"My thoughts are at banquet for the deed"

Among the material stuffs of "The Changeling," (stage props like vials, rapiers & swords, Isabella’s cage, Alonzo's finger), books, as well as references to books, appear often. Alonzo dismisses Tomazo’s suspicion of Beatrice in 2.1 with a textual metaphor: “If lovers should mark everything a fault,/ Affection would be like an ill-set book,/ Whose faults might prove as big as half the volume” (112-14). There is also Beatrice’s reading and interpreting the “Book of Experiment, Called Secrets In Nature,” that belongs to Alsemero. In the last scene, Alsemero tells Beatrice, “you read me well enough,” when she says he doesn’t look well (16) and Vermandero believes his name’s been registered in the book of shame, “Where till this fatal hour ’twas never read” (191). Could these references to texts be a manifestation of characters’ inability to see, read, and interpret others correctly (or for who they really are) in the play?

One of the most interesting aspects of "Tis Pity" is the way in which Giovanni defies his society, culture, and religion in pursuit of his desires. Or more specifically, I’m curious about how Giovanni figures himself as beyond normative social and political networks. The only social or religious force that tries to subdue Giovanni’s desires is the Friar. Otherwise, he appears isolated from family and friends (except Annabella, of course). That Ford allows his tragic “hero” attain his incestuous love by the end of Act 1 complicates our view of Giovanni: how do we read Giovanni’s desire for something unique against the validity of social constraints he's butting heads with? In other words, other tragedies depict how social constraints are irrational or need to be adjusted to accommodate love. With incest as the subject matter, how is our reading of Giovanni as an “over-reacher” or tragic figure complicated and made ambiguous?