Streetcar and Malfi critic quotes

Question 1

Elia Kazan

Answer 1

“Blanche is dangerous. She is destructive. She would soon have him and Stella fighting. He’s got things the way he wants them around there and he does not want them upset by a phony, corrupt woman. This makes Stanley right!”

Question 2

Durgin

Answer 2

“The play is a brilliant study of the disintegration of a woman”

Question 3

John Lahr

Answer 3

“The play, and its author, beg the question of the price of survival”

Question 4

Tennessee Williams

Answer 4

“I do not believe in villains or heroes - only right and wrong ways that individuals have taken.”

Question 5

Lisa Jardine

Answer 5

“In the moment of disobeying her brothers and remarrying a social inferior to emphasise the contrast between ‘lust’ and ‘duty’, the Duchess of Malfi asserts her sexual self.”

Question 6

P B Murray

Answer 6

“The radiant spirit of the Duchess cannot be killed”

Question 7

Gamaliel Bradford

Answer 7

“The Duchess is the victim of cruel and hopeless fatality, which pursues her relentlessly to the very end”

Question 8

Phyllida Lloyd

Answer 8

“What’s striking about the character is that she’s very much who she is - her own soul - but she’s also the repository for the feelings of everyone around her”

Question 9

David Cecil

Answer 9

“The world as seen by Webster is of its nature, incurably corrupt. To be involved in it is to be inescapably involved in evil.”