is ever more infallible" (HT [Honor Triumphant], DI^V). Ford shows ironically that this position is absurd. Giovanni's sophistical argument, like the logic of Honor Triumphant, is patently false, and we must agree with the friar when he describes Giovanni's reasoning as "O ignorance in knowledge" (EI; II, v).

Nevertheless we should beware of putting their love in an oversimplified context. At this point in the play Giovanni and Annabella themselves still regard their love as some-thing pure and lovely and believe that they can make it lasting and ennobling. Any audience would have to grant that Annabella's virtues make her worthy of idealization, if not of worship, and that Giovanni is attracted not only by physical longing but also by admiration of these real virtues. If there were no moral barrier one could imagine a happy and lasting marriage, and Giovanni and Annabella are indeed unfortunate to love where the natural fruition of marriage is impossible. But without that fruition corruption is inevitable, as they would have realized if they could have been more rational. One of the major interests of the play is in showing the progressive degeneration of Annabella and Giovanni as they become more and more inextricably trapped by events initiated by their passionate love. We have already seen that Giovanni's love for Annabella has led him to atheism, blasphemy, incest, fatalism, deceit, and a complete abrogation of his former power of reason. As the drama proceeds these faults are intensified and others—jealousy, adultery, and finally murder—are added. Giovanni, the paragon of reason, is turned into a foolish madman by his love. Annabella re-covers her moral sense before the play's end, but she too is for a time consumed by passion. When she first appears, she is on the balcony observing with apparent detachment and superiority the chaos of the scene following the duel between Grimaldi and Vasques. But when Giovanni crosses the stage she breaks into lyric praise of his noble qualities, and we are made to see that her silence has been a reflection, not of her detachment from the immoral world about her, but of her preoccupation with her love for her brother. When she goes down to meet Giovanni, her literal descent may be taken as a visual image of the moral descent that is to follow. …

Although the corruption in the society around them makes the attraction of Giovanni and Annabella to each other more understandable, it must be emphasized that they are not absolved from blame simply because their situation was difficult. The initial contrast of their nobility with the degradation around them does not lead to a defense of their immoral relationship as something purer and more ideal. Rather it reveals their weakness in betraying their earlier values and descending to the level of the society around them. Ford skillfully depicts the deterioration that results from their abandonment of reason and virtue. As the play progresses, we see that a steady decline in the spiritual quality of their relationship accompanies their continuing revolt against the moral order.

The deterioration of Giovanni's love is perhaps best indicated by his compulsive jealousy. Instead of trusting the person with whom he has established this supposedly idealized spiritual relationship Giovanni repeatedly suspects that she will desert him for another lover. In the first scene after the consummation of their love he first brings up the subject of her marriage, and it is clear that he is unalterably opposed. At this point his concern seems quite natural but it soon develops into an obsession. Before Annabella's conference with Soranzo he warns her: "Sister be not all woeman, thinke on me" (E4; III, ii). This cynical comment on woman's fidelity does not sound at all like his earlier praise, but we should remember that Burton has a long section in The Anatomy of Melancholy which stresses that jealousy frequently accompanies heroical love (AM, III, 295-357; 3, 3). It is likely that Ford included Giovanni's jealousy as an indication of the steady decline of his moral character. Even after Annabella becomes pregnant and desperate measures are necessary. Giovanni is violently opposed to any marriage not only because he does not want to degrade their relationship by sharing her with another man, but also because he does not trust Annabella's love for him. The physical relation-ship has become such an important part of their love that he fears that another man might easily replace him in her favor. Thus when Annabella repents in the last act, Giovanni's first response is to suspect her motive:

What chang'd so soone? hath your new sprightly
 Lord
Found out a tricke in night-games more then wee
Could know in our simplicity?
                                        (14; V, v)

Giovanni's jealousy and his preoccupation with the physical are connected, and both indicate that he is a victim of heroical love.

