The Duchess of Malfi AO5 Flashcards
Andrew Marr
‘A world of shadows’
‘A moral universe which is dark with jealousy, mistrust and revenge.’
‘the melancholy of the age’
‘It is a story of jealousy, deceit and murder.’
What does Andrew Marr state about Ferdinand?
‘His jealousy is a fuse waiting to be lit.’
Andrew Marr about the Duchess as a tragic heroine
‘But through all these horrors, the Duchess grows in stature. Suffering turns her from a romantic widow into a tragic heroine.’
Pearson - the heroine’s death
‘The heroine dies well before the end of the play, so that the significance of her death can be explored.’
Billington - Ferdinand and his frikky incest
‘[Ferdinand] is a victim of thwarted incest.’
Mirren - feminist play
‘It is essentially a feminist play about a woman who is fighting for her autonomy.’
Bogard - chaooos
‘Life as it appears to Webster is a moral chaos.’
Morrison - difference between Duchess and Julia
‘Whereas the Duchess’s death is a historical inevitability, the character of Julia is Webster’s own invention and thus a feminist critique might argue that her death reflects the social expectation that such independently minded women must severely be punished.’
Hazlitt - revenge tragedy/gory
the grotesqse and gratituously violent aspects of the play ‘exceed the just bound set of poetry and tragedy.’
Morrison - class and status
‘The only difference between a socially eminent person and a person of a meaner status is that the powerful have the power to do more harm.’
Brooke - men in death
‘Webster… adopts the romantic convention that men are, in the second of death, most essentially and significantly themselves.’
T.S. Elliot
‘Webster was much possessed by death, And saw the skull beneath the skin.’
