I attempted
this essay under timed conditions and received 28/30, equivalent to an A*. To
have earned full marks I would have needed to reference form and structure of
both texts explicitly, which I have now added!
"Court, city or country: a writer's choice of setting is
always significant."
In the light of this view, discuss writers’ use of setting
Despite their different
timelines, Blake being a late 18th century Romantic poet, while Ford
dabbled in the Caroline and Jacobean periods of Renaissance drama, both writers
witnessed social transformations in the cities, their writings shaping and
defining such changes. Blake’s poetry from the Songs of Innocence and of
Experience is often set in London, which he portrays as teeming with corruption
and exploitation, while Ford’s play ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore is set in the
mythical Italian city of Parma, the immorality and corruption that it
encompasses can be externalised to Ford’s own contemporary society within
Renaissance England. Critic Abate postulates that the “whore” referred to in
the title is “the city of Parma herself”, because adultery and incest occur
within her borders. Setting in both respective texts symbolise the societal
concerns both writers wished to convey to their readership or audience.
Although it seems the play
revolves around the incestuous affair between Annabella and Giovanni, given the
deplorable and unceasing acts of revenge in ‘Tis Pity, characteristic of the Revenge
Tragedy form, this is the least of Parma’s woes. As critic Amtower notes, “two
potentially “savable” individuals find themselves contaminated by a surrounding
culture” of “spiritual depravity”, leading them to private carnal perversions.
This is highlighted explicitly in the Cardinal’s closing heroic couplets of the
play, the couplet structure significant in that it is used to conclude the play
with conviction. He observes that “incest and murder” have “never so strangely
met”, which is an ironic statement in that Ford specifically chose the Italian
city setting because Italy was famed for murder, corruption and aristocratic
incest during the Renaissance. Therefore, despite closing the play with the
final rhyming couplet:
“Of one so young, so rich in
Nature’s store
Who could not say, ‘Tis pity she’s a whore?”
Which would
suggest conviction in his condemnation of Annabella, stresses falling on “she’s”
and “whore”, given the hypocrisy in his previous observation in denying the
characteristics of the corrupted Renaissance Italy setting, this with the addition
of the nature of Annabella’s brutal death serves to lead the audience to drawn
on the stressed abstract noun and Christian virtue of “pity” to take pity on
Annabella. But furthermore, in line with Abate’s argument, the audience is also
invited to pity Parma as a city that Laura Finke argues, reduces “all women to
whores or potential whores”, like the macrocosm of a brothel. This is not a
sweeping statement given that prostitution was on the rise in England during
this time, and is continuously referred to within the play, even by the most
innocence of characters, like Bergetto, who casually comments “I can have
wenches enough in Parma”, suggesting the normality of its role in society.
Therefore, the city setting of Parma is very significant as an externalised
symbol of sexual impropriety, under which the women of the play fall victim to.
Blake’s Song of Experience “London”,
like ‘Tis Pity also utilises the city setting of England’s capital as a symbol
of sexual corruption, drawing on the imagery of “youthful harlots”, the
adjective “youthful” making it hard to stomach, highlighting how their
childhood has been stolen from them through exploitation, before the
apocalyptic vision of London follows. While the previous three quatrains of the
poem draw on social injustices being committed within the city’s limits, which
were condoned by the Church and State because this was taking place during the
capitalist Industrial Revolution, these all accumulate into the final stanza.
The plosive sounds of “blights” and “plagues” creates a harsh tone, indicating
the realism of this imagery of the streets of London as they were consumed by
sexually-transmitted diseases like syphilis, which is symbolised in the
juxtaposition of sacraments in “Marriage hearse”, as the confinement of
sexuality within marriage forced people to prostitution, thereby forcing them
to contract disease, until their demise. The poem adopts a variation of the
ballad form, declaring his intention of it being spread via word-of-mouth, and
indicting the city’s exploitative society, leading playwright Arthur Miller to
conclude, “There is more understanding in the nature of capitalist society” in
London “than in the whole of socialist literature.”
