_'Tis Pity she's a Whore_ has been justly recognized as a tragedy of extraordinary power. Mr Swinburne, in his eloquent essay on Ford, has rightly shown what is the meaning of this tragedy, and has at the same time indicated wherein consists its poison. He dwells with great force upon the different treatment applied by Ford to the characters of the two miserable lovers--brother and sister. "The sin once committed, there is no more wavering or flinching possible to him, who has fought so hard against the demoniac possession; while she who resigned body and soul to the tempter, almost at a word, remains liable to the influences of religion and remorse." This different treatment shows the feeling of the poet--the feeling for which he seeks to evoke our inmost sympathy--to oscillate between the belief that an awful crime brings with it its awful punishment (and it is sickening to observe how the argument by which the Friar persuades Annabella to forsake her evil courses mainly appeals to the physical terrors of retribution), and the notion that there is something fatal, something irresistible, and therefore in a sense self-justified, in so dominant a passion. The key-note to the conduct of Giovanni lies in his words at the close of the first scene-- "All this I'll do, to free me from the rod Of vengeance; _else I'll swear my fate's my god_." Thus there is no solution of the conflict between passion on the one side, and law, duty and religion on the other; and passion triumphs, in the dying words of "the student struck blind and mad by passion"-- "O, I bleed fast! Death, thou'rt a guest long look'd for; I embrace Thee and thy wounds: O, my last minute comes! Where'er I go, let me enjoy this grace Freely to view my Annabella's face." It has been observed by J.A. Symonds that "English poets have given us the right key to the Italian temperament.... The love of Giovanni and Annabella is rightly depicted as more imaginative than sensual." It is difficult to allow the appositeness of this special illustration; on the other hand, Ford has even in this case shown his art of depicting sensual passion without grossness of expression; for the exception in Annabella's language to Soranzo seems to have a special intention, and is true to the pressure of the situation and the revulsion produced by it in a naturally weak and yielding mind. The entire atmosphere, so to speak, of the play is stifling, and is not rendered less so by the underplot with Hippolita. _'Tis Pity she's a Whore_ was translated into French by Maurice Maeterlinck under the title of _Annabella_, and represented at the Theatre de l'Oeuvre in 1894. The translator prefixes to the version an eloquent appreciation of Ford's genius, especially in his portraits of women, whose fate it is to live "dans les tenebres, les craintes et les larmes."