Summary A level English Literature - Webster's The Duchess of Malfi context table - eduquas -
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A level English Literature - Webster's The Duchess of Malfi context table - eduquas - includes historical, social, political, literary context on gender, class, social relations, family, religion, contemporary values, different interpretations, staging
Stereotypical figures
- The Cardinal as a Machiavellian figure, manipulative, cruel and ruthless -
unscrupulous and morally questionable political practice
- Bosola as the Malcontent - In Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, lack of position, and
social exclusion characterises the malcontent. A character who offers a cynical
perspective on the machinations of the court, cutting through the rhetoric, the
dissembling and hypocrisy.
- The deficiencies of the status quo create a logical space for the malcontent, a
character who is consumed with disgust at the corruption and stupidity of courtly
society and who vents his spleen by railing against it.
Literary influences
- The story of the Duchess of Malfi first appeared in 1567 in the ‘Palace of
Pleasures’. This play was far more condemning of her and moralised about her
lustfulness. Webster transformed it and gave it more psychological depth.
- Webster enjoyed writing 'Characters', a popular 17th-century genre which described
a particular type in society, usually satirical in nature.
- Webster has inherited from Shakespeare, but it’s not the Shakespeare of interior
psychology, it's much more the Shakespeare of horrific theatricalised cruelty
- The origins of Jacobean tragedy derive from mediaeval morality plays, where
characters were personified as vices or virtues in order to create allegorical
representations of good and evil. such plays were popular, were performed open-air
and had a didactic purpose. Webster and other dramatists such as John Ford were
influenced by these tales (although that's not to say that The Duchess of Malfi has a
strict moral code; quite the contrary). The characters can be seen as personifications
of sin to some extent (or allegorical representations of certain attributes of humanity).
- Webster draws on a particular kind of love poetry of the period, often termed
Petrarchan, in his depiction of Antonio’s praise of the Duchess. Antonio’s words
uphold the convention of a strong tendency to idealise the loved object, emphasising
the power of female beauty and investing the Duchess’s appearance with a spiritual
potency.
- By the time of the first performance of The Duchess in 1613–14, this kind of love
poetry, with its idealised picture of the woman, was fairly old-fashioned, and this is
reflected in Delio’s amused response to his friend’s rapturous speech: ‘Fie, Antonio, /
You play the wire-drawer with her commendations’.
- Nevertheless, Webster’s representation of that love in Petrarchan terms identifies it
as intensely romantic, as a form of adoration that, in Antonio’s circumstances, defines
the social distance separating him from his aristocratic employer.
, - The concept of the echo scene comes from classical literature. In his 5th century
BCE comedy Aristophanes parodies an echo scene from Euripides’ earlier
Andromeda.
Revenge Tragedy
- Webster was inspired by Seneca, whose dramas included violent and bloody actions,
themes of revenge and supernatural elements.
- “When the bad bleed, then is the tragedy good” - the Revenger's tragedy
- A tense and exciting plot, moral corruption, strong passions, evil and violence.
- In Jacobean drama, there is a sense in which revenge results in dramatic justice -
and ultimately, in the purging of the corrupt society.
- Prior to the Renaissance revenge was a common way to get justice, to balance a
wrongdoing (particularly murder). However in the Renaissance, a state legal system
developed which became progressively more sophisticated as courts of law became
more established. This means when Webster was writing personal revenge was
usually unlawful and an indicator of a malaise in a society infected by anarchy.
However, revenge drama was still popular as it gave normal people a chance to use
their imagination to bring justice to the wrong ignored by courts, all through theatre.
- Act V, Scene V, despite flouting the conventions of Senecan definitions of Revenge
Tragedy as the main protagonist has already met her death, is in fact an original
structural device used by Webster. It gives a view of a world which is absent of the
Christian morality upheld by the Duchess and, in consequence, Webster's dramatic
construct of the world of Malfi has become a staged 'Hell' with the final array of dead
bodies on the stage representing the triumph of a new matriarchal order in honour of
the Duchess' adherence to Christian morality and its triumph over the brothers' evil
patriarchy and obsession with preserving their bloodline.
- Revenge tragedies consistently present their audience with the spectacle of
decadent courts and irresponsible, often criminal, rulers.
Tragic heroine
- The Duchess as “a tragic heroine destroyed by the heartless authoritarian regime of
her brothers”
The Real Duchess of Malfi
- The Duchess’ radiance may not just be imagined stage time, but an oblique
reference to a notorious injustice which occurred one hundred years before.
- Giovanna d'Aragona, was born in 1478. Owing to the fact that her father had died
prior to her birth, she fell under the authority of her closest male relatives, her two
brothers. In 1490, whilst still only a child, she was married. Her husband died in 1498
and left her a widow.
- The young widow's freedom to remarry was restricted by her brothers and she defied
both her brothers and social expectations by secretly marrying her servant.
- In Webster’s own time, King James had his cousin Lady Arbella imprisoned for
marrying beneath her status against his wishes.
Webster as a proto-feminist
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