Marriage in the 17th century...

...good male/female context for all three year 13 texts...

http://www.phil.muni.cz/angl/thepes/thepes_02_02.pdf

Different types of love

Courtly love: http://www.britannica.com/topic/courtly-love




Pygmalion: Falling in love with your creation (http://www.shmoop.com/pygmalion-myth/)




Neoplatonic love: Beauty is God (http://www.slideshare.net/mjarry/neoplatonism)




Petrarchan Lover: Unrequited Love (see below)

The Petrarchan Lover suffers from unrequited love—the love is not returned or reciprocated, loves from afar. Often the object of love doesn’t even know someone is pining for her.

Idealizes—falls in love with an ideal, a vision of perfection, rather than a human being with strengths AND weakness. Falls in love with an idea—an idea of a person, the idea of love.

Idolizes—Turns the lover into an idol, an object of worship. Puts the lover on a pedestal (she’s high above/he’s a lowly peon), worships her from afar, compares her to a goddess or something holy.

This is not truly love. This is infatuation.

Infatuation—in love with the idea of love rather than a real person/ is in love with love/ is in love with longing rather than having

Language—Devices

• uses blazon to catalogue physical beauty and physical characteristics (similes and metaphors)
• uses conceit—exaggerated metaphors
• uses elaborate, flowery, exaggerated, embellished, artificial language
  Petrarchan love is not a sexual love.

Shakespeare on Lust

SONNET 129

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
   All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
   To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Five theories on love

Five theories

BBC adapatation - 1980

The text was adapted by Joffé, producer Richard Broke and Kenneth McLeish, known for his effective translations of Greek dramas. Elements of the language throughout were updated (‘gallants’ becomes ‘fellows”, ‘Call me not dear’ becomes ‘I am not your dear’), while what is perhaps the most egregious substitution attracted the critical wrath of Andrew Sinclair writing in The Listener,

Ford’s good line, ‘Oh, ignorance in knowledge!’ was removed for [Alexander] Pope’s most notorious one, ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing’… Texts are not sacred but they may be respected. Otherwise all the splendour of what is seen may be overwhelmed by anger at what is misheard.’ (‘The enemy within’, 22 May 1980, p. 662)

‘The most extensive interventions are made to the final act of the play,’ Martin White notes, ‘many designed to smooth out the shifts in Ford’s text that can present some difficulty in tracking the link between the characters’ words and actions.’ (John Ford: ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, p. 130) While some additions may jar, the overall effect is to create a fast-paced and largely credible period drama, which at many points allows Ford’s language to make a considerable impact. See, for example, the whispered attack of Alison Fiske’s glorious Hippolita on Soranzo (Anthony Bate) from Act II Scene 2.

Joffé and his colleagues transposed the play from Renaissance Parma to a northern country house in mid-nineteenth century Britain. Filming in fact took place at Chastleton House, a Jacobean wool-merchant’s estate built in the early seventeenth century, and where James MacTaggart had shot The Duchess of Malfi eight years before. The all-important urban context of the original is lost, as is much of the religious and intellectual context (it is arguable, for example, that for Ford, Giovanni’s embrace of incest is as much an intellectual challenge as it is driven by the passions).

The setting is that of a prosperous, agrarian bourgeoisie and the corruption of the society around the lovers becomes primarily financial. Martin White identifies how

Putana’s altered lines emphasized the priorities of this mercantile society where there is ‘bargaining, talking, dealing on every side’ rather than Ford’s ‘threatening, challenging, quarrelling and fighting’. (John Ford: ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, p. 129)

‘Tis Pity… was filmed during the first year of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government, and the production is an effective if oblique riposte to the ‘Victorian values’ about the Prime Minister was so enthusiastic.

Filming in a contained world like Chastleton has practical advantages, given that urban exteriors do not need to be dressed in period, but the house also offered Joffé numerous opportunities to conjure up a claustrophobic world in which supposedly secret conversations can be overheard. Note how many scenes (including the first passionate kiss of the lovers) are shot as if being observed through doorways, and like James Taggart for Malfi, Joffé uses Chastleton’s staircases to suggest a world lacking all stability. There are other felicities of staging also, as when Giovanni declares his love to Anabella in what appears to have been their nursery, with that potent symbol of innocence, a rocking-horse, prominent in the establishing shot.

The escalating brutality of the play’s actions is observed dispassionately by the somewhat distanced camerawork of Nat Crosby, who shoots with muted colours and a style that echoes the social realism of The Spongers and other films from producer Tony Garnett set in contemporary Britain. By the end the affair Giovanni and Anabella may not have brought about the collapse of an urban polity and the takeover of Parma by the Cardinal, but the vicious authoritarianism of Soranzo triumphs and the household and estate of the good-hearted Florio is erased. The world is harsh and pitiless, whether the time and the place are those of late sixteenth-century Italy, of mid Victorian England or of the country in which the television audience was watching in May 1980.

The Sam Wanamaker playhouse production

This is the one some of you saw.




Telegraph review:


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/11195788/Tis-Pity-Shes-a-Whore-Sam-Wanamaker-Playhouse-review-evil-made-seductive.html






Britishtheatre review:
http://britishtheatre.com/review-tis-pity-shes-whore-sam-wannamaker-theatre-4stars/




Poor review in the independent - disappointed more with the play itself than with the production.
http://www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/tis-pity-shes-whore-sam-wanamaker-playhouse

Cheek By Jowl's production

This would've been a good one to watch...

The trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZDvCN1so9M

A preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNenpG_gxXc

Honour in the movies

How to hold (and release) a grudge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCdXiOssbM0


A Scottish, idealised and patriarchal view of honour: http://movieclips.com/PF2TR-rob-roy-movie-explaining-honor/


Defending women's honour: http://movieclips.com/Khkno-tom-jones-movie-defending-sophies-name/

Ambiguity essay

"Ambiguity: the bastard child of creativity and
cowardice." How far and in what ways do you agree with
this statement? Refer to Marvell and Ford in your writing.


OR.


"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies." Discuss, with reference to both writers.

Griffi's Film

It's weird. But there are some interesting choices.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MPg0KJRzak

Finally, a film version of Tis Pity

The final 15 minutes, including Giovanni's farewell to Annabella.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sor5jCdqS0


NO PASSIVE WATCHING! Ask yourselves about the choices Griffi (the director) has made:


- Why does he make Giovanni faceless, and in black, in this scene?


- Why is Annabella in red?


- Is their body language justified in the text?


- Are you pleased or disappointed with the heart/banquet scene? What angle has the director chosen to take? What angle would you take?


Ask your own questions throughout... you will be able to refer to this as 'Griffi's 1971 film' and his interpretation, and use that to prove/contest your own points.


CAKE FOR ANYONE WHO CAN FIND THE REST OF IT.

Louise Fordham's essay on the inherent AMBIGUITY of Giovanni's love

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/documents/innervate/08-09/0809fordhamearlymodernlove.pdf

Essay question: 07/05/2015

"The course of true love never did run smooth." In light of this quotation, explore writers' treatment of love.

Past questions - Jun 2013