Books by John Ford
The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Penguin Classics)
A new volume of the greatest revenge tragedies of the seventeenth-century stage
These four plays, written during the reigns of James I and Charles I, took revenge tragedy in dark and ambiguous new directions. In The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil, John Webster explores power, sex, and corruption in the Italian court, creating two unforgettable anti-heroines. In The Broken Heart, John Ford questions the value of emotional repression as his characters attempt to subdue their desires and hatreds in ancient Greece. Finally, Ford's masterpiece 'Tis Pity She's a Whore explores the taboo themes of incest and forbidden love in a daring reworking of Romeo and Juliet.
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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A Woman Killed with Kindness and Other Domestic Plays (Oxford World's Classics)
by Thomas Dekker, John Ford, Thomas Heywood, William Rowley
Here is a marvelous collection of plays from the English Renaissance period, offering prime examples of the "domestic drama" genre that first appeared around 1590. These four pioneering works, set in near-contemporary England and concerned with issues of marriage and crime rather than war and power, focus on the lives of ordinary people, instead of kings and queens and politicians. Arden dramatizes a notorious murder case of forty years earlier, in which a wealthy husband was killed by his wife and her lover. In A Woman Killed with Kindness, a wife is caught by her husband in bed with his best friend. The Witch of Edmonton combines a true-life story of witchcraft with a fictitious tale of bigamy and wife-murder, and The English Traveller deals with the unexpected changes people find when they return home after a lengthy absence. Part of the Oxford English Drama series, this edition has modern-spelling, critical introductions, wide-ranging notes, a chronology of the plays, and appendices that address the question: who wrote Arden of Faversham and when did Thomas Heywood write The English Traveller.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Four Revenge Tragedies: The Spanish Tragedy, The Revenger's Tragedy, 'Tis Pity She's A Whore and The White Devil (New Mermaids)
by John Webster, Thomas Kyd, John Ford
Francis Bacon described revenge as a 'kind of wild justice'. Then as now, early modern playwrights and their theatre-going public were fascinated by the anarchic energies that a desire for retribution unleashes. Rather than rehearsing familiar conventions, each of these plays presents a unique social and cultural milieu where dark fantasies of revenge are variously played out.
In Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy a grieving father seeks public justice for the murder of his son by envious princelings. When his attempts are thwarted he turns a court spectacle of murder into the 'real' thing. Blackly comic in its tone and style, The Revenger's Tragedy (anon.) presents vengeance as mimetic art, witty and cruel. Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore represents an innovative re-working of the genre as a brother's love for his sister leads to his spectacular revenge on his rival, her husband, in a society in which brutal retaliation for perceived wrong is the norm. In Webster's The White Devil crimes of passion ignite revenge in the courts of the Italian city states.
This student edition contains fully annotated, modernized texts of each play together with an introduction discussing the dramatic and poetic style of each play, focusing on its action and play of ideas.
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'Tis Pity She's a Whore and Other Plays: The Lover's Melancholy; The Broken Heart; 'Tis Pity She's a Whore; Perkin Warbeck (Oxford World's Classics)
by John Ford
Ford wrote darkly about sexual and political passion, thwarted ambition, and incest. This selection of four plays also shows his ability to portray the poignancy of love as well as write entertaining comedy and create convincing roles for women. Setting Ford's earliest surviving independently written play, The Lover's Melancholy, alongside his three best-known works, The Broken Heart, 'Tis a Pity She's a Whore, and Perkin Warbeck, this edition includes an introduction with sections on each play, addressing gender issues, modern relevance, and staging possibilities.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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The Witch of Edmonton: by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford (Revels Student Editions)
by Thomas Dekker, John Ford, William Rowley, Peter Corbin, Dekker Sedge
The Witch of Edmonton has received considerable attention recently both from scholars and critics interested in witchcraft practices and also from the directors in the theatre. The play, based on a sensational witchcraft trial of 1621, presents Mother Sawyer and her local community in the grip of a witch-mania reflecting popular belief and superstition of the time. This edition offers a thorough reconsideration of the text with a complete transcription of the original pamphlet by Henry Goodcole. This edition will be of particular interest not only to students of Renaissance Drama but also of the cultural history of the seventeenth century.. Open University adopted text (for their new Renaissance Drama module).
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