Tis A Pity - Notes on the text from York Notes - Revision Notes in A Level and IB English Literature

Printed as a quarto [small cheaply printed edition of the play, more like a pamphlet than a book].
Ring was a symbol of female virginity as well as intention to marry.
Philotis' name in Greek means love.
Machiavelli in The Prince 1532, asserts that he thinks a ruler should take whatever steps he thinks necessary, however immoral.
In 1600, a famous case reported on of Elizabeth I's maids of honour, Mistress Ratcliffe [dying of grief and self-starvation] was autopsied and her heart was "stripped all over".
Images of saints were often condemned for inspiring idolatry eg in Webster's White Devil [1612] Isabella's idolatrous act of kissing a picture of her husband is punished with death.
Giovanni may be likening himself to Cupid with the impaled heart, representing the triumph of love.
Ford may be recalling another famous meloncholic University student, Hamlet.
Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy [1621] is a textual description of melancholic personalities.
In myth and literature, blindness is often associated with sexual crime: Oedipus Rex in Sophocles' tragedy blinds himself are committing incest with his own mother, in King Lear, Gloucester is blinded perhaps for fathering an illegitimate child.
Servants in 17th century England were often bequeathed in their master's wills.
Perhaps Ford means to allude to a famous case of Sir Giles Allington who was put…

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