The Duchess of Malfi


The Duchess of Malfi is a Jacobean revenge tragedy written by English dramatist John Webster in 1612–1613. It was first performed privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, then later to a larger audience at The Globe, in 1613–1614.
Published in 1623, the play is loosely based on events that occurred between 1508 and 1513 surrounding Giovanna d'Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi, whose father, Enrico d'Aragona, Marquis of Gerace, was an illegitimate son of Ferdinand I of Naples. As in the play, she secretly married Antonio Beccadelli di Bologna after the death of her first husband Alfonso I Piccolomini, Duke of Amalfi.
The play begins as a love story, when the Duchess marries beneath her class, and ends as a nightmarish tragedy as her two brothers undertake their revenge, destroying themselves in the process. Jacobean drama continued the trend of stage violence and horror set by Elizabethan tragedy, under the influence of Seneca. The complexity of some of the play's characters, particularly Bosola and the Duchess, and Webster's poetic language, have led many critics to consider The Duchess of Malfi among the greatest tragedies of English renaissance drama.

Characters

There are also minor roles including courtiers, servants, officers, a mistress, the Duchess’s children, executioners, etc.

Synopsis

The play is set in the court of Malfi, Italy, from 1504 to 1510. The recently widowed Duchess falls in love with Antonio, a lowly steward. Her brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, forbid her from remarrying, seeking to defend their inheritance and desperate to avoid a degrading association with a social inferior. Suspicious of her, they hire Bosola to spy on her. She elopes with Antonio and bears him three children secretly. Bosola eventually discovers that the Duchess is pregnant but does not know who the father is.
Ferdinand, shown by now to be a depraved lunatic, threatens and disowns the Duchess. In an attempt to escape, she and Antonio concoct a story that Antonio has swindled her out of her fortune and must flee into exile. The Duchess takes Bosola into her confidence, unaware that he is Ferdinand's spy, and arranges for him to deliver her jewellery to Antonio at his hiding-place in Ancona. She will join them later, while pretending to make a pilgrimage to a nearby town. The Cardinal hears of the plan, instructs Bosola to banish the two lovers, and sends soldiers to capture them. Antonio escapes with their eldest son, but the Duchess, her maid, and her two younger children are returned to Malfi and die at the hands of Bosola's executioners, who are under Ferdinand's orders. This experience leads Bosola to turn against the brothers, and he decides to take up the cause of “revenge for the Duchess of Malfi”.
The Cardinal confesses his part in the killing of the Duchess to his mistress, Julia, then murders her with a poisoned Bible. Bosola overhears the Cardinal plotting to kill him, so he visits the darkened chapel to kill the Cardinal at his prayers. Instead, he mistakenly kills Antonio, who has just returned to Malfi to attempt a reconciliation with the Cardinal. Bosola then stabs the Cardinal, who dies. In the brawl that follows, Ferdinand and Bosola stab each other to death.
Antonio's elder son by the Duchess appears in the final scene and takes his place as the heir to the Malfi fortune. The son's decision is in spite of his father's explicit wish that he "fly the court of princes", a corrupt and increasingly deadly environment.
The conclusion is controversial for some readers because they find reason to believe the inheriting son is not the rightful heir of the Duchess. The play briefly mentions a son who is the product of her first marriage and would therefore have a stronger claim to the duchy. Other scholars believe the mention of a prior son is just a careless error in the text.

Plot

Act 1

Corruption

A vein of corruption runs throughout the play, notably in the character of the deadly Cardinal, a man ready to employ lesser beings to commit murders for him, then cast them aside as rotten fruit. He is no stranger to murder himself, however, as he slays his own mistress by making her kiss a poisoned book. Antonio describes him thus:
The Cardinal gambles, keeps the wife of one of his courtiers as a mistress, and fights duels. Conspiracy and intrigue are the air he breathes. Duke Ferdinand is his brother's willing conspirator in villainy, and at times his rages shock even the Cardinal's sense of decorum. The Duke's corruption in the end destroys his sanity: incestuous desire for his own sister. Realizing she has married and borne children by Antonio, his rage drives him to do everything in his power to bring his sister to despair, madness and death, but in the end he is driven mad himself.
These two perverse villains destroy or poison all that is within their reach, all semblance of warmth or human affection.

Abuse of power

The brothers repeatedly abuse their power. Ferdinand is caught committing adultery but is not punished. The Cardinal abuses his ecclesiastical powers to have Antonio's property confiscated and to have the Duchess and her family banished from the state of Ancona. Ferdinand and the Cardinal order the death of the Duchess without any proper judgement passed by a court of law.

