malfi critics Flashcards
THE DUCHESS
…
Dympha Callaghan 2017 (the Duchess)
- ‘Webster takes on the challenge of representing a woman who is both virtuous and sensual, and who embodies the virtues of a sexually fulfilling married life’
- ‘The Duchess thus transgresses her society’s notion of proper female conduct” by “choosing a husband who is her social inferior’
Emma Smith 2009 (the Duchess)
‘the Duchess is culpable of excessive sexual desire. The story is a moral one in which sexual desire, particularly women’s sexual desire, is punished’
Dympha Callaghan (the Duchess and sexuality)
‘Unlike the ‘Virgin Queen’, the Duchess seeks marital intimacy rather than renouncing it’
Joyce E Peterson (the Duchess)
‘The Duchess improperly sets the private claims of her body natural above the public claims of her body politic’
Frank Whigham (the Duchess)
‘privately assumes the unmistakably male tone of the Renaissance hero’
Sean McEvoy (critics and Duchess)
‘it is strange that some critics have chosen to find Webster’s depiction of the Duchess’s healthy physicality as tinged with disgust’
‘she is brave, intelligent and vivacious’
Andrew Marr (the Duchess)
‘Suffering turns her from a romantic widow to a tragic heroine’
Emma Smith (the Duchess’s death)
‘A set piece of immense stoicism’
SLEEPWALKERS
…
Mathew Beaumont 2015 (sleepwalkers)
- ‘He is an outsider to the Duchess’s household, and he constitutes a constant threat to its order; at least, parasitic as he is, he rapaciously exploits the slightest sign of internal disorder, including his mistress’s concealed pregnancy’
- ‘The Duchess of Malfi, in common with other Jacobean tragedies, is a play in which the night exercises a dangerous, if not lunatic rule or lure’
JULIA
…
William Poel 1893 (Julia)
‘Julia is designed as a set-off to the Duchess; as an instance of unholy love in contrast to the chaste love of the Duchess’
Peter B Murray (Julia)
‘The Duchess’s childbearing is thus set in the middle of Act II as a bright jewel against the dark foil of the false old woman and Julia’
GREED,AMBITION
….
Kenneth Tynan 1960 (greed)
‘In the whole of Webster’s work, scarcely an act is committed that is not motivated by greed, revenge, or sexual rapacity’
BOSOLA
Michael Cordner 2011 (Bosola)
‘Bosola ‘is forged from contradictory imperatives … a craven need to be employed by those in power…matched with a deep revulsion from the kind of service that employment will entail.’
Emma Smith 2009 (Bosola)
‘Bosola’s terrible agency in the play is that of the malcontent, a distinctly early modern phenomenon, a product of massive increase in secondary education under the Tudors, an educated man who cannot get preferement, a clever, isolated individual whose intelligence is turned to malignancy, or more precisely, to amorality’
Kate Aughterson (Bosola)
‘He is a man of bitter resentment and eager willingness’
Lucy Webster (Bosola)
‘In Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, lack of position, and social exclusion characterises the malcontent’
‘He wants to become embroiled within it’
C G Thayer (Bosola)
‘Unquestionably one of the most complex and elusive in the major Jacobean drama’
FERDINAND
…
Clifford Leech 1963 (Ferdinand)
‘The grossness of his language to her in Act 1 and the continued violence of his response to the situation’ is part of a long list of evidence for his incestuous desire.’
Leah S Marcus 2009 (Ferdinand)
- ‘Webster’s portrayal of the Duchess’s twin brother Ferdinand also departs from the historical record in order to intensify the threat he represents’
Frank Whigham (Ferdinand)
‘Ferdinand’s incestuous desire is determined by class paranoia’
Leah Marcus (Ferdinand)
‘He deploys fragmentary objects in a way that suggest the Catholic use of sacred relics as objects for display’
Leah Marcus (Ferdinand)
‘Webster’s portrayal of the Duchess’s twin brother Ferdinand also departs from the historical record in order to intensify the threat he represents’
‘no sexual outlet beyond incestuous yearning for his sister’
Farah Karim-Cooper (Ferdinand)
‘His incestuous, misogynistic impulses force him to deploy dark means to achieve even darker ends’
‘Darkness enables him to torment his sister with a dead hand and effigies of her family’
MALFI
…
GK Hunter 1978 (setting)
A critic who argues the Italian setting in Jacobean drama is used ‘as a mode of human experience rather than as a country’.
JW Lever (malfi)
‘The court of Amalfi presents in miniature the court of Whitehall … its heedless and heartless pursuit of privilege’
‘Honours were openly bought and sold; marriages and divorces were steps to political influence’
Nigel Wheale (malfi and courts)
‘The staged versions of Italy in English drama during the Jacobean period not only provided negative stereotypes against which to define ‘English’ manners and virtues but the debased behaviours performed could also be turned against King James VI and I’
THE CARDINAL
…
Nigel Wheale (the Cardinal)
‘When the Cardinal launches on his career of warrior-priest in Act 3 Scene 3, he takes his orders from ‘The Emperor’ himself, Charles V, the most powerful monarch of the age, Spanish Catholic ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, and a perpetual threat to England during the reign of Henry VIII.’
Swetnam’s Pamphlets 1615 (women)
‘there is nothing more dangerous that a woman in her fury’
‘the answer of a wise woman is silence’
‘if she be rich and beautiful, then thou matches thyself to a she-Devil’
GENERAL CONTEXT
…
TS Eliot on Webster
- ‘Whispers of Immorality’
‘Webster was much possessed. by death/And saw the skull beneath the skin’
Peter Morrison on Webster’s proto feminism?
‘Duchess’s determination to make her own decisions in such a profoundly patriarchal and misogynistic society, it is easy to see why some modern critics argue that Webster is a proto-feminist’
Peter Morrison on merit vs privilege
‘Webster’s championing of personal merit over hereditary privilege’
Helen Mirren (on the play)
‘A feminist play about a woman who is fighting for her autonomy’
Peter B Murray (the brothers)
‘perverse and violent pair of Italian devils’
Lucy Webster (the brothers)
**
‘The Cardinal and Ferdinand are responsible for supporting a society of parasites’
Farah Karim-Cooper (light and dark)
‘The conditions of a theatre such as the Blackfriars enabled the torture scenes to pack the emotional punch that Webster intended’
‘Lighting became manipulable’
