Malfi: Writers methods: Form, structure and language

Question 1

An example of the significance of stage directions: Entrances and Exits

Answer 1

Act III scene 2: Antonio comes out of hiding holding a pistol AFTER Ferdinand has dissapeared– makes him appear distinctly unheroic.
Bosola’s sudden entrance in Act V Scene 5 immediately after Cardinal related his terrifying vision of seeing ‘a thing armed with a rake / That seems to strike at me’ (creates excitement, dramatically foreshadowing forthcoming events)

Question 2

An example of the significance of stage directions:

eg. explicit instruction regarding light and darkness

Answer 2

Act IV scene 1: F deceives sister with severed hand:
contributes to sense of hopeless gloom, creates suspense, makes Ferdinand’s deception credible, creates empathy and pathos for Duchess by shocking audience with sudden exposure of horrifying hand

Question 3

An example of the significance of stage directions:

Props

Answer 3

ie. waxworks: Act IV Scene 1: “Here is discovered behind a traverse the artificial figures of ANTONIO and his children, appearing as if they were dead”
- Visually electrifying
- contributes considerable impact to the overwhelming sense of evil that pervades the latter part of play

Question 4

THE DRAMATIC FEATURES THAT WERE AN INTEGRAL PART OF THEATRE AT TIME:
Dumb show

mimed dramatic performance, used extensively, present details necessary to development of play’s main action economically

Answer 4

Act III Scene 4: Cardinal invested with new military status and Duchess, Antonio, Children banished
detailed stage directions
convey with theatrical force the great increase in the Cardinal’s power; make Duchess’ fall seem even more perilous

Question 5

THE DRAMATIC FEATURES THAT WERE AN INTEGRAL PART OF THEATRE AT TIME:
Ditty to dumb show

Answer 5

The ‘ditty… sung to very solemn music, by divers churchmen’ during Cardinal military dumb show
Overwhelms auditory sense with rapturous praise for Cardinal in new role as warrior general, yet again emphaising the COMPARATIVE WEAKNESS and EXTREME VULNERABILITY of now-powerless Duchess and her family

Question 6

THE DRAMATIC FEATURES THAT WERE AN INTEGRAL PART OF THEATRE AT TIME:
Act IV Scene 2, the song set to…

Answer 6

‘a dismal kind of music’: produces appropriately brooding atmosphere through sonic and lyrical discordancy
Foreshadow’s Ferdinand’s total collapse into lycanthropia with its opening line: “Oh let us howl”

Question 7

THE DRAMATIC FEATURES THAT WERE AN INTEGRAL PART OF THEATRE AT TIME:
Antimasque of madmen Act IV scene 2

Answer 7

introduce appropriately grim comic relief; brief respite from tension
may symbolically represent the general ‘madness’ and chaos of such a badly managed society & immense frustrations of emergent middle class: key social figures (doctor, lawyer, priest, astrologist)

Question 8

from 14th to 16th centuries, _________ became an unstoppable force throughout Western Europe. the renaissance.

Answer 8

Classical humanism

Question 9

By late 16th & early 17th centuries, a new type of drama established. This was clearly influenced by the classical models, and significantly more sophisticated than the medieval plays that had preceded it. Ten of the major developments?

revival of interest in ancient greece and rome, revolution in thought, changes to science, technology, philosophy, literature, architecture, art, business and commerce and exploration

Answer 9

1) overall structure clearly influenced by great dramatists of Ancient Greece and Rome: esp. Seneca
2) much longer and infinitely more complex plays: subplot, double plot
3) shift in focus from theocentric universe to one where man takes center stage: ie. tension between good and evil becomes a driving force in human psychology > spiritual encounter
4) presentation of a world in which God’s order is much less apparent
5) consequent focus on man’s capacity for creating chaos & survivors struggle to restore order
6) exploration of relationships between individuals & between individuals and society rather than just between man and God
7) much greater emphasis on secular themes: society, politics, money, romance, sexuality, with religion remaining an extremely important element
8) focus on universal human problems: tension between desire and moral/social responsibility
9) Fully realised characters, sophisticated psychology > 2D ones of medieval drama, representing single vice/virtue
10) entertainment > religious/moral instruction

Question 10

Aristotle: when was he alive, what did he write

Answer 10

384BC-322BC, Poetics

Question 11

What were the key features of the Aristotelian Tragedy?