Status of women and responsibility for the tragedy

The ideal quality her brothers would foist on the Duchess is that of being submissive to male control, though ironically widowhood was often the first time women might be independent of the control of husbands or male relatives. However, the Duchess went against her brothers' wishes and remarried. Her assertion of her freedom of choice is best illustrated in her soliloquy following her conversation with her brothers when they strictly advise her to not even think about remarrying. Immediately after telling her brothers that she will never remarry, she says to herself: "If all my royal kindred / Lay in my way unto this marriage, / I'd make them my low foot-steps." The central conflict of the play involves the Duchess' desire to marry for love and her brothers' desire to prevent her from remarrying. Throughout, she refuses to submit to her brothers' attempts at control and even asserts her identity and self-control at the moment of her death, announcing "I am Duchess of Malfi still".
The internal struggle faced by the Duchess when fighting her brothers and hiding her marriage was all part of Webster's intention to reflect and refer to the Roman paradigms and Senecan tragedies. This is compelled through the Duchess's speech and actions.

Cruelty

The relationship between the Duchess and her brothers is rooted in cruelty. The brothers often try to manipulate her and drive her mad. This cruelty is first evident when the Cardinal and Ferdinand lock the Duchess in her own home. Ferdinand deceives the Duchess into thinking that he cares: "I come to seal my peace with you. / Here's a hand, / To which you have vowed much love. / The ring upon't / You gave". In the darkness, the Duchess thinks that Ferdinand is asking for her forgiveness when he reaches out his hand, and so she kisses it; when the lights come on she sees the dead bodies of her husband and children, and believes she just kissed her husband's severed hand. But in reality, Ferdinand used wax figures to trick her into thinking her family is dead. This deception and cruelty cause the Duchess physical and emotional torment throughout the play. At the end of the play, the Duchess is strangled at the request of her brothers.

Class

The Duchess argues that high class is not an indicator of a good man. At the time, Italy was moving into capitalism and one no longer needed to be born into wealth to obtain it. Though the Duchess and her brothers are aware of this, her brothers, concerned with wealth and honour, nevertheless strive to dismantle her marriage to Antonio while disapproving of their sister's love life. Ferdinand is particularly obsessed with the idea of inheriting the fortune to which his sister is entitled, because it would protect his social and financial status. Ultimately the Duchess is put to death for remarrying into a lower class.

Objectification

The Duchess is often criticised for stepping out of the societal expectations of a widow in sixteenth century England. As a widow, the Duchess gains a new power and independence, which angers her brothers. As a female in a position of power, she is expected to hold the throne and obey the patriarchal figures in the court, specifically her two brothers, the Cardinal and Ferdinand. The Cardinal and Ferdinand are in line to receive the inheritance if the Duchess does not have any children, so controlling her sexual affairs becomes their singular focus. Rather than respecting her autonomy and wishes, they aim to control her sexuality and diminish her independence. In Act I, Scene I, Ferdinand makes this clear when he states, "Nay, / I mean the tongue: variety of courtship. / What cannot a neat knave with a smooth tale / Make a woman believe? Farewell, lusty widow". He is solely focused on preserving her chastity, so he views her as an object, rather than a human being. The continued objectification of the Duchess from her brothers conveys males' perceived ability to control a woman's body in the society of the 16th century.

Theatrical devices

The play makes use of various theatrical devices, some of them derived from Senecan Tragedy which includes violence and bloodshed on the stage. Act III, Scene IV is a mime scene, in which a song is sung in honour of the Cardinal, who gives up his robes and invests himself with the attire of a soldier, and then performs the act of banishing the Duchess. The whole scene is commented upon by two pilgrims, who condemn the harsh behaviour of the Cardinal towards the Duchess. That the scene is set against the backdrop of the Shrine of Our Lady of Loretto, a religious place, adds to its sharp distinction between good and evil, justice and injustice.
Act V, Scene iii, features an important theatrical device, echo, which seems to emanate from the grave of the Duchess, in her voice. In its totality, it reads: "Deadly accent. A thing of sorrow. That suits it best. Ay, wife's voice. Be mindful of thy safety. O fly your fate. Thou art a dead thing. Never see her more." The echo repeats the last words of what Antonio and Delio speak, but is selective. It adds to the sense of the inevitability of Antonio's death, while highlighting the role of fate.

Historical staging

Set and Props: As this play would have first been produced in the Globe, the set would probably been a bare stage with movable set pieces such as tables, stools, beds, hangings, and altars, all of which would have been stock pieces used in every show. Props would also have been minimal, with essentials like swords, pistols, and candles, and dummies. The traveller and future translator of Castiglione's Cortegiano, Thomas Hoby, together with his friend Peter Whitehorne, translator of Machiavelli's Art of War, were lavishly entertained by a subsequent Duchess of Malfi and her son, Innico, in the Castello di Amalfi in 1550. Hoby was clearly very impressed by the decor, by implication superior to what he was used to in England, describing the chamber in which they were accommodated as: 'hanged with clothe of gold and vellett, wherein were two beddes, th'one of silver worke and the other of vellett, with pillowes bolsters and the shetes curiouslie wrowght with needle worke.'
Lighting: Lighting for a theatre like the Globe is completely dependent upon the sun. Performances would occur in the afternoon so as to see the performers, since no other sources of lighting were accessible.
Costumes: This was the Jacobean era, and Renaissance clothing, often hand-me-downs from noble patrons, would have been appropriate during this time. Especially since this play takes place among wealthy, prestigious characters who belong to The Royal Court, there would have been long dresses with elaborate sleeves and headpieces for most female characters, and form fitting tunics for most of the men as a general rule. Men would wear hose and codpieces, very royal members of The Court might wear jackets with stuffed sleeves, and both men and women would be able to wear clothing with some type of colour to it. Due to the sumptuary laws, deep purple was restricted to the nobility of the times. During this period, and until the Restoration women were not generally accepted on stage. Because of this, the roles of women were played by apprentice boys or the younger men. Padding would be built into their costumes, their heads would be adorned with wigs, and extra make-up would be applied to their faces.

