Tis Pity
She’s a
Whore.
Figurative language:
language that uses words or
expressions with a meaning that is
different from the literal
interpretation.
• Metaphors/Similes
• Personification
• Metonymy
Metaphors and similes.
• Ford's language lacks the sweep of the Shakespearean
metaphors.
• Uses simpler form of expression of almost unique
purity and truthfulness.
• When Giovanni is about to kill his sister the language
maintains a sanity and purity that is terrifying..
• “Give me your hand. How sweetly life doth run
In these well coloured veins; how constantly
These palms do promise health! But I could chide
With Nature for this cunning flattery.
Kiss me again. Forgive me.”
A03
The Cheek by Jowl production company uses the bed as
the physical and metaphoric centre for ’Tis Pity” in
reminding the audience of the theme of incest. The bed is
symbolic as it represents sinning, hell, and wrong doing.
Personification.
The attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics
to something non-human, or the representation of an abstract
quality in human form.
• Ford uses personification to set the scene and create
imagery.
• “ Welcome, sweet night! The evening crowns the day”
• Describing the night ‘sweet’ - Human nature.
• Hippolita - Richardetto's unfaithful wife, is the
beautifully vicious personification of the woman
scorned.
Metonymy.
A figure of speech in which a thing or concept is called not by
its own name but rather by the name of something associated
in meaning with that thing or concept.
The main theme of Incest.
• Act 1 Scene 1.
• Giovanni does not want to admit to this sin.
• Blames it on the concept of ‘nature’ and ‘blood’.
• “One soul, one flesh, one love, one heart, one all”
• Essentially classed as Forbidden love.
Which others can you think of?
• “Thus hung Jove on Leda’s Neck”
• Theme of rape behind the story of Leda and the
Swan.
Louise Fordham.
University of Nottingham.
The personification of nature is juxtaposed
with the Platonic image of the “double
soul‟, still to be found in the contemporary
notion of “soul mates‟, and with the
religious rhetoric of damnation, “sin and
foul‟, in order to invert such discourses and
depict incestuous love as a natural
inclination.