Answer 11

Purpose: provide catharsis, healthful emotional release through observing ‘incidents arousing pity and fear’
Civilising psychological purge: hero should be “a man who is highly renowned and prosperous, but one who is not pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice or depravity but by some error of judgment or frailty”- “hamartia”

our “pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves”: climactic interaction between hamartia and unkind fate

Question 12

What is the Duchess’ ‘hamartia’?

Answer 12

she succumbs to a young woman’s desire for romantic love and so places personal happiness above duty.
Error of judgement > serious moral flaw

She fits tragedy because she deserves much better than she receives and is so recognisably human

Question 13

William Hazlitt (1821) said moments in the play

Answer 13

“exceed the just bounds of poetry and tragedy”

Question 14

Influence of classical drama during Jacobean period can be discerned from playwright John Ford’s commendatory verse to The Duchess of Malfi 1623 first published edition

Answer 14

“Crown him a poet, whom nor Rome, nor Greece, /

Transcend in all theirs, for a masterpiece…”

Question 15

Which playwright had more of an influence, do critics say, on webster and contemporary playwrights than Aristotle?

L.G.Salingar ‘like most drama of the time, it draws heavily from Seneca… both Seneca the moral sage and Seneca the fabricator of ghastly revenges”

Answer 15

Seneca:

Webster has Bosola declare: “What creature ever fed worse than hoping Tantalus?” (opens S’s revenge drama Thyestes

1589 Thomas Nash: ‘yet English Seneca read by candle light yeeldes manie good sentences… he will afoord you whole Hamlets, I should say handfulls of tragical speaches”

Question 16

Characteristics of Senecan tragedies?

Answer 16

1) division into FIVE parts
2) blank verse, much metaphorical language
3) a chorus (essential background info & commentary)
4) long reflective soliloquy
5) sententious philosophy & moral maxims
6) morally indifferent universe
7) stoicism/hopeless fatalism
8) ghosts
9) sexual transgression/excessive desire
10) detailed accounts of horror and violence
11) revenge & deceit central themes
12) bloody denouement

Question 17

Why has the structure of the Duchess of Malfi been criticised?

Answer 17

Apparently ‘random’ structure, collapse into anti-climax after Duchess’s death.
She, from title, is central character; danger that killing her in Act IV Webster deflects attention from her in his departure from conventional 5 act structure
(departure from norm could also be regarded as radical and courageous)

Question 18

Webster and contemporaries conformed to five-part structure originally advocated by Roman poet and literary critic…

Answer 18

Horace (65-8bce), Ars Poetica

Question 19

The German author and literary critic _________, having analysed Classical and Renaissance drama, noted a commonality of structure that did break down into 5 distinctive phases: the ‘dramatic arc’

Answer 19

EXPOSITION: main characters introduced/background info to set the scene
RISING ACTION: complication or conflict, create rising tension, power play through to
CLIMAX/CRISIS: main turning-point; event takes place to drastically alter the protagonist’s fate; decline in fortunes
FALLING ACTION: conflict between protagonist and antagonist becomes fully exposed, at end of act ultimate outcome still in doubt– suspense
DENOUEMENT/CATASTROPHE: conflict culminates, death of hero or heroine, fall-out for those around

Question 20

What did the influential Scottish drama critic William Archer refer to?

Answer 20

The Duchess of Malfi’s ‘ramshackle looseness of structure and barbarous violence of effect’ 1922

Question 21

Does the death of the Duchess add to or detract from the success of the play as a whole?

Answer 21

• Her death dominates the rest of the action
• It generates enormous suspense
• The conflict set up in the falling action is not fully resolved until the audience’s thirst to see justice done has been satisfied by the end of the play, when all the Duchess’ antagonists gained what they deserve.

