AO3: Duchess Of Malfi

Question 1

LITERARY CONTEXT: TRAGEDY: Arete Arista

Answer 1

A reversal of fortune; the hero will reverse from his initial excellent status

Question 2

LITERARY CONTEXT: TRAGEDY: hubris

Answer 2

Excessive pride or confidence; the hero will often assume godlike status

Question 3

LITERARY CONTEXT: TRAGEDY: Hamartia

Answer 3

A fatal flaw within the hero; their downfall will come from their own doing

Question 4

LITERARY CONTEXT: TRAGEDY: Peripeteia

Answer 4

The idea that a tragic hero should come from a background of excellence

Question 5

LITERARY CONTEXT: TRAGEDY: Anagnorisis

Answer 5

A movement of realisation; an insight into themselves, the situations, and others

Question 6

LITERARY CONTEXT: TRAGEDY: Catharsis

Answer 6

The cleansing of the audience; they feel better after watching the tragedy

Question 7

HISTORICAL CONTEXT - JAMES I COURT: Sycophants

Answer 7

a person who acts obsequiously towards someone important in order to gain advantage.

Question 8

HISTORICAL CONTEXT - JAMES I COURT: Basilikon Doran

Answer 8

James I treaty on how to be a good king.
IRONY as he surrounded himself with noble people

Question 9

HISTORICAL CONTEXT - JAMES I COURT: Profligacy

Answer 9

Excessive + irresponsible spending of funds and money

Question 10

HISTORICAL CONTEXT - JAMES I COURT: Sexual Licentiousness

Answer 10

Dirty deeds

Question 11

HISTORICAL CONTEXT - JAMES I COURT: Robert Carr + George Villiers

Answer 11

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

Question 12

LITERARY CONTEXT - LINKED TEXTS: The First Blast of the Trumpet (1588)

Answer 12

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

Question 13

LITERARY CONTEXT - LINKED TEXTS: The Spanish Tragedy (1587)

Answer 13

Thomas Kyd’s tragedy established the genre of Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, bringing back traits from Senecan tragedy (themes such as horrors + violence)

Question 14

LITERARY CONTEXT - LINKED TEXTS: Titus Andronicus (1588)

Answer 14

Shakespeare’s bloodies revenge tragedy; this play sees rape, body parts cut off, and mothers unwittingly eating their own children

Question 15

LITERARY CONTEXT - LINKED TEXTS: Basilikon Doran (1599)

Answer 15

King James I’s treatise instructing his son on how to best run a court, including (ironically) to choose courtiers with care

Question 16

LITERARY CONTEXT - LINKED TEXTS: The Devil’s Law Case (1623)

Answer 16

In Webster’s only other play, he asserts the importance of social order, particularly in terms of law

Question 17

HISTORICAL CONTEXT - FIGURES: Queen Elizabeth I

Answer 17

Queen Elizabeth reserved the right to choose who she should marry – and whether she should marry at all.

Question 18

HISTORICAL CONTEXT - FIGURES: Lady Arbella Stuart

Answer 18

She married below her class for love and starved herself to death instead of renewing herself to death

Question 19

HISTORICAL CONTEXT - FIGURES: Giovanna d’Aragona

Answer 19

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

Question 20

HISTORICAL CONTEXT - FIGURES: King James I

Answer 20

A court full of sycophants mirroring the Aragonian brothers + Bosola’s nature

Question 21

GENERAL CONTEXT: Stoicism

Answer 21

the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint.

Question 22

GENERAL CONTEXT: What did Elizabeth I say during her 1588 Tilbury Docks speech?

Answer 22

“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”.

Question 23

GENERAL CONTEXT: What is a malcontent?

Answer 23

a person who is dissatisfied and rebellious. (With the court)

Question 24

GENERAL CONTEXT: Who is the malcontent in DOM?

Answer 24

Bosola

Question 25

GENERAL CONTEXT: What are some Machiavellian traits?

Answer 25

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.

Question 26

GENERAL CONTEXT: Who is the Machiavellian in the DOM?

Answer 26

Ferdinand

Question 27

GENERAL CONTEXT: What are the humours?

Answer 27

Black Bile
Yellow Bile
Phlegm
Blood

Question 28

GENERAL CONTEXT: Who might the humours link to in the play?

Answer 28

Black Bile: Bosola (melancholic)
Yellow Bile: Ferdinand (to much emotion)
Phlegm: Cardinal (emotionless)
Blood: Duchess (too full of blood + love)

Question 29

GENERAL CONTEXT: What were medieval attitudes to revenge?

Answer 29

• 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.

Question 30

GENERAL CONTEXT: How had renaissance attitudes to revenge changed by comparison to medieval?

Question 31

GENERAL CONTEXT: Who said Webster ‘saw the skull beneath the skin”?

Answer 31

T. S. Eliot’s poem Whispers of Immortality

Question 32

GENERAL CONTEXT: What company first performed DOM?

Answer 32

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.

Question 33

GENERAL CONTEXT: Which modern production most closely imitates the original playhouse?

Question 34

GENERAL CONTEXT: 3 reasons the play is set in Italy:

Answer 34

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

Question 35

GENERAL CONTEXT: Why was hierarchy so important to a Renaissance audience?

Answer 35

were composed of four social classes:
the nobles
the merchants
the tradesmen
the unskilled workers

Question 36

GENERAL CONTEXT: What was the name of the London mental asylum?

Answer 36

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.

Question 37

GENERAL CONTEXT: What was Hippocrates’ view on the womb?

Answer 37

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.