ABSTRACT
Recently Bruce Boehrer has addressed the issue of incest in Renaissance literature, documenting its pervasive recurrence both on the stage and elsewhere. Boehrer goes so far as to argue that ‘in some basic ways the English Renaissance is about incest.... various of the products (principally literary, but also historical, theological, and legal) of courtly culture in early modern England developed as a response to problems in the function and the structure of the family and such problems actively engage the subject of incest on both a practical and theoretical level’ (Boehrer 1992 p.5) 1 . The boldest treatment of incest on the Renaissance stage, John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore , may be regarded as just such a response to the sociopolitical concerns of the 1630s. 2