Question 22

Critical quote discussing premature death of Duchess

Answer 22

“In The Duchess of Malfi… the heroine dies well before the end of the play so that the significance of her death can be explored” Jacqueline Pearson, 1980

Question 23

PARALLEL SCENES:

abortive affair between Julia and Bosola parodies the genuine love story of the Duchess and Antonio

Answer 23

Julia too woos and ‘wins’ Bosola, but here it is a matter of unabashed lust
Julia: ‘Now you’ll say / I am wanton; this nice modesty in ladies / Is but a troublesome familiar / That haunts them’
Duchess’s bashful confession: ‘Oh, let me shroud my blushes in your bosom”
B and A accept: B to ‘work upon this creature’ to gain Cardinal goss.
Mirror: clear contrast between pure, selfless love and unbridled lust of the entirely self-motivated

IRONY: outcome same for all: proves thesis that any corruption at the ‘head’ rains destruction on all, regardless.

Question 24

PARALLEL SCENES:
Cardinal confines everyone to room Act V Scene 4 to conceal murder of Julia & intended murders of Antonio and Bosola….

Answer 24

Mirrors Act II Scene 2
Antonio, on Delio’s advice, concocted strategic lie to keep everyone in chambers throughout night to hide Duchess’ labour
AGAIN DEALING WITH POLAR OPPOSITES: birth and death

Question 25

why PARALLEL SCENES?

Answer 25

1) satisfying aesthetic

2) sense of deja vu: reinforces strong sense of fatalism within play

Question 26

Charles Spencer, reviewing 2003 production of play at National Theatre

Answer 26

‘Though earnest critics have tried to present him as a Christian moralist, a proto-feminist and even a daring existentialist, what clearly turned Webster on was cruelty’

Question 27

Whispers of Immortality, 1918:

nihilistic disorder

Answer 27

T.S.Elliot “Webster was much possessed by death / And saw the skull beneath the skin”

Question 28

T. S. Elliot:

Answer 28

1924: more effusive about Webster’s literary merit:

“The Duchess of Malfi will provide an interesting example of a very great literary and dramatic genius directed towards chaos”

Question 29

George Bernard Shaw

crass sensationalism and cheap thrills

Answer 29

1898: harshly condemns ‘the opacity that prevented Webster, the Tussaud laureate, from appreciating his own stupidity…”

Question 30

Extreme horror and violence are definitely aspects of Webster’s style but also integral features in other classic Revenge Tragedies and some critics see, within it, a deeply moral intent

How?
Critic?

Answer 30

Graphically portrays human nature at its worst, simultaneously portraying inevitably tragic outcome of such behaviour (on Earth and in next life)

Lord David Cecil: ‘a study of the working of sin in the world’ in the context of ‘the supremacy of that Divine Law against which they have offended’ 1949

Question 31

Thomas Heywood, 1612

Answer 31

“If we present a tragedy we include the fatal and abortive ends of such as commit notorious murders… to terrify men from like abhorred practices”

Question 32

BLACK COMEDY;
humour in the horror scenes
Madmen

Answer 32

PLOT: madmen’s function serious; advance destruction of sister’s sanity by depriving her of sleep:
“let them practise together, sing and dance / And act theri gambols to the full o’th’moon”
BUT may be designed to AMUSE:
tap into popular contemporary public pastime of seeking entertainment by observing mentally ill in London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital (BEDLAM)

Question 33

Which critic sees Webster’s worldview as nihilistic?

Which argues Webster writes from a deeply Christian perspective, life a test of one’s moral character?

Answer 33

Travis Bogard- 1955: “Life, as it appears to Webster, is a moral chaos. Ultimately no clarifying philosophy is possible”

David Gunby

Question 34

BLACK COMEDY;

aspects of Ferdinand’s insane antics genuinely comical

Answer 34

“he howled fearfully; / Said he was a wolf, only the difference / was, a wolf’s skin was hairy on the outside, / His on the inside”

Doctor’s over-confident assertion he will “buffet his madness out of him”, only to be thrown to the ground and pummelled himself:
Pescara- ‘Doctor, he did not fear you thoroughly’
Doctor- ‘True, I was somewhat too forward’

Question 35

Dominic Dromgooles 2014 production; audience reaction to some of the more extreme gruesomeness can be problematic:

Answer 35

Liz Schafer: “generated a lot of laughs. Waxworks, a dead man’s hand, a reviving corpse, a poisonous book, lycanthropy and a pile of corpses – some aspects of The Duchess are always going to seem borderline Hammer House of Horror. But although some of the laughter arose from embarrassment and shock, laughter is itself under scrutiny in this play.”

Question 36

David Gunby, 1972

Answer 36

“In Webster’s plays, salvation and damnation are ever-present realities”

Question 37

What does Timothy Fox ask?

