The Duchess of Malfi is a Jacobean revenge tragedy play written by the English dramatist John Webster in 1612–1613. The play begins as a love story, when the Duchess marries beneath her class, and ends as a nightmarish tragedy as her two brothers...

There are many complex personalities in John Webster's classic play, "The Duchess of Malfi". Webster's character named "Bosola" is perhaps the most complex of any. Throughout the play, one may notice a variety of emotional traits in each of the...

Much of John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi" centers around the subversions and perversions of Ferdinand, the Duchess' brother. Ferdinand is an immensely disturbed man who has been driven to insanity by his inability to control his sister, and...

Webster's decision to cast strong female characters as the protagonists in his two most popular plays could have been considered highly controversial and unexpected by the audiences of his time. This unintended effect immediately seems to prompt a...

The main themes of “The Duchess of Malfi” are expertly demonstrated by Webster throughout many of the play’s intriguing scenes and dialogues. One particular instance occurs in the famous echo scene (5.3.1-55) between Antonio and Delio. As they are...

“Her days are practis’d in such noble virtue,

That, sure her nights, nay more, her very sleeps,

Are more in heaven, than other ladies’ shrifts.

Let all sweet ladies break their flatt’ring glasses,

And dress themselves in her” – (1.2.123-127)

These...

In British literature of the 16th and 17th centuries, plots often center on romance, royalty, and the battle for power. With this emphasis come stories that feature the stereotypes of the damsel in distress, the powerless princess, and the haughty...

In John Webster’s tragic play The Duchess of Malfi, the titular character is undoubtedly subjected to great degrees of suffering, both physical and mental. However, it is less clear whether or not she can be viewed simply as an innocent victim....

In John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, the audience’s opinion on the anti-hero Bosola and his moral integrity changes throughout the play due to his sudden catharsis and change in behavior after he realizes the consequences of his working for the...

Webster's Machiavellian antagonist Ferdinand demonstrates a decline into insanity in 'The Duchess of Malfi' through displaying signs of uncontrollable emotions, fixations on his sister and incestuous desires, and the development of lycanthropy.

...

Both Webster in ‘The Duchess of Malfi,’ a Jacobean revenge tragedy, and Williams in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ a 20th century modern-domestic tragedy, use entrapment as a pivotal focus for chief dramatic moments. The playwrights especially focus...

Power is the underlying current that runs through both Webster’s ‘The Duchess of Malfi’, a 17th century revenge tragedy, and Williams’ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, a 20th Century modern domestic tragedy. Both plays offer stark representations of...

The writers of the early modern period often presented in their texts characters who struggled with a crisis of identity. Furthermore, these characters were unable to reconcile their identity with the role that they played within the fictional...

In ‘The Duchess of Malfi’ the characterisation of the protagonists allows the concept of death to be explored deeply. Webster’s portrayal of the Duchess marks her embracement of death as she appears to be prepared for her fate, whereas the...

John Webster explores the attraction of that which is forbidden in a plethora of ways. The nature of the attraction, and the powers that determine that which is forbidden vary throughout. However, the theme remains manifest in all the instances...

In Webster’s Jacobean revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi, and Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, written in 1947, both men consider the themes of chastity and the effect chastity has on the main female characters’ reputation within society....

Despite the varying contexts with which they wrote their work, as well as the vastly different tone and content, both Chaucer in ‘The Merchants Tale’ and Webster through ‘The Duchess of Malfi’ explore the theme of forbidden love- or forbidden...

The Renaissance Era was a period when theatre, among other forms of art, bloomed in its adolescence, as it outgrew old, traditional characteristics of the Middle Ages, and gradually evolved into what would later become known as modern history....

‘As one judge said to the other, “Be just, and if you can’t be just, be arbitrary.”’ - William Burroughs

Agamben’s Homo Sacer begins thus: ‘The paradox of sovereignty consists in the fact the sovereign is, at the same time, outside and inside the...

Issues of wealth are addressed as central concerns of the texts The Duchess of Malfi (Webster, 2012) and Oroonoko; Or, The Royal Slave (Behn, 2012). The exploration of character portrayal within different social standings and how the...

Webster's decision to cast strong female characters as the protagonists in his two most popular plays could have been considered highly controversial and unexpected by the audiences of his time. This unintended effect immediately seems to prompt a...

John Webster’s The White Devil portrays an inherent brutality within the human condition, which, while humanity may strive to do good, ensures its ultimate destruction. He draws on genuine fears of the Jacobean era to attribute immorality to every...

Webster’s presentation of the fallen world in Act V of The White Devil appears as a more developed and grander reflection of Milton’s fallen world in Book IX of Paradise Lost. Milton’s outstanding attributes of the fallen world are developed by...

The English Renaissance notably developed alongside a volatile political backdrop intertwined with internal conflict, dynastic instability and, perhaps most importantly, religious tension. Religious settlement in the sixteenth and early...