'Tis Pity She's a Whore/Sources

No perfectly certain source of this play has been discovered. Events in some respects similar to those of the tragedy are said to have taken place in Normandy in 1603. An account of them is given by the chronicler Pierre Mattieu in his Histoire de France et des Choses Memorables . . . , published in Paris, 1606. The story is retold by François de Rosset in Les Histoires Tragiques de Nostre Temps. It is the fifth tale in the second edition, 1615; the seventh in the edition of 1619. Wolff declares outright that Ford took his plot from this source. (See John Forde ein Nachahmer Shakespeare's, page 8). But Koeppel approves Dyce's observation that "though Ford may probably have read it, there are no particular resemblances between it and the play." (See Koeppel's Quellen-Studien, page 180; also, Gifford-Dyce, Introduction, page xxx.)

A great part of the Shakesperean influence which Wolff attempted to trace in this play is purely imaginary. It is not difficult, however, to see a certain general likeness between Friar Bonaventura and Friar Laurence, and—to a less degree—between other characters of 'Tis Pity and Romeo and Juliet.

As a possible indirect source W. Bang and H. de Vocht suggest the Περί έρωτικων παθημάτων of Parthenios of Nikaia. See Englische Studien, Band 36, pp. 392-93 (1906).

There is a striking parallelism—hitherto, I think, unnoticed—between Annabella, Donado, Bergetto, and Poggio: and Isabella, Guardiano, the Ward, and Sordido in Middleton's Women Beware Women. The resemblance is the more worth noting as the same element of unnatural passion enters into the intrigue of both plays.

In my introduction I have discussed at some length an impressive analogue and possible source of 'Tis Pity in Speroni's Canace è Macareo.