During Act 2, Scene 5, Giovanni informs the Friar that he has consummated his relationship with his sister Annabella. In the process of attempting to rationalize his actions, Giovanni describes the intensity of his feelings for Annabella in powerful detail. This conversation is rife with vivid imagery that provides critical insight into the mind of the play’s complex antihero:
Giovanni: View well her face, and in that little round,
You may observe a world of variety:
For colour, lips; for sweet perfumes, her breath;
For jewels, eyes; for threads of purest gold,
Hair; for delicious choice of flowers, cheeks;
Wonder in every portion of that throne.
Hear her but speak, and you will swear the spheres
Make music to the citizens in heaven;
But father, what is else for pleasure framed,
Lest I offend your ears shall go unnamed.
Friar: The more I hear, I pity thee the more –
That one so excellent should give those parts
All to a second death!
Much like the Friar, with each additional line Giovanni speaks, the audience cannot help but begin to develop a sense of compassion for his plight. Giovanni speaks of his sister in pure, devotional, worshipful terms—terms of love, rather than merely lust. By elucidating his feelings for Annabella so beautifully, Giovanni’s feelings are raised from something loathful to something deserving a degree of pity. The depth of the feelings he vocalizes during this scene underscores the dangerous height of the pedestal upon which Giovanni has placed his sister, revealing a man utterly consumed by thoughts of love above all else.
In Act 3, Scene 6, the Friar lectures Annabella about her wanton ways, describing with vivid imagery every gory detail of the hellish punishment that awaits her if she does not curb her path:
There is a place –
List, daughter! – in a black and hollow vault,
Where day is never seen. There shines no sun,
But flaming horror of consuming fires,
A lightless sulphur, choked with smoky fogs
Of an infected darkness. In this place
Dwell many thousand, thousand sundry sorts
Of never-dying deaths. There damnèd souls
Roar without pity; there are gluttons fed
With toads and adders; there is burning oil
Poured down the drunkard’s throat; the usurer
Is forced to sup whole draughts of molten gold;
There is the murderer forever stabbed,
Yet can he never die; there lies the wanton
On racks of burning steel, whiles in his soul
He feels the torment of his raging lust.
The Friar conjures these horrifying images of unending torture, torment, and death in the quote above in an attempt to induce Annabella’s heartfelt repentance of her sins. Importantly, his words do seem to have a direct effect upon Annabella, as she cries out for mercy and begs to be shown a path towards redemption. The positive impact of the Friar’s warning upon Annabella’s psyche affirms the morals of Ford’s religious audience, even as the imagery invokes their own sense of fear. Thus, with this passage Ford is able to demonstrate that (for some characters at least) redemption may be possible even at the eleventh hour—if only one is willing to follow through on their desire to repent.
