All my highlights from The Duchess of Malfi (York Notes) A level Guide organised by theme
Notes from Duchess of Mali guide: (sims)
ambition
Antonio on ambition “ambition … is a great mans madness”
Bosola; I would shift, to other dependance
Bosola’s discontentment issues from lack of reward
Will join antonio with ‘sword of justice’ ironic
Sims “guy fawkes is still alive and well and living websters imagination” bosola to cardinal “you imitate some that do plot great treasons”
bosola “thou which stoodst like a huge pyramid … shalt end in a little point, a kind of nothing”
“The kings men leading company of Websters era were to perform his play” clearly it was good – many argue because of his undeniable ambition
Blandness/feebility:
How does “Antonio demonstrates a flawed nature” (sims)
pointing a gun at cariola and accusing her of treachery
doesn’t revenge duchess
cowardice (stays to protect / endanger duchess rather than face Ferdinand
“The diamonds were changed to pearls” “pearls do change to tears”
Antonio uses weak and stolen simile of duchess’ own
Antonio no match for the testing circumstances webster throws him in.
Life fuller in promise than performance
Bosola “this proclaims your breeding. Every small thing dews a base mind to fear”
Bosola means him no good but “feebleness is nonetheless dissapointing” (link to argument about role of a playwright) (make things clear then confuse then re clear)
Marriage:
“Brothers threaten marriage is a prison, the irony being that she will end up in a prison of their making
From his characterisations we see “family loyalty is flawed”
Duchess mocking brothers “this is terrible good counsel”
Yet Clearly is dangerous to re marry
Catherine de Valois re marry’s after henry 5th's death secrety her steward and had children, for this imprisioned.
Cariola calls marriage “fearful madness”
We see how (Cruz) “how effortlessly the language of service becomes the language of love” and “A servant turned husband becomes dependant”
Amalfi coast – surving the wild sea to be shipwrecked on an inhospitable shore. her duchess looks for a safe haven of harmony and simplicity(in terms of heirachy?) not specifically for love and romance.
Sims: Duchess wants antonio to treat her like a man, implicit plea by antonio for her to treat him like a woman
Ultimate acknowlegement that her social status outweighs superior status as a man
Sexuality:
Desire is shown as risky; hence secrecy. Orgasm is likened to a mini-death. Sidney a contemporary of webster’s writes “i desire nothing but the death of desire” - link to orgasm is how you get pregnant contextual belief, dangers of pregnancy.
‘Lay a naked sword between us, keep us chaste’
“my rule is only in the night”
There desires are not hidden
Anontio reiterates (with pereverse pride) that the rable estimation that the duchess is a strumpet
Many critics eg. Jankowski, saw this as their problem
Sims: Unfortunate to harbour healthy desires in such a sick society
Death:
In reinassance drama we are never very far from death
Death scares her “not a wit”
“Knowing to meet such excellent company in other world”
“Death is the best gift they can give”
Critifc “all duchess qualities are concentrated in death , has to submit in order to rule.
Shouldn't scare: in death ferdinand locates truth- Ferdinand “my sister, there’s the cause on’t”
Critic: “characters more real the closer they get to death (“the noose”)”
Even for the cardinal provides relief - “let me be laid by and never thought of”
Webster flawed, in his presentation of not the duchess first son getting wealth
Of 3 year old son being a “fine gentleman”
Of random characters like forbosco being added
Of casual use of time that makes it not suit the Aristotle model
“Melodrama”
Bosola trusted with duchess’ wealth in act 3, more than he could expect from Aragon brothers, yet still executes deeds
Aragon bothers Rich rule (are dukes of) more fertile lands (geographist perspective)
Yet Ferdinand still argues he wanted to get “rich” in her death , “some great fortune?”
