Ford's stagecraft, <i>’Tis Pity She's a Whore</i> , and Mason's <i>The Turk</i>

John Ford is known for regularly mining the work of fellow dramatists. Behind his best-known work, ’ Tis Pity She's a Whore , the influence of a number of plays may be detected, notably in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Othello . In this note, I propose a further source-text for ’ Tis Pity She's a Whore as well as for two other Ford plays that share a common feature. I set out correspondences between a lesser-known play, The Turk , by John Mason (written for The Children of the King's Revels) and ’ Tis Pity She's a Whore , focusing particularly on the use of the upper stage, a device also found in Perkin Warbeck and The Lady's Trial .