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Mar. 8th, 2008 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThe last Jacobean tragedy booklogging post! You all weep, I am sure.
The two last plays we read for class were both by John Ford: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (and yes, I was reading the edition with the jaunty neon pink cover) and The Broken Heart. 'Tis Pity She's a Whore is a tragedy in the true wacky Jacobean style, despite being technically post-Jacobean in time period - histrionic Italians, wacky brother-sister incest, raging jealous husbands, surpries pregnancy, and a conclusion that involves the hero cutting out his sister's heart and waving it around on the point of his sword. As you do.
The play is disturbing basically because the hero is crazy and no one else is quite crazy or dramatic enough to keep up with him. There are a couple of revenge plots going on, but one of the vengeful husbands decides that revenge is too much trouble and gives up halfway through, and the other one never gets a chance to murder his wife, the incestuous sister, because her brother gets there first with the heart-slicing etc. (much to the surprise of his sister-lover, who, as the more sensible of the pair, clearly did not expect to become an object lesson in Why You Don't Take The Dramatic Things You Say About Giving Your Heart To People Literally.) It also wasn't quite as much fun for me as, say, Webster, because you didn't quite feel that everyone else deserved to have all this happening at their dinner party - especially the father of the hero and heroine, who has been very kind and understanding and oblivious all throughout the play, and is understandably so freaked out when his son pops up and announces that he's been sleeping with his sister this whole time that he promptly dies of shock. Poor guy.
The Broken Heart, by comparison, is a very dignified and sedate sort of tragedy. It takes place in Sparta, so everyone suffers very bravely and resolves to have death before dishonor etc., and nobody would ever dream of flying into a rage and poisoning anyone's tennis racket or cutting out their heart. Basically, the main conflict involves a pair of betrothed lovers who are separated because the girl's brother breaks their father's promise that she could marry Mr. True Love, and instead lets a much richer man force himself on her and marry her. The brother feels very guilty about this afterwards and continually apologizes repeatedly to everyone, but it is to NO AVAIL, because the girl decides that this means she is Forever Dishonored, announces to everyone that she is going to die, and starves herself to death in a tragic and dignified manner. Her boyfriend also decides that it is his duty to Take Revenge on the brother, and so he traps him in a chair and kills him, all the while talking regretfully about how very brave and noble the brother is and how sorry he is about all this, really, but, you know, duty calls. This is the only murder in the whole piece, which is, like, unheard of for a revenge tragedy. And then he goes to the Princess, who was betrothed to the brother, and with great dignity announces that he murdered this very great man, he's very sorry about it but it had to be done, and now he himself deserves the death penalty, and the Princess is like, "very well, choose your death. WITH HONOR AND DIGNITY." So he very politely asks his friend to help him slit his wrists, and dies. And then the Princess, who has been tough and controlled and sedate throughout the whole thing, very properly gives a series of orders dictating who everyone left alive should marry, hands the kingdom over to someone else, and then keels over and dies of the eponymous broken heart. And everyone stands around and tuts over how brave and sorrowful they all were, O Sparta, O woe. Everyone acts in general much more sensibly than in your average revenge tragedy, but . . . I have to admit, I kind of miss the crazy.
The two last plays we read for class were both by John Ford: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (and yes, I was reading the edition with the jaunty neon pink cover) and The Broken Heart. 'Tis Pity She's a Whore is a tragedy in the true wacky Jacobean style, despite being technically post-Jacobean in time period - histrionic Italians, wacky brother-sister incest, raging jealous husbands, surpries pregnancy, and a conclusion that involves the hero cutting out his sister's heart and waving it around on the point of his sword. As you do.
The play is disturbing basically because the hero is crazy and no one else is quite crazy or dramatic enough to keep up with him. There are a couple of revenge plots going on, but one of the vengeful husbands decides that revenge is too much trouble and gives up halfway through, and the other one never gets a chance to murder his wife, the incestuous sister, because her brother gets there first with the heart-slicing etc. (much to the surprise of his sister-lover, who, as the more sensible of the pair, clearly did not expect to become an object lesson in Why You Don't Take The Dramatic Things You Say About Giving Your Heart To People Literally.) It also wasn't quite as much fun for me as, say, Webster, because you didn't quite feel that everyone else deserved to have all this happening at their dinner party - especially the father of the hero and heroine, who has been very kind and understanding and oblivious all throughout the play, and is understandably so freaked out when his son pops up and announces that he's been sleeping with his sister this whole time that he promptly dies of shock. Poor guy.
The Broken Heart, by comparison, is a very dignified and sedate sort of tragedy. It takes place in Sparta, so everyone suffers very bravely and resolves to have death before dishonor etc., and nobody would ever dream of flying into a rage and poisoning anyone's tennis racket or cutting out their heart. Basically, the main conflict involves a pair of betrothed lovers who are separated because the girl's brother breaks their father's promise that she could marry Mr. True Love, and instead lets a much richer man force himself on her and marry her. The brother feels very guilty about this afterwards and continually apologizes repeatedly to everyone, but it is to NO AVAIL, because the girl decides that this means she is Forever Dishonored, announces to everyone that she is going to die, and starves herself to death in a tragic and dignified manner. Her boyfriend also decides that it is his duty to Take Revenge on the brother, and so he traps him in a chair and kills him, all the while talking regretfully about how very brave and noble the brother is and how sorry he is about all this, really, but, you know, duty calls. This is the only murder in the whole piece, which is, like, unheard of for a revenge tragedy. And then he goes to the Princess, who was betrothed to the brother, and with great dignity announces that he murdered this very great man, he's very sorry about it but it had to be done, and now he himself deserves the death penalty, and the Princess is like, "very well, choose your death. WITH HONOR AND DIGNITY." So he very politely asks his friend to help him slit his wrists, and dies. And then the Princess, who has been tough and controlled and sedate throughout the whole thing, very properly gives a series of orders dictating who everyone left alive should marry, hands the kingdom over to someone else, and then keels over and dies of the eponymous broken heart. And everyone stands around and tuts over how brave and sorrowful they all were, O Sparta, O woe. Everyone acts in general much more sensibly than in your average revenge tragedy, but . . . I have to admit, I kind of miss the crazy.