Answer 37

‘is “the skull beneath the skin” the vision of a moralist or a purveyor of horror?’ 2002

Question 38

Webster pushes boundaries when dealing with such serious themes as murder and torture.
Different views- then and now?

(“exceed the just bounds of poetry and tragedy”- William Hazlitt, 1821)

Answer 38

THEN: made public spectacles from being hung drawn and quartered, burning at stake, beheading
NOW: moral perspective refined: laughs during dark scenes (Liz Shaffer) may be out of discomfort; our reality is so different from Webster’s that we regard his excessive brutality as primarily a vicarious cinematic experience > visceral everyday reality

Question 39

POETIC LANGUAGE
intensely poetic/numberous emotive and highly vivid imagery patterns/woven into fabric of play/condensed, can explode with multiple layers of meaning

“She stains the time past, lights the time to come”- beautiful and complex

Answer 39

• Metaphorical luminosity of her physical and spiritual essence is so great that she eclipses the past and puts it to shade
• OR more poetic: signifying that she is pure white light, shines radiantly into the future from the prism of the present and leaves gorgeous rainbow spectrum of colour in its wake
• CONTINUES to be associated with LIGHT throughout the play: ‘Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle” / webster strongly suggests shes off to heaven in her death scene, resplendent in God’s glory

Question 40

POETIC LANGUAGE

L. G. Salingar: he ‘is highly ingenious in the rendering of sensations…’ 1963: PHYSICAL SENSATIONS

Answer 40

but equally emotional experience
Act IV scene 2: Duchess: ‘Th’ heaven o’er my head seems made of molten brass, / The earth of flaming sulphur…’
Intense physicality of these images of extreme heat and entrapment that enables Webster so vividly to portray the intensity of her despair

Question 41

Dr Farah Karim-Cooper

Answer 41

The Duchess of Malfi contains a network of imagery connected to light and darkness…
There are a number of uses that this range of patterns serves, one being to illustrate character…
Significantly, the language of light surrounds the descriptions of the Duchess…
Ferdinand, by contrast, is cloaked in darkness

Question 42

CHARNEL HOUSE IMAGERY
One of the more emotive image patterns 
George Bernard Shaw and T. S. Eliot note;
Images of death and physical decay 
Bosola’s contribution?

Answer 42

Declares to old lady

“Though we are eaten up of lice, and worms, /
And though continually we bear about us /
A rotten and dead body, we delight /
To hide it in rich tissue…”
(Sumptuary Laws)

Question 43

What were the sumptuary laws?

Answer 43

Reinforced notions of upper class superiority 
Dictated the quality of materials that could be used for the clothing worn by the various strays of Society 

“Rich tissue”—
Reminds audience that even those at the top of the hierarchy are only mortal and so intrinsically the same as everyone else

Question 44

RELIGIOUS IMAGERY
Politics and theology are closely linked in the moral landscape of the play

Webster reinforced his message through the use of semantic fields that reference the bible

Answer 44

A’s opening speech:

“a judicious king” who rids himself of the “flatt’ring sycophants” and other “dissolute / And infamous persons” and who replaces these with “a most provident council” will have created
“a blessed government”
——— King James court

Question 45

RELIGIOUS IMAGERY

The devil / evil

Answer 45

Not obviously at work within play (unlike Macbeth).
Antonio’s opening analysis suggests a government not run according to the ideal cannot be “blessed”: stand vulnerable and defenceless in face of evil

Malevolent forces in play are not demons but men who are possessed by evil

A; days of Cardinal’s pronouncements that “the devil speaks in them”
Toward end, Malateste says of Ferdinand “‘Twas nothing but pure kindness in the devil, / To rock his own child”

Question 46

RELIGIOUS IMAGERY

Ambition: deal with through another devil reference

Answer 46

Antonio highlights ambition (one of the main impetuses to commit evil) ; duchess offers him her ring- Antonio, virtuous, questions his own motives regarding such a dramatic rise in status
“There is a saucy and ambitious devil /
Is dancing in this circle”

Drives bosons to oversee brothers evil: Webster similarly taints him: duchess asks “What devil art thou that counterfeits heaven’s thunder?”