“she was born first” “your elder brother” - contradiction
Critic sims “realise how daringly experimental webester was”
“loose ends do produce some scintillating theatre”
Webster “seems to approve most of those who conclude there are no simple answers”
Lope and Webster wrote similar plays about Duchess, Lope focus on how things come together, Webster on how things fall apart
“Lawyers (like Webster) are primarily concerned with things that go wrong, and how wrongs can be legally righted”
Interest in fraught political events of the time well known to his spectators
Renaissance willingness to challenge orthodoxy, a curiosity about everything
Purpose (sims) expose moral excesses in high places
Webster tendency towards merit and away from class (link to give up all ceremony)
“attitude does not imply... that he was an anarchist”
In the play “words contend for attention with action” “submerged violence”
Gender:
Antonio thinks he is the one in danger
Grows cold Like “an holy anchorite” - cold distancing is of course a male coping strategy (sims)
Cardinal and Julias interaction, critic “he rejects her charge of inconstancy with make logic, challenging female consistency”
Cardinal “passionless” (sims)
Hysteria – thought to be illness cause by disturbance in the womb
Julia: all her men treat her badly castrucio is a pun on castrate, delio forgets any courtesy in trying to court her. Bosola uses her and is happy when she is gone. Her lover cardinal kills her –yet each of them are in her power
Religion:
In “describing pervasive irreligion at court Webster demystifies religion and robs it of its power”
Cardinal in last act refers to murders he “counselled” - way webster wryly subverts values
Cardinal murdering Julia combines blaspheme with an act of atheism
Sims “websters’ discrediting of the cardinal in fact a disguised attempt to discredit the catholic church
Pope acting on rumours of duchess’ looseness disposes her of dukedom, by what justice, one pilgrim asks. “by none” the other responds
Uses linguistic gymnastics of legal mind promotes Christian humanism and therefore challenges catholic authority but also puritan orthodoxy
Cariola “foolish woman” “supersitious fooL”
Critics see her as a Virgin Mary figure (Dolan), sims argues due to similarity of fleeing to area after threat from religious authority
Like joan of ark (used in shakespeare) too unpractised a liar to fake being pregnant
Protestant sentiment of contempt for authority in practice of religion e.g. Duchess remarrying
Deception:
Dramatic irony of ferdinands knowledge of duchess’ kids “Playwright weaves his web of deceit”
Ferdinand “go be safe, in your innocency” which is exactly what he believes she cannot be
Critic on secrets “strength of the play lies in the number of secrets being kept at any one time. The drama lies in how those secrets are revealed”
Most critics unsympathetic to her duplicitous response to brothers “I'll never remarry-”
Frances e dolan (candour comes too late)
However, sims views the dash and thinks ferdinand interupts her “so most widows say”
No suggestion of what she would have said
But truncated statement poor evidence for supposed deception
In fact consistently open and direct: lusty and shows it “what pleasure can two lovers find in sleep” only midly more modest to ferdinand “I have youth, and a little beauty
“Flattery as a major theme” -sims
“dark malcontent” - antonio about bosola
‘Bosola plays role the whole play’ “an actor in the main of all”
Yet About bosola: “we like his honesty”
Bosola reconciles duchess telling her kids still alive
Bosola correct calls Antonio “false steward” he is
Unlike: initial ‘upright honesty of antonio’, Then cowadice in the face of danger
Almost will Bosola to win because of his “scathingly picturesque” language when describing shortcomings of the villains(actually all a quote)
Along with disjointed time, critics suggest “action takes place at night, traditionally a time of unintelligibility”
Critic on secrets “strength of the play lies in the number of secrets being kept at any one time. The drama lies in how those secrets are revealed”
Dramatists skill is to build a credible confusion in the minds of his audience , and then to unpack confusion to make things seem what they are not – how imposssible may be magically transformed to the probable.
To trust him is fatal
Ferdinand says why he wanted duchess dead (although not true) “i had a hope... to have gained, an infinite mass of treasure by her death”
Morality of duchess
Fable of salmon and the dogfish - first demonstration of strength is no indicator of end-worth
Value cannot be truly known until caught and sold, not judged by the river they start in , (sims) “one of the greatest speeches of the play”
One critic on duchess’ philosophy “midway between fatalism and optimism”
Identity:
Webster politially liberal standing seen through the duchess
“give up all vain ceremony”
John Selzer exoneration (of duchess) by her attempt to establish a meritocracy in place of the traditional aristocracy
Bosola only match for her and only sometimes
Even he acknowledges her birth “behaviour so noble as gives majesty to adverstity”
Antonio “she stains time past, lights up time to come”
Duchess' lack of name distances her from us “dost thou know me?” “who am I”
Ultimately leans back on her status rather than her person “I am duchess of Mali still”
Sims: duchess a hero with “significant flaws”
Revenge
Regret:
“revenge clouds judgement” (sims) - why revenge was abandoned as a route legally to retribution
She and I were twins - ferdinand
“for the good deed you have done me, I must do all the ill man can invent” - b
Bosola words of remorse “i am angry with myself … I loathed evil, yet I loved You, that did cousel it”
Bosola loves the dead duchess - (he picks her up and takes her away in some performances)
-can he only love the dead and decaying
“foul melancholy will poison all his goodness”
Delio to antonio on the brothers “i cannot think they mean well to your life
Madness:
Cardinal on edge – for the first. Time he appears not in center stage
Love and madness
Madness like lovers who see the whole rest of the world as de ranged
Others call her resbonsible “my sister theres the cause on’t
Ferdinand combines mania with sharp insight
Churlish to blame an unblemished soul for the manner in which evil forces react to her goodness yet this is what ferdinand does
Critic on Ferdinand with duchess “debases himself by debasing her, his vivid imagination taking him into debauched fantasy - cardinal “are you stark mad”
Malateste, Sims “something wrong with his manliness “mere stick of sugar candy”
Sims (who is always the critic im referring too) “anger lies in her disregard of his strong counsel’
Mactaggart “dismisses the implication of Ferdinands incest as Fruedian obsession
Ferdinand “laughs like a deadly cannon”
Ill with lycanthropia + more, medicine in those days hardly the science it is today
Class/ courts:
Antonio “gains class by learning – reinassance humanist traditon that absorbing scholarhsip is were the road to improvement lies
-only to an extent
Lack of education can only demean the aritsocracy so much, as gain of education can only improve lowers situation so much , context emerging educated middle class.
