The Duchess of Malfi Critics Flashcards
What does Leech say about Julia and the Duchess?
Julia and the Duchess are “sisters, in their passions and in their consequent actions.”
What does the director of the 2024 Wannamaker production say about the Duchess in relation to her agency?
“A quiet radical”
Rachel Bagshaw
What does the actress that plays the Duchess in a 2018 RSC production say about her in relation to her relationship with Ferdinand?
“Communication point does not exist”
“Ferdinand’s madness is not without the Duchess”
Joan Iyola
Suggests that the Duchess is complicit in her punishment as she refuses to recognize her body politic
What does Elizabeth Oakes say in ‘A Tragedy of Identity’ regarding the Duchess’s last moments?
“At the end of the play she is, she says, the Duchess of Malfi, and with that title she negates her relationship with Antonio: she becomes the woman carved in stone that Ferdinand wanted her to be.”
What does ___ say about Bosola and his role as a malcontent?
“He is frightened of his own role”
“Always a question of whether his melancholy is part of his real nature or merely a pose for his own ends”
Spinrad
What are Jankowksi’s ideas on the body politic and body natural in relation to the female body?
“Women’s bodies are threatening because they are ever-changing and cannot be confined to a single shape”
What does ___ illuminate on young widowhood?
The category of youth as youthful subjectivity
“inherently unstable: young people were difficult to define and understand, and therefore difficult to control.”
prusko
Neuse
“dungeon of wedlock”
The Catholic view is not only affixed to the
critic
villains of the play but is perverted, corrupted.
Mikesell
Static quality of descriptions: e.g. Antonio’s at the start or Bosola’s images
- “common fountain”
-“ standing pools”
- The display of the Duchess in the Almeida class cage, “cased up like a holy relic”
- Static of male body/ body politic
“It displays and defines: it does not develop.”
(Belsey)
“The longing for
a forceful queen and impatience with an ineffective king contributed to Webster’s portraits of the Duchess and Antonio as “mannish” woman and “womanish” man.”
Winston
T. S. Elliot on Webster
“whispers of immortality”
“Skull beneath the skin”
Reason, instinct, fabliau
“The less rationalized instincts of the fabliau world.”
ruggiers
Almeida Production Act 4 Scene 1
Ferdinand stands in front of the only light source, fixing the play into a “general eclipse”
Pasolini’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’
Januarie shouts at the priest to go away as he’s blessing their bed so he can have sex with May.
1972
Almeida Production: glass cage in the center of the stage
The Duchess visually carves out a sphere for her own sexuality, with then serves to entrap her.
Or is it NOT a space for her sexuality~ the “male fantasy” and a space where she puts her rebellion on display?
RSC 2018 Julia and the Cardinal
Only a mattress in the middle of the stage- lustful sex with a stranger
Julia is a young and vulnerable character with heels she can’t walk in. Characterized as a young woman who’s out of her depth and does not understand. Cardinal wears gloves (washing himself of guilt and her- Pontius pilot)
He rapes her on the mattress in the middle of the stage
questions of agency and if they are “sisters in their passions” (Leech) or both victims of corruption and oppressive masculine control
Older husband Casrtruccio- link to May.
Act 3 Scene 1 Almeida
Whilst the brothers talk on stage, in the darkness of the glass cage the Duchess is lifted up by Antonio and they passionately make out.
2024 Wanamaker: madmen
Makes the madness living in a patriarchal society: “used goods”, “boys will be boys” “she belongs to him because he’s the man”
A contrast with the gendered nostalgia for queen Elizabeth
Importance of female: Cariola and the duchess kneeled together at the center “just look at me”—— Is the Duchess mad to listen to Bosola? Almeida Act 4 scene 2
Almeida Act 4 Scene 2
Christ like shape- a martyr.
She listens to Bosola attentively- is madness who you listen to? The Merchant’s tale- 2024 Wanamaker Ferdinand with he speaker turned towards his ear. “Just look at me” is why the Duchess is able to remain sane in a whirligig of patriarchal insanity.
noose
1972 BBC sex leads to death
