AO3: Duchess Of Malfi Flashcards
LITERARY CONTEXT: TRAGEDY: Arete Arista
A reversal of fortune; the hero will reverse from his initial excellent status
LITERARY CONTEXT: TRAGEDY: hubris
Excessive pride or confidence; the hero will often assume godlike status
LITERARY CONTEXT: TRAGEDY: Hamartia
A fatal flaw within the hero; their downfall will come from their own doing
LITERARY CONTEXT: TRAGEDY: Peripeteia
The idea that a tragic hero should come from a background of excellence
LITERARY CONTEXT: TRAGEDY: Anagnorisis
A movement of realisation; an insight into themselves, the situations, and others
LITERARY CONTEXT: TRAGEDY: Catharsis
The cleansing of the audience; they feel better after watching the tragedy
HISTORICAL CONTEXT - JAMES I COURT: Sycophants
a person who acts obsequiously towards someone important in order to gain advantage.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT - JAMES I COURT: Basilikon Doran
James I treaty on how to be a good king.
IRONY as he surrounded himself with noble people
HISTORICAL CONTEXT - JAMES I COURT: Profligacy
Excessive + irresponsible spending of funds and money
HISTORICAL CONTEXT - JAMES I COURT: Sexual Licentiousness
Dirty deeds
HISTORICAL CONTEXT - JAMES I COURT: Robert Carr + George Villiers
Hugely sycophantic towards James I who he valued + gave titles and honours to them whose he didn’t deserve.
Sexual licentious letters sent to them
LITERARY CONTEXT - LINKED TEXTS: The First Blast of the Trumpet (1588)
John Knox’s pamphlet criticised women in power, saying it was a ‘monstrous in nature’.
When Elizabeth I became queen she banned Knox from coming over to England
LITERARY CONTEXT - LINKED TEXTS: The Spanish Tragedy (1587)
Thomas Kyd’s tragedy established the genre of Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, bringing back traits from Senecan tragedy (themes such as horrors + violence)
LITERARY CONTEXT - LINKED TEXTS: Titus Andronicus (1588)
Shakespeare’s bloodies revenge tragedy; this play sees rape, body parts cut off, and mothers unwittingly eating their own children
LITERARY CONTEXT - LINKED TEXTS: Basilikon Doran (1599)
King James I’s treatise instructing his son on how to best run a court, including (ironically) to choose courtiers with care
LITERARY CONTEXT - LINKED TEXTS: The Devil’s Law Case (1623)
In Webster’s only other play, he asserts the importance of social order, particularly in terms of law
HISTORICAL CONTEXT - FIGURES: Queen Elizabeth I
Queen Elizabeth reserved the right to choose who she should marry – and whether she should marry at all.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT - FIGURES: Lady Arbella Stuart
She married below her class for love and starved herself to death instead of renewing herself to death
HISTORICAL CONTEXT - FIGURES: Giovanna d’Aragona
WHO DOM is based on
Giovanna d’Aragona married her state Stuart, had 2 children and a suspicious 3rd with him, chased by brothers and mysteriously died
HISTORICAL CONTEXT - FIGURES: King James I
A court full of sycophants mirroring the Aragonian brothers + Bosola’s nature
GENERAL CONTEXT: Stoicism
the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint.
GENERAL CONTEXT: What did Elizabeth I say during her 1588 Tilbury Docks speech?
“I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too”.
GENERAL CONTEXT: What is a malcontent?
a person who is dissatisfied and rebellious. (With the court)
GENERAL CONTEXT: Who is the malcontent in DOM?
Bosola
GENERAL CONTEXT: What are some Machiavellian traits?
Machiavellians are sly, deceptive, distrusting, and manipulative. They are characterized by cynical and misanthropic beliefs, callousness, a striving for … money, power, and status, and the use of cunning influence tactics.
GENERAL CONTEXT: Who is the Machiavellian in the DOM?
Ferdinand
GENERAL CONTEXT: What are the humours?
Black Bile
Yellow Bile
Phlegm
Blood
GENERAL CONTEXT: Who might the humours link to in the play?
Black Bile: Bosola (melancholic)
Yellow Bile: Ferdinand (to much emotion)
Phlegm: Cardinal (emotionless)
Blood: Duchess (too full of blood + love)
GENERAL CONTEXT: What were medieval attitudes to revenge?
- Vengeance and feud were an essential part of these cultures, revenge was considered both a right and a duty and was legislated and regulated by social norms.
- It was an important tool for obtaining justice and protecting property, family, and reputation.
GENERAL CONTEXT: How had renaissance attitudes to revenge changed by comparison to medieval?
GENERAL CONTEXT: Who said Webster ‘saw the skull beneath the skin”?
T. S. Eliot’s poem Whispers of Immortality
GENERAL CONTEXT: What company first performed DOM?
The King’s Men
(the acting company to which Shakespeare belonged) at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre in 1614, before being later revived at the outdoor Globe Theatre.
GENERAL CONTEXT: Which modern production most closely imitates the original playhouse?
GENERAL CONTEXT: 3 reasons the play is set in Italy:
1) Italy acts as a theatrical metaphor, allowing dramatists to criticise the court of King James I of England by setting their plays in the distant European country.
2) The Duchess of Malfi is set in Italy because that is where the historical events it is based on occurred
3) Italy was associated with corruption
GENERAL CONTEXT: Why was hierarchy so important to a Renaissance audience?
were composed of four social classes:
the nobles
the merchants
the tradesmen
the unskilled workers
GENERAL CONTEXT: What was the name of the London mental asylum?
Bethlem Royal Hospital (1247 -)
The names ‘Bethlem’ and ‘Bedlam’, by which it came to be known, are early variants of ‘Bethlehem’. It is first referred to as a hospital for ‘insane’ patients in 1403, after which it has a continuous history of caring for people with mental distress.
GENERAL CONTEXT: What was Hippocrates’ view on the womb?
Hippocratic corpus, believed that the womb was not a stationary object, but one that traveled throughout the body, often to the detriment of the women’s health.
