John Ford's ’Tis Pity She's a Whore, written after tragedy had ceased to occupy the central position on the Renaissance stage, has often been considered in relation to its predecessors. Readings of this relationship, however, have varied widely. On the one hand, Ford's play has been viewed as “the last, belated Jacobean tragedy,” the final gasp of serious tragic form in a world of fantastic, “feminine” tragicomedy. On the other hand, it has been seen as a falling off from earlier accomplishments, considered as “decadent” and thus effectively feminized itself. And, on the third hand (because these things are never simple), it has been credited with self-consciously criticizing and playing with the forms that it has inherited. I would suggest that all these conceptualizations contain some truth. Even more fully than its Jacobean precursors, ’Tis Pity inhabits a masculinized tragic space that it simultaneously criticizes from within, unsettling the categories of masculinity and tragedy, unmasking them (and itself) as inescapably transgressive and fundamentally fantasmatic. Both on the level of its fiction and on the level of its form, it forcefully enacts patriarchal imperatives while exposing their contradictions – precisely by pushing them so forcefully to their logical (and absurd) conclusions.

I would like to begin demonstrating this by briefly reconsidering Ford's relation to two of his best-known predecessors.