But the corruption of a city
world in Blake’s poetry is not only limited to sexual corruption, but blatant
social corruption, where the nobility are protected, while the disadvantaged
are forced to fend for themselves. This is explored in Blake’s “The Chimney
Sweeper” “antitype” poems, as critic Northrop Frye called them, as they place
the same social issue at the forefront of each poem, but explore it from the
different contrary states of Innocence and Experience. In this case, the social
issue is the climbing boy trade, when boys as young as four were effectively
sold into slavery. The Innocence antitype takes the form of a monologue,
unusual of Innocence, to fully encapsulate the innocent and naïve perspective
of “little Tom Dacre”, who is told that:
“So if all do their duty, they
need not fear harm.”
Which is
written in anapaestic metre which serves to convey his relentless optimism in
aspiring to heaven despite his life-denying circumstances. His belief following
his “duty” is fuelled by the Marxist perspective of “Religion is the opium of
the masses”, in how it sedated the vulnerable in society from their difficult
lives, forcing them into submission. As critic Freedman suggests, “The sin of
organised religion, as Blake sees it, is to prevent people from seeing things
as they are by training them in the fallacy of received wisdom.” Tom is
susceptible to this “fallacy” because he only dwells in Innocence, and not in
Experience. Blake uses his own visions of a corrupted London to externalise to
all readers across the country seized by a capitalist Industrial Revolution,
encouraging them to speak out against the corruptive nature of this city
setting.
Blake also draws on the country
of England as a setting in his fiery poem “The Tyger”, a contrast to the
Innocence poem “The Lamb”, which while exploring the contrary natures of God as
a creator of beauty and destruction, also presents the contrast between the
industrialisation of urban cities against the destruction of pastoral society.
As critic Johnson notes, “The industrial rhythm of its metre speak more to the “dark
Satanic mills” of the Industrial Revolution and its encroachment on England’s “green
and pleasant land””, accompanied by the semantic field of metallurgic imagery
of the “hammer”, “anvil” and “furnace”. This is contrasted against the calm pastoral
imagery of Innocence in The Lamb, with the rural description of “stream” and “mead”.
As a Romantic poet, Blake valued nature and was horrified to see it being
destroyed within London, and presumably across England to make way for the “dark
Satanic mills” of industry. In contrasting “city” and “country” between these
two antitypes as a setting, Blake not only indicts the shift towards the
deprivation of nature, but uses this as a metaphor for society’s moral
deprivation in doing so. Hence, setting is key in conveying Blake’s
condemnation of his contemporary society.
While Ford, like Blake, also wants to showcase Giovanni’s own moral deprivation, he does so through a different setting: the setting of a court environment. Having been educated at Middle Temple, Ford was familiar with the art of debate, which transfers to the opening scene of the play, as does it continue through while Giovanni transcends humanity’s limits, but continues to justify doing so. As critic Hartley Coleridge notes, “He [Ford] delighted in the sensation of intellectual power, his moral sense was gratified by indignation at the dark possibilities of sin”, which is reflected through Giovanni’s Faustus character, who uses the language of debate within a verbal court environment to justify his quest for forbidden love, as Faustus did for forbidden knowledge.
“Are we not therefore each to
other bound
So much the more by nature; by
the links
Of blood, of reason?”
While the
iambic pentameter of blank verse stresses the language of debate of “therefore”
and “reason”, the stress on “links of blood” bluntly states that although
Giovanni can convince himself that he can justify incest through intellectual
debate, he cannot deny the prerequisite that makes it sinful to begin with:
their “links of blood”. Giovanni’s own delusion is explicitly showcased in his
debate with the Friar that parallels this opening scene, only he has
consummated his love for Annabella, when the Friar exclaims, “O ignorance in
knowledge!” the juxtapository nature of this statement stigmatising Giovanni’s
reasoning. As Lisa Hopkins notes, “Knowledge is not an absolute at all, but
something that can be seen to contain its own opposite.” At a time when areas,
most notably anatomy, were being enlightened by disproving previously heralded
academic texts, perhaps this is Ford’s way of suggesting that social rules,
including the abolishment of incest, should be challenged within courtly
environments of debate. Therefore, the court-like settings in ‘Tis Pity, which
would have been emphasised through the intimacy of the Cockpit Theatre where it
was performed in Ford’s day, present an intellectual challenge to social
conventions, but it is the protagonist’s failure to present a sustained and
reasoned argument to this that leads him to his delusioned demise, rendering
him a morally compromised man.
Phew! That
was a LOT of words…
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