Friar Bonaventura has received unjustified criticism for his part in persuading Annabella to marry Soranzo. Throughout the play the friar does everything in his power to stop the incestuous relationship, and his support of the marriage should be seen as another practical attempt to stop the affair. Certainly the friar does not counsel a marriage simply to preserve appearances; his continued demands for repentance prove that he sees Annabella's marriage as a means of ending rather than hiding the af-fair. Nor is the friar to be blamed for supporting a marriage that is almost certain to end in disaster because of Annabella's pregnancy. For he knows nothing or at least appears to know nothing of the pregnancy. If, as the friar assumes, Annabella is truly repentant and is ready to end her affair with Giovanni, there is no reason why the marriage to Soranzo will not work. Admittedly there is no evidence of love for Soranzo in Annabella, but a common Renaissance view was that love came as a result of marriage. From the audience's point of view Soranzo will hardly make an ideal husband, but it should be noted that neither the friar nor Annabella has much choice as to the groom. Earlier Florio had talked about letting Annabella choose her own husband, but at this point Florio has decided that the marriage will go through, and Annabella would have to rebel openly to prevent it. There is no indication of the friar's attitude toward Soranzo, but presumably he would support any plausible marriage that would stop the affair.

Another charge made against the friar is that his lecture on hell is an "exercise in terror" that Ford does not approve [Robert Ornstein, The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy]. But the passage is apparently lifted directly from the passage on hell in Christ's Bloody Sweat, since the correspondence of details is very close. If Ford's author-ship of Christ's Bloody Sweat is accepted, the debt suggests Ford's approval of the friar's stand since it is unlikely, though admittedly possible, that an author would lift a passage from his earlier work that he no longer approved. More important is that the speech is a standard exposition of the Christian view of hell and is designed to encourage Annabella's repentance. Only after Annabella has convinced him that she is truly penitent does the friar come forward with his practical suggestions as to what can be done:

          'tis thus agreed,
First, for your Honours safety that you marry
The Lord Soranzo, next, to save your soule,
Leave off this life, and henceforth live to him.
                                           (F4; III, vi)

The progression is chronological and does not imply that the friar is less concerned about her soul than about getting her married. His repeated insistence on her repentance refutes such a view. As for the reference to "your Honours safety," the friar probably does not mean "for the safety of your reputation" but rather "for the safety of your true honor—that is, your moral integrity and virtue." As the friar has maintained throughout the play, the safest and surest way for Annabella to forget Giovanni and insure her virtue and honor is to marry someone else and and then stay true to him. We must distinguish between the friar's sense of honor and the concern for worldly honor that motivates Annabella when she later tells Soranzo "'twas not for love / I chose you, but for honour" (H1; IV, iii).

The question of whether Annabella's repentance in this scene is sincere is troublesome but is not crucial to the play's interpretation. The best answer seems to be that she is so deeply disturbed that she lets circumstances control her responses, but it may be that she feigns repentance so that the friar will consent to the marriage. An actual stage production could easily clarify the nature of her attitude. Certainly she is unfair to Soranzo to marry him without revealing that she is pregnant. Also it is clear that even if she does feel some penitence in this scene she quickly resumes the affair with her brother. Giovanni himself describes loving her after the marriage (I2; V, iii). Also Putana apparently does not think she is sincerely penitent for she tells Vasques that Giovanni "will not be long from her" (H4; IV, iii).

Nor does Annabella seem very repentant in the scene in which Soranzo discovers her pregnancy. There her rebellious behavior parallels Giovanni's in insolence and moral confusion. Soranzo justifiably demands some explanations, but Annabella argues only that she is faultless since fate is beyond her control: "Beastly man, why 'tis thy fate: / I sued not to thee" (H1; IV, iii). Even though her defiance may be calculated to get Soranzo to kill her, it should be apparent that she believes what she says. If you cannot justify an action, do it anyway and blame fate: that would seem to be Giovanni and Annabella's moral code. Her fault is the same as his; she has elevated her lover to a position of dominance and worships him:

This Noble Creature was in every part
So angell-like, so glorious, that a woeman,
Who had not beene but human as was I,
Would have kneel'd to him, and have beg'd for
 love.
You, why you are not worthy once to name
His name without true worship, or indeede,
Unlesse you kneel'd, to heare another name him.
                                              (H1; IV, iii)

They both treat other human beings as means of achieving their lustful ends. Thus she can tell Soranzo to feel happy that he has had a part in such an affair:

Let it suffice, that you shall have the glory,
To Father what so Brave a Father got.
                                                (H1^v; IV, iii)

She can meet his threats of death with blasphemous exclamations:

Che morte [piu] dolce che morire per amore?
                                              (H1^v; IV, iii)

In Christian terms death for love of the celestial Venus would be sweet, but Annabella would be dying for love of the earthly Venus. Her inversion is blasphemous, as is her next phrase:

Morendo in gratia [dee] morire senza dolore.
                                              (H1^v; IV, iii)

Her grace is not the grace of God but the grace of Giovanni.

The atmosphere of approaching tragedy is clearly mirrored earlier in the scene describing Annabella's wedding feast, for none of the characters closely involved approaches the celebration in the right spirit. The scene opens with the friar commenting on the ritual significance of the feast as a celebration of the joy and plenitude of marriage; he suggests that the saints of the church are there in spirit and urges that the feast may be an emblem of their future happiness. Unfortunately this proper wedding spirit is perverted at every turn. Soranzo is still preoccupied with his recent escape from murder and self-righteously pro-claims that God has protected him and rewarded him with Annabella. Donado is reluctant to drink because of his grief for his dead nephew, Bergetto. The brother-lover, Giovanni, rudely refuses to drink the ceremonial toast. Even the wedding masque, ostensibly performed by lovely virgins honoring the marriage, is in reality Hippolyta's device for exposing and murdering her former lover. In-stead of toasting their happiness, she reminds everyone of Soranzo's affair with her; then after realizing that she herself has been poisoned with the wine intended for Soranzo, she curses the marriage in terms that are particularly ominous since the audience knows of Annabella's incestuous pregnancy:

Take here my curse amongst you; may thy bed
Of marriage be a racke unto thy heart,
… maist thou live
To father Bastards, may her wombe bring forth
Monsters, and dye together in your sinnes
Hated, scorn'd and unpittied.
                                           (G4; IV, i)

Although the appearance of order is reestablished at the end of the scene, we must agree with the friar who closes the scene with a choral comment on the bad omen of a bloody marriage feast and a warning to Giovanni to "take heed" (G4; IV, i). Unfortunately Giovanni does not take heed, and the second banquet, a birthday feast, supposedly a celebration of life, also becomes a feast of death. After Hippolyta's death Richardetto comments: "Here's the end / Of lust and pride" (G4; IV, i). After the second banquet, he makes a similar comment; he has disguised himself "To see the effect of Pride and Lust at once / Brought both to shamefull ends" (K4; V, vi). Richardetto, perceiving what Soranzo and Giovanni do not, that tragedy results from revenge, determines to change his life and give up his revenge: "there is one / Above begins to worke" (G4; IV, ii). The implication that he would still act if God does not makes it questionable whether Ford regards the reformed Richardetto as a norm; but certainly his decision to quit seeking revenge and his evaluations of the deaths of the four principal characters are sound. Lust was the initial cause of the tragedies, and pride, expressed in a compelling desire to assert greatness of spirit, is a strong motivating force behind the revenges of Hippolyta, Soranzo, and Giovanni. The moral attitude suggested by the handling of the revenges in the play is important for establishing the moral context of the ending. As Fredson Bowers has shown in his study of revenge tragedy, Ford, like most of the dramatists of the 1620's, disapproves of revenge and treats it as "a cruel, mistaken, or useless motive." All of the revenges in the play end in tragedy. Two misfire completely: Grimaldi and Richardetto's plot to kill Soranzo results in the death of Bergetto, ironically the means by which Richardetto had hoped to get some wealth; Hippolyta's plot to kill Soranzo results in her own death. Also the innocent suffer: in addition to the innocent Bergetto, Florio dies of grief at his children's actions. Nor in the cases in which the revenge is carried out successfully is there justice, unless one judges by the same code of values that prompted the revenges in the first place. The motivation of each of the revenges is the reassertion of one's nobility in the face of an action which has questioned it. But the concern with only the appearances of grandeur and honor is shown to be empty and misguided. The revenger takes justice into his own hands and invari-ably produces tragedy for all concerned. A thinking person of Ford's own time would be more concerned with living a truly honorable life under God's moral law.

