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Ford, John (1585-circa 1640) 'Tis Pitty Shee's a Whore. Acted by the Queenes Maiesties Servants at the Phoenix in Drury-Lane.
London: Printed by Nicholas Okes for Richard Collins, 1633.
First edition, quarto, uncorrected running head in signature B, without the scarce leaf with the poem by Thomas Ellice; some foxing and spotting; margins of H4 and I3 trimmed with some minor loss to the ends of the last two lines and the catchword on H4 recto, and the two-line stage direction at the bottom of I3 recto; marginal staining, a few small rust spots, and other minor stains; bound in mid-19th century half calf with marbled paper boards; 18th century ink inscription to title identifying the author; ex libris James Stevens Cox, with bookplate, 7 1/8 x 4 3/4 in.
STC 11165; Greg II 486; Pforzheimer 383.
'Tis Pitty raises the bar on Romeo & Juliet by presenting the audience with a passionately incestuous pair of siblings. "Ford had already reworked the disastrous end of Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers in the scene of eroticized self-immolation that gave Love's Sacrifice its title, in 'Tis Pitty he relocated the entire romance action in the corrupt bourgeois world of the Middletonian satire, and reinvented the lovers as a mutually infatuated brother and sister [...] whose fatally intense passion is protected from the audience's instinctive condemnation by its contrast with the cynical opportunism and thoroughgoing Italianate viciousness that characterizes the society whose norms they defy. The play carries to its logical extreme the romantic individualism that justifies Shakespeare's lovers, making of the hero an atheistical Marlovian overreacher." (ODNB)
