Tis Pity Context

Tis Pity Context

1. Social setting

   • middle class
   • Education and Learning
     • During Renaissance/ early modern period, universities taught the rhetoric, intellectual approaches to argument
       • question social custom and conventions
       • university of Bologna interest in investigating Anatomy =, 13th century Italian physician - credited for reintroducing the practice of publicdissection
         • where Giovanni went

2. John Ford

   • Middle Temple London 1602
   • work is common with earlier writers, many critics refer to him as Jacobean writer
     • Revenge tragedy was flourished during Jacobean period (1603-1625)
   • Women
     • Renaissance daughters had to become wives so that father can pass patriarchal responsibility to husbands
     • raised to believe in the reputation of chastity

3. play

   • published 1633, maybe written in 1631
   • set in Parma
     • italians thought of as lustful, unscrupulous

4. Influences

   • Robert Burton's treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy
     • During the Renaissance obsessive fascination with human body
       • dissection on stages, public entertainment
         • Leiden Anatomy Theatre1609
   • similarities to Othello and Romeo and Juliet

5. Charles 1629

   • Parliament dissolved
     • civil war in 1642, Charles' beheading in 1649
     • politics: Royalism Vs Republicanism
       • Royalism: monarchal absolution, power to the king
       • Repulicanism: democratic like classical Athens
   • 'Personal Rule' 11 years
   • Puritans vs Ch of E vs Atheism
   • belief: appointed by God to govern
   • Married a Spanish Catholic
   • attempts to bring back Catholic Church, redecorates them

6. Religion

   • mainstream Protestantism