“the duchess in marrying her advisor fatally mixes business with pleasure”
Issues and abuses Webster deals with are glaringly present in the english court, distance offered playwright some protection from a charge of anti-patriotism or treason
“princes court like a common fountain... if it poisond near the head death and disease through the whole land spread
Webster oncerned with abusues of the upper classes (“no roles for women or educated middle class)
“Malcontents role to unsettle the power of the corrupt”
The most important and least important people … are known alone by their titles
Duchess strength
In her denial of the advantages of birth and “put off all vain ceremony” we may percive undeniable strength wants to re marry and does (“i winked and chose a husband”) , wants children skillful enough to produce them and conceal their existence
Ferdinand emobdies unresolved displacement of the middle sibbling
Lacks natual authority of first born
Imprisonment:
Sense of ongoing claustrophobia:
Much of the action takes place in confined spaces, atmosphere of threat
Prison is where the duchess nearly always is
“nightengale/ never live long in cages”
She learns, to her lasting credit that even under house arrest she may win a degree of independence and freedom
Contrasts?:
Intially:
Cardinal ferdinand unremmittingly evil
Antonio and delio unswervingly good
Allowed to witnes cardinals (let me be laid by and never thought of) remorse ferdinands partial return to sanity (she and I were twins) and bosolas vain attempt to save antonio
Nice “go no further in your cruelty” (bosola)
Dramatists skill is to build a credible confusion in the minds of his audience , and then to unpack confusion to make things seem what they are not – how imposssible may be magically transformed to the probable.
Where older brother is cold he is hot
Characters are often opposites
Constant contrasts of mood at beginning and end of scenes
Also verbal contrasts cardinals secret about duches “a grave dark and obscure”
Antonios hears voice from grave as “a clear light”
Webster endevours, one critic infers from these contrasts, to not be bias
Critics:
Disliked:
Others unhappy with “episodic structure” “absurd improbabilities and gross excess”
“Decadence and imorality” Charles Kingsley – no moral purpose
“lacks that fine humanity which looks so beautiful in shakespeare”
Concentrated chief engergies on repulsive themes
Modern audiences have serious risk of being reduced to laughter rather than tears
“18th century was one of neglect for websters work” (due to poor adaptations) Pepys(from “which seems a good play” to “sorry play”
Liked:
1945 review of play in the times appeared by strange but telling accident beneath Nazi extermination camp images – world had again become used to confronting stiuations of horror again
Charles Lamb “entusiastic about webster”
Hazlitt “the nearest to shakespeare of any thing we have on record
Moore: poetic power of his tragic vision
Swinburne “no poet is morally nobler”
T.s.Elliot on webster “knew that thought clings round dead limbs tightening its lusts and luxuries”
Symbols jacobean/ elizabethen theatre
Scene 5 act 5: empty stage symbol of an exhausted story
Cardinal enters reading, symbol used to indicate depressed melancholia
Structure/ features
Dumb show common as was play within a play in joacboean / Elizabethan theatre
“Gives relief from preceding intensity” - use of pilgrims
T.s Elliot “disapproved of renaissance dramatiststs who attempted to “attain complete realism without surrounding unrealistic conventions”
Supernatural in echo
Denouement- command the audience's interest when the protagonist is gone, what happens when the good is gone
By act 3 Julius caesar is gone in Shakespeare
Artistolian model used to maintain audience credibility
Increasingly disregarded- rejects unities of time and place
In a revenge tragedy “ultimately no one wins”
Instead of a model revenge tradgedy and senecan model with twists
Historisicist position (Belsey) DoM between medival stage and post restoration theatre
Character:
Delio- hazitt webster more subtle than shakespeare in that unlike horatio in hamlet webster endows delio with a weakness making him theatrically more credible
For aristotle character is less important than plot
For webster interest lies in how characters deal with stress and distress
Harold bloom identifies shakespeares work as the first beleivable – does his acknowldgement also hold for other contempoary craftsmen like webster