Annabella in Act V finally does see the folly of her sinful ways. In a long soliloquy which the friar overhears she reveals what her mistake has been:

My Conscience now stands up against my lust
With dispositions charectred in guilt,
And tells mee I am lost: Now I confesse,
Beauty that cloathes the out-side of the face,

Is cursed if it be not cloath'd with grace.
                                                      (H4^v; V, i)

Annabella in this complete recantation admits that her former love was lust and that beauty without the grace of God is "cursed. " She also makes clear that she no longer believes in the fatalistic argument that man cannot be blamed for his fate since all is predetermined:

But they who sleepe in Lethargies of Lust
Hugge their confusion, making Heaven unjust,
And so did I.
                                         (II; V, i)

The sincerity of this repentance after the falseness or at least shallowness of her repentance in Act III is certain because she is alone, and the friar discovers her penitence only by overhearing. From this point on all that Annabella does is nobly conceived; because of her repentance she will, as the friar suggests, "dye more blessed" (Il^v; V, i). Incidentally the friar's genuine surprise and happiness at the change in her are further rebukes to those who claim that the friar himself has been somewhat Machiavellian in his methods. Also the repentant Annabella's wholehearted praise of the former advice of "that Blessed Fryar" (I1; V, i) implies that he never deviated from sound morality.

In contrast to Annabella's repentance, Giovanni rises to even greater defiance. Although he maintains the pretense of lofty Platonism, it has become clear that the motivation of his love is primarily physical pleasure and that Anna-bella has become an idolatrous heaven on earth for him:

Let Poaring booke-men dreame of other worlds,
My world, and all of happinesse is here,
And I'de not change it for the best to come,
A life of pleasure is Elyzeum.
                                                (I2; V, iii)

To incest is added adultery, but Giovanni finds "no change / Of pleasure in this formali law of sports" (I2). His attitude to the friar and religion has now become flippant and condescending:

Father, you enter on the Jubile
Of my retyr'd delights; Now I can tell you,
The hell you oft have prompted, is nought else
But slavish and fond superstitious feare;
And I could prove it too—.
                                          (I2; V, iii)

When the friar gives Giovanni the letter from Annabella telling of the discovery of their affair and apparently also imploring him to repent, Giovanni refuses to take the letter seriously and goes so far as to call it a forgery. When in spite of the warning Giovanni accepts an invitation to dinner with Soranzo, the friar realizes that Giovanni's state of mind is desperate and beyond control.

In the final act Soranzo and Giovanni, parallel earlier in their techniques of courtship and their valuation of love, are shown to have similar ideas about revenge and honor as well. The moral code of both is based on worldly rather than spiritual values: both feel that the self is more important than any moral law. Since both of them are more concerned with outward appearances man with inner truth, they react to any trivial assault upon their honor, not with reason and common sense, but with the self-aggrandizing act of revenge.

