State Conquers All

'Tis Pity She's a Whore

In one some of his final words to Annabella, Giovanni makes an interesting claim; he says, "If ever aftertimes should hear / Of our fast-knit affections, though perhaps / The laws of conscience and of civil use / May justly blame us, yet when they but know / Our loves, that love will wipe away that rigor / Which would in other incests be abhorred" (5.5.68-73). In a sense, love will conquer, or at least be an apologia for, all social prohibitions to their particular incest. However, as Katherine Maus points out in her introduction, Giovanni and Annabella’s love cannot prevent the intrusion of the social world and their lives end disastrously. This brings to mind a point Jonathan Dollimore makes in his introduction to Radical Tragedy. Specifically, though it would seem that the play gives voice to the threat of incest then contains that threat, there is something more sinister going on; incest is not the real threat, it veils the political machinations that reward cruelty as a way of maintaining social hegemony. In Dollimore’s words, does this play evince a “subversive knowledge of political domination” (xxi)? In this respect, what do we make of the kind of character that Vasques is? Or of the Cardinal who seems lenient in his pronouncing banishment? Or is the bloody end of this tale just a show of growing anxiety with regard to England’s political climate?

The Changeling

This play runs its course within three distinct institutions of social control: the castle home of Vermandero, Alibius’s insane asylum, and the less tangible institution of marriage (though the first scene does happen in a temple). As I tried (perhaps unsuccessfully) to sketch in my question above, what seems to be the culprit, the threat to society, is not what we first think it is. In The Changeling, all three institutions fail to prohibit acts of change, violence, and sexual taboo. However, the curious attempt to reclaim marriage at the end of the play, as Engle points out, seems rushed. Is marriage the real social threat in this play? Do Middleton and Rowley’s include this promise by Alibius in order to underline a certain sense of absurdity to this third estate? Or would it more profit the reader to understand this as a kind of metaphysical truth that is allowed to exist in the fragmented world of tragedy?