SOURCE: '"Tis Pity She's a Whore: Representing the Incestuous Body," in Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in English Culture, c. 1540-1660, edited by Lucy Gent and Nigel Llewellyn, Reaktion Books, 1990, pp. 180-97.

In the following essay, Wiseman discusses Ford's treatment of the incestuous body in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore as a context from which modern readers can examine seventeenth-century cultural attitudes towards sex, incest, and the human body.

I

Soranzo.   Tell me his name!
 Annabella.                      Alas, alas, there's all.
          Will you believe?
 Soranzo.                  What?
 Annabella.                     You shall
  never know.
 Soranzo.   HOW!
 Annabella.    Never; if you do, let me be
  cursed.
 Soranzo.    Not know it strumpet! I'll rip up thy
  heart and find it there.
 Annabella.               DO, do.

In this speech from Ford's mid-seventeenth-century play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore there are a number of gaps between what is presented on stage and what might be called...