Soranzo, a more practical and less reflective person than Giovanni, is so hardened in his villainy that he never faces the contradiction between his noble appearance and his corrupt actions and manages to convince himself, with the help of Vasques, that even his most treacherous actions are honorable. Thus the proposed murder of Giovanni and Annabella is seen as a ritual punishment that not only purges corruption but also proves Soranzo's nobility. When Vasques recites the long list of Annabella's misdeeds, Soranzo replies by stressing his resolution and nobility:

I am resolv'd; urge not another word,
My thoughts are great, and all as resolute
As thunder.
                                                 (I1; V, ii)

When later Vasques again tells him to be resolute and not to pity Annabella, Soranzo says firmly that "Revenge is all the Ambition I aspire" (I1^v; V, ii). Later he tells the banditti: "what you do is noble, and an act of brave revenge" (I3; V, iv), and Vasques tells him "nothing is unready to this Great worke, but a great mind in you" (I3^V; V, iv); In planning the banquet Soranzo and Vasques have been attentive to every detail, and we can probably assume that they would have succeeded if Giovanni had not acted first. Soranzo would dramatically reveal the incest and the pregnancy and would pose as a champion of moral order; probably his power-conscious friend, the hypocritical Cardinal, would agree, and if the Cardinal agreed, the rest would follow.

When Giovanni's actions in the last act are compared with Soranzo's it can be seen that he is struggling to accept the moral code of his corrupt society so that he can justify his depraved actions as glorious and courageous. He wants to prove his greatness by a final gesture of heroic nobility, but beneath the eloquent rhetoric is a depraved and troubled sinner now approaching madness. When Annabella tells him of her repentance he jealously suspects that Soranzo has replaced him in her favor and launches into a grand assertion of his ability to overcome fate if only Annabella had been true:

             why I hold Fate
Clasp't in my fist, and could Command the Course
Of times eternali motion; hadst thou beene
One thought more steddy then an ebbing Sea.
                                        (14; V, v)

In his irrationality, Giovanni does not notice that this contradicts his previous position that man is helpless in the power of a malevolent universe.

Not surprisingly the passionate Giovanni himself seems unsure of his rebellion. He shifts from rebellion to conventional speeches about life, death, and immortality and even urges Annabella to pray so that she will go to heaven. Underneath his defiance is a deep consciousness of sin. Giovanni is not a study of a man in intellectual revolt against God but of a sinner who desperately tries to justify what even he himself subconsciously knows is wrong. His naive hope that the strength of their love "will wipe away that rigour" (Kl; V, v) of the just condemnation of the laws of morality is both a recognition that a moral law does exist and a repetition of his old fault of elevating their love above that moral law. Ford would probably expect the audience of "after times" to see the mitigating circumstances in their situation, but he has revealed far too much of the weakness in their passion to permit anyone to accept Giovanni's romanticized view of their love.

Our final attitude toward Giovanni should probably be close to that of Annabella in their last interview. She now sees their affair as deadly sin, is unimpressed by his heroic rhetoric, and insists on breaking off their relationship. Nevertheless she is sympathetic to him: she sees him as tormented by "Distraction and a troubled Countenance" (14^V; V, v), and she without reservation forgives him, some-what ironically in light of what happens, "With my heart" (K1; V, v). But significantly there is no romanticizing of their love and no thought in her mind of a counterrevenge against Soranzo. She wants to find a way of avoiding the catastrophe that she knows is being planned for them, but she is insistent that the most important factor is their relationship to God. She dies while imploring mercy for both Giovanni and herself.

Irony is heavily operative throughout the murder scene. Giovanni speaks of saving Annabella's fame, but it is difficult to see how killing her can save her reputation, particularly since in the next scene in the banquet hall Giovanni flaunts their immorality. Giovanni also speaks of the honor of his revenge: "Revenge is mine; Honour doth love Command" (K1^v; V, v). The revenge can only be on Annabella herself for her defection from him and to a lesser extent on Soranzo for his treatment of Annabella. Such revenge is hardly honorable, and yet Giovanni refers to honor as commanding love. Perhaps he refers to their vows when they first made their pledge of love; each vowed: "Love mee, or kill mee …" (C2; I, iii). Even though the vow itself was sinful and Annabella no longer approves, there is a perverted kind of honor in Giovanni's carrying out the letter of the terms they had agreed on. Giovanni himself seems to see the weakness of his abstractions, for he then tells Annabella that he will explain later:

                   When thou art dead
I'le give my reasons for't; for to dispute
With thy (even in thy death) most lovely beauty,
Would make mee stagger to perforine this act
Which I most glory in.
                                          (K1^v; V, v)