Question 47

RELIGIOUS IMAGERY

Answer 47

The duchess (rules a well-ordered court with Antonio’s aid) associated with goodliness from beginning to end

Antonio’s initial eulogy: Christian virtue- “her nights, nay more, her very sleeps, /
Are more in heaven than other ladies’ shrifts”

At her death: duchess asks “pull down heaven upon me”

Question 48

How does Webster, in line with the Senecan model of tragedy, deepen the moral profanity of the play?

Answer 48

Frequent introduction of wise sayings, which appear as aphorisms, parables and sententiae: does not reserve these just for the use of characters with unquestionable moral stature

Question 49

Definition and example of aphorism?

Answer 49

Succinct statement that embodies an astute general truth

Castruchio:
“It is fitting a soldier arise to be a prince, but not necessary a prince descend to be a captain!”

Question 50

Definition and example of a parable?

Answer 50

Short allegorical story that illustrates a moral or spiritual truth:

Duchess’ dog-fish story (end of AIII) when countering bosola’s accusation that Antonio is a “base, low fellow”

Question 51

Definition and example of sententia?

Answer 51

Succinct saying that imparts a profound moral or philosophical truth

Often appeared at the end of scenes in rhymed couplets:
Ferdinand— “That friend a great man’s ruin strongly checks, / Who rails into his belief, all his defects”

Question 52

Does the fact Webster shares sententious wisdom with good and evil characters alike suggest insincerity on his part and thus undermine the credibility of the moral fabric of the play?

Answer 52

Idk

Question 53

Many critics have noted that Webster often used prose to frame bosolas speeches - why?

(Also blank verse tho, and other characters sometimes in prose)

Answer 53

Maybe emphasise Bosola’s lower status

The other major characters generally speak in blank verse - set bosola apart, add distinctive voice to his role as satirical and cynical commentator on events

Much of what he says too coarse and brutal for verse
His cynicism arises from the fact he longs to be a beneficiary of the corruption he affects to disdain

Question 54

He and his brother are like

Answer 54

Plum trees that grow crooked over standing pools: they are rich, and o’erladen with fruit, but none but crows, pies, and caterpillars feed on them. Could I be one of their flatt’ring panders, I would hang on their ears like a horse-leech till I were full, and then drop off

Bosolas prose is far from prosaic because of rich metaphorical language

1) Contrast with free-flowing fountain simile
2) Animal imagery=debased humanity

Question 55

The first three lines are written in blank verse, but the transition to a rhyming heroic couplet emphasises the idea that is the play’s main argument

Final line is a subtle departure from iambic pentameter - first word heavily stressed ; unexpected break in pattern enables actors delivery of the word to be even more emphatic

Answer 55

Consid’ring duly that a prince’s court
Is likea common fountains, whence should flow
Pure silver drops in general, but if’t chance
Some cursed example poison’t near the head,
Death and diseases through the whole land spread

Question 56

how does Webster imbue his chilling tale with a shocking sense of realism?

Answer 56

Boundary between blank verse and prose often blurred

Make dialogue sound more conversational and naturalistic

Question 57

CHARNEL HOUSE IMAGERY
emotive imagery pattern. Eliot and Shaw notice.
death, physical decay
Bosola provides many contributions to this motif

Answer 57

To Old Lady:
‘Though we are eaten up of lice, and worms,
And though continually we bear about us
A rotten and dead body, we delight
To hide it in rich tissue…’ (Sumptuary Laws)

Question 58

What were the Sumptuary Laws?

Answer 58

Jacobean society, reinforced notions of upper-class superiority by dictating the quality of materials that could be used for the clothing of various strata of society.
'Rich tissue' is a condensed way of reminding his audience that even those at the top are only mortal, intrinsically the same as everyone else

Question 59

In what seems to be a dark parody of Shakespeare’s famous ‘What a piece of work is man!’ speech (Hamlet 1603), what does Bosola say that relates to the motif of charnel house imagery?

Answer 59

Vicious verbal attacks on Duchess after she’s been imprisoned:
“What’s this flesh? A little crudded milk, fantastical puff paste: our bodies are weaker than those paper prisons boys use to keep flies in – more contemptible, since ours is to preserve earth worms”
Webster does not allow Bosola to speculate, as Hamlet does, on the noble and god-like qualities of man, only Hamlet’s ‘this quintessence of dust’