Ford's stagecraft,’Tis Pity She's a Whore,and Mason's The Turk

Abstract

John Ford is known for regularly mining the work of fellow dramatists. Behind his best-known work, ’Tis Pity She's a Whore, the influence of a number of plays may be detected, notably in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Othello. In this note, I propose a further source-text for ’Tis Pity She's a Whore as well as for two other Ford plays that share a common feature. I set out correspondences between a lesser-known play, The Turk, by John Mason (written for The Children of the King's Revels) and ’Tis Pity She's a Whore, focusing particularly on the use of the upper stage, a device also found in Perkin Warbeck and The Lady's Trial.