Giovanni's final melodramatic entry into the hall with Annabella's heart on his sword is the ultimate depravity of a man approaching madness. In his deluded concern with dying a glorious death, Giovanni sacrifices all decency. First he breaks the heart of his father and shames the memory of Annabella by revealing his incestuous love; men he is much more impressed by the appropriateness of his father's death than he is with his own guilt in causing it; finally he glories in his "brave revenge" on Soranzo even though what Soranzo has actually done hardly justifies such gloating language. In his final welcome of death Giovanni is concerned only with seeing Annabella again; the romantic grandeur of his death is more important to him than the state of his own soul. If we allow ourselves to be impressed by passionate but vacuous rhetoric we can perhaps see even these final actions as noble, but to do so we must ignore Giovanni's twisted logic, self-conscious role-playing, and lack of con-cern for others. We should pity the lovers since their situation was difficult and since passions are hard to control, but I can find no historical justification for romanticizing their love as something noble and transcendent.

The moral chaos of the last scenes is symbolized by the friar's departure after his final warning to Giovanni. The friar has stood for religion's promise of repentance and regeneration. When he departs after being rejected by Giovanni, all hope of a new life for Giovanni is gone and the tragic ending is inevitable. Evil has assumed control of the society of Parma, and the result must be a bloody conclusion. A criticism made of the friar is that his flight indicates his lack of sincere concern about Giovanni's problem. Such an argument fails to account for the friar's repeated warnings of impending tragedy and his obviously sincere pleasure when Annabella repents. He leaves Giovanni only when he sees that there is no chance of getting him to reconsider. His physical departure serves a double function: it prepares us for the tragedy of the final act and it suggests that the entire society of Parma has been corrupted beyond hope of restoration.

After the friar, the symbol of true religion, leaves the city, corruption and hypocrisy go unchallenged, and the powerful Cardinal is made a kind of symbol of the society's venality. His perverted sense of justice was revealed in the earlier scene in which he protected Grimaldi after the murder of Bergetto. The justice that he dispenses at the end is similarly corrupt. He orders Putana put to death even though she was only indirectly connected with the incest, whereas the villainous Vasques is only banished since he is able to appear virtuous through eloquent but hypocritical speeches about the duty of servants to masters and the glories of revenge. If any doubt remains about the Cardinal's moral values it is dispelled when he confiscates the gold and jewels from the bodies for the church. His final speech about Annabella should probably be viewed ironically as well. The Cardinal thinks in worldly terms, and his glib, clever summary is consistent with his character: "Of one so young, so rich in Natures store, / Who could not say, 'Tis pitty shee's a Whoore?" (K4; V, vi). Although the Cardinal's summary of Annabella's position has a superficial truth that all would grant, it is a view which fails to account for the deeper truth of Annabella's guilt and sincere repentance. Ford's use of the final phrase for his title may be taken as an indication of the extent of the irony that pervades Ford's view of the entire play, particularly this last scene. In his dedicatory letter Ford himself calls attention to the difference between the lightness of the title and the gravity of the play: "The Gravity of the Subject may easily excuse the leightnesse of the Title: otherwise, I had beene a severe Judge against mine owne guilt" (A2^V). The effect of the ironic ending is to suggest the danger of falling back on moral platitudes without examining the realities they represent. Reason and faith should be allies, but if the faith is hypocritical the situation is made worse rather than better. A society in which the friar can find no place is in a deplorable state, and Ford suggests no easy solution. No doubt this cynicism, witty but at bottom traditionally moral, would appeal to an audience aware of the hypocrisies in their own society. The extent of Ford's detachment from moralizing tragedy is indicated by this ironic handling of the conclusion. If we are to understand the nature of Ford's achievement we must distinguish the melodramatic, satiric, and tragic elements. The play is at once an exciting entertainment, a witty but serious analysis of important ideas of the time, and a study of two human beings caught in a situation that they cannot handle.