Brother-Sister Relationships in Early Modern Drama

Salim E. Al-Ibia, Ruth M.E. Oldman

Abstract


This study aims to evaluate the commodified brother-sister relationship in Early Modern drama. It examines three different samples from three major playwrights of this time period: Isabella and Claudio in William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1603), Charles and Susan in Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603), and Giovanni and Annabella in John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1632). The three aforementioned cases are closely evaluated through a Marxist-feminist lens. The study finds out that the brothers in the three examined plays are not very different since they all encourage their sisters to sacrifice their chastity to achieve some sort of personal interest. Interestingly enough, the sisters vary in their responses to their brothers’ requests of offering their bodies to help their brothers. Obviously, Shakespeare offers the ideal version of a sister who does everything in her power to save a brother. Yet, she refuses to offer her body in return to his freedom in spite of her brother’s desperate calls to offer her virginity to Angelo to save the former’s life. Susan of Heywood is also similar to Isabella of Shakespeare since she refuses to sell herself in return to the money needed to save her brother. However, Ford offers the ugliest version of a brother-sister relationship. The brother wants to have a love affair with his sister who yields to his sexual advances and eventually gets pregnant.

Keywords


Brother-sister Relationships, Family Affairs, Female Body, Incest, Early Modern Drama

Full Text:

PDF

References


Archibald, Elizabeth (2001). Incest and The Medieval Imagination. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Brissenden, Alan (1964). “Impediments to Love: A Them in John Ford.” Renaissance Drama. Vol. 7. No. 1. Chicago

UP,. pp. 95-102.

Bueler, Lois E. (1984). "The Structural Uses of Incest in English Renaissance Drama.” Renaissance Drama. Vol. 15,

Chicago: Chicago UP. pp. 115-145.

Churches, Christine (1998). “Women and Property in Early Modern England: A Case-Study.” Social History, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 165-180.

Erickson, Amy Louise (1993). Women and Property in Early Modern England. Routledge.

Ford, John (1966). 'Tis Pity she's a Whore. Ed. N. W. Bawcutt. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.

Heywood, Thomas (1910). “A Woman Killed with Kindness.”The Chief Elizabethan Dramatists, Excluding

Shakespeare. Ed. William Allan Nielson, ed.: The Riverside Press. pp. 485-508.

Homan, Sidney R (1967). “Shakespeare and Dekker as Keys to Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore.”

Studies in English Literature 1500-1900. Vol 7. No. 2. Rice UP.

Howell, Martha (2019). “The Problem of Women’s Agency in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.” Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries. Eds. Sarah Joan Moran & Amanda Pipkin. Brill. pp. 21-31.

Hull, Suzanne W. (1996). Women According to Men: The World of Tudor-Stuart Women. New York: Altamira Press.

Kitzes, Adam H. (2013). “The Hazards of Expurgation: Adopting ‘Measure for Measure’ to the

Bowdler ‘Family Shakespeare’.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Vol.

, No. 2. U of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 43-68.

Murphy, Andrew (2003). Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare’s

Publishing.Cambridge UP.

Martínez, Zenón Luis (1997). “A Speechless Dialect”: Gender and Self-Recognition in Measure for Measure. SEDERI.

Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies. No. 8, Sociedad Hispano-

Portuguesa de Estudios Renacentistas Ingleses. Huelva: University of Huelva Press. pp. 183-190.

McQuade, Paula (2000). “ ‘A Labyrinth of Sin:’ Marriage and Moral Capacity in Thomas Heywood’s ‘A Woman

Killed with Kindness.’” Modern Philology. Vol. 98 No. 2. U of Chicago Press. pp. 231-250.

Panek, Jennifer (1994). “ Punishing Adultery in A Woman Killed with Kindness.” Studies in English Literature 1500-

Vol. 34. No. 2. Rice University Press. pp. 357-378.

Sensabaugh, G.F. (1944). The Tragic Muse of John Ford. Stanford University Press.

Simmons, J. L. (1989). “Recent Studies in Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama:” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900.

Vol. 29,No 2. Rice University Press. pp. 357-408.

Shakespeare, William (1987). Measure for Measure. Ed. Harold Bloom. PA: Chelsea House, 1987.

Shell, Marc (1995). The End of Kinship: "Measure for Measure", Incest, and the Ideal of Universal Siblinghood.

California: Stanford University Press.

Sherman S. P. (1908). “Ford’s Contribution to the Decadence of the Drama”. John Fordes Dramatische Werke. W.

Bang ed.

Smith, Hallett D. (1983). “A Woman Killed with Kindness.” PMLA. Vol. 53, No. 1. Modern Language Association. pp

-147.

Stone, Lawrence (1977). The Family, Sex and Marriage In England 1500-1800. New York: Harper & Row.

Watson, Robert N. (1990). “False Immortality in Measure for Measure: Comic Means, Tragic Ends.” Shakespeare

Quarterly. Vol. 41. No. 4. Oxford University Press. pp. 411—432.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.11n.6p.25

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.

Advances in Language and Literary Studies

You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.