Frankie and Johnny

This song raises so many questions about what actually happened between Frankie and Johnny. The way the story begins, Frankie and Johnny were lovers. Oh, lordy how they could love". The key phrase for me was "were lovers". This shows that before anything in the story happened, they were already referring to thier love as past tense. As if to say they used to be lovers but now they are not. So if you look at the story from this point of view, you start to think maybee Johnny broke up with Frankie prior to what happened in the story. So if this was true, then this story Frankie could not take the break up. She still looked at Johnny as her man, no matter what. Another part of this that makes this assumption seem true is when Frankie went to the saloon. She approached the bartender, "Has my Johnny man been her?", then the bartender call her by her name as if to show he knows her. Then he said, "If he's your man, if he's your man, then he's doin you wrong". This shows the bartender knew her but did not know that Frankie and Johnny were lovers. That makes it seem that either he did not know that they were lovers or he knew that they had broken up and did not know they got back together. So maybee after she shot Johnny, Johnny felt bad because he promised to always be true to her.