The 1623 quarto

The Duchess of Malfi was first performed between 1613 and 1614 by the King's Men, an acting group to which Shakespeare belonged. The printer was Nicholas Okes and the publisher was John Waterson. However, the play was not printed in quarto until 1623. The title page of this particular edition tells us that the play was printed privately. The title page also informs readers that the play text includes numerous passages that were cut for performance. The 1623 quarto is the only substantive version of the play in circulation today, and modern editions and productions are based on it. Notable is that, on the title page of the 1623 quarto, a clear distinction is drawn between the play in performance and the play as a text to be read.

Reception and performance history

The play was written for and performed by the King's Men in 1613 or 1614. The double cast lists included in the 1623 quarto suggest a revival around 1619. Contemporary reference also indicated that the play was performed in 1618, for in that year Orazio Busino, the chaplain to the Venetian ambassador to England, complained of the play's treatment of Catholics in the character of the Cardinal.
The quarto's cast list allows more precision about casting than is usually available. Richard Burbage and Joseph Taylor successively played Ferdinand to Henry Condell's Cardinal. John Lowin played Bosola; William Ostler was Antonio. Boy player Richard Sharpe played the title role not in the original 1612 production, presumably due to his age, but in the revival of 1619–23. Nicholas Tooley played Forobosco, and Robert Pallant doubled numerous minor roles, including Cariola.
The quarto title page announces that the play was performed at both the Globe Theatre and at Blackfriars; however, in tone and in some details of staging the play is clearly meant primarily for the indoor stage. Robert Johnson, a regular composer for Blackfriars, wrote incidental music for the play and composed a setting for the "madmen's song" in Act 4.
The play is known to have been performed for Charles I at the Cockpit-in-Court in 1630; there is little reason to doubt that it was performed intermittently throughout the period.
The play remained current through the first part of the Restoration. Samuel Pepys reports seeing the play several times; it was performed by the Duke of York's company under Thomas Betterton.
By the early eighteenth century, Webster's violence and sexual frankness had gone out of taste. In 1733, Lewis Theobald wrote and directed an adaptation, The Fatal Secret; the play imposed neoclassical unities on the play, for instance by eliminating the Duchess's child and preserving the Duchess at the end. By mid-century, the play had fallen, with Webster, out of the repertory, where it stayed until the Romantic revival of Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt.
In 1850, after a generation of critical interest and theatrical neglect, the play was staged by Samuel Phelps at Sadler's Wells, with Isabella Glyn in the title role. The text was adapted by Richard Henry Horne. The production was favourably reviewed by The Athenaeum; George Henry Lewes, however, registered disapproval of the play's violence and what he termed its shoddy construction: "Instead of 'holding the mirror up to nature,' this drama holds the mirror up to Madame Tussauds." These would become the cornerstones of criticisms of Webster for the next century. Still, the play was popular enough for Glyn to revive her performance periodically for the next two decades.
Shortly after, Duchess came to the United States. Working with Horne's text, director James Stark staged a production in San Francisco; this version is noteworthy for a sentimental apotheosis Stark added, in which the Duchess and Ferdinand are reunited in heaven. The most popular American productions, however, were produced by Wilmarth Waller and his wife Emma.
William Poel staged the play at the Opera Comique in 1892, with Mary Rorke as the Duchess and Murray Carson as Bosola. Poel's playscript followed Webster's text closely apart from scene rearrangements; however, reaction had set in, and the production received generally scathing reviews. William Archer, England's chief proponent of Ibsen's new drama, took advantage of the occasion to lambast what he saw as the overestimation of Elizabethan theatre in general.
In 1919, the Phoenix Society revived the play in London for the first time in two decades. The production featured Cathleen Nesbitt as the Duchess; Robert Farquharson played Ferdinand. The production was widely disparaged. For many of the newspaper critics, the failure indicated that Webster had become a "curio"; T. S. Eliot, conversely, argued that the production had failed to uncover the elements that made Webster a great dramatist—specifically his poetry. A 1935 production at the Embassy Theatre received similarly negative reviews; Ivor Brown noted that the audience left "rather with superior smiles than with emotional surrender." In 1938, a production was broadcast on BBC television; it was no better received than the previous two stage productions.
In 1937, it was performed in Dublin, Ireland, at the Abbey Theatre, with incidental music composed by Arthur Duff.
In the aftermath of World War II, George Rylands directed a production