Queen Elizabeth and Annabella in Tis Pity Shes a Whore by John Ford Es

Queen Elizabeth and Annabella in Tis Pity Shes a Whore by John Ford Annabella, the female ally in John Fords play, Tis Pity Shes a Whore, ultimately dies after trying to meet the conflicting demands that her brother and father induct on her. While her brother, Giovanni, commands her to be his clandestine lover, her father, Florio, expects her to marry a socially appropriate man and bear a child. These demands closely resemble the real-life demands that Queen Elizabeth Is subjects placed on her because they simultaneously wanted her to fulfill their erotic go fors, marry a politically appropriate man, and produce an heir to the throne. Fords play was first published in 1633, thirty years after the death of Queen Elizabeth I, but nostalgia in the late 1620s and 1630s drove packto measure a worsening political situation against inevitably heightened memories or impressions of what life had been like under the great queen (Morris vii Barton 724). While its not clear whether thi s nostalgia for the reign of Elizabeth drove Ford when he wrote his play, there are clear parallels between the demands that were placed on the factual Elizabeth and on the assumed Annabella moreover, there are striking parallels between the responses to the two womens deaths. Both women were expected to forever remain objects of male erotic desire, and the characteristics of Elizabeth that evoked erotic desire in her subjects parallel the characteristics of Annabella that elicit erotic desire in Giovanni. Just as courtiers paid homage to Elizabeth as an ever-youthful yet unapproachable object of desire, Giovanni confesses to Annabella, The facet / Of thy immortal beauty hath untuned / All harmony both... ...bbory, Achsah. Oh, Let Mee Not Serve So The Politics of Love in Donnes Elegies. ELH 57.4 (1990) 811-833.King, John N. Queen Elizabeth I Representations of the unadulterated Queen. Renaissance Quarterly 43.1 (1990) 30-74.Morris, Brian. Introduction. Tis Pit y Shes a Whore. By John Ford. Ed. Brian Morris. London Black, 1992. vii-xxvii.Mullaney, Steven. Mourning and Misogyny Hamlet, The Revengers Tragedy, and the Final Progress of Elizabeth I, 1600-1607. Shakespeare Quarterly 45.2 (1994) 139-162.Promiscuous, a.2a. Oxford English Dictionary. 1989 southward ed. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 8 May 2005 . Rose, Mary Beth. The Gendering of Authority in the Public Speeches of Elizabeth I. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 115.5 (2000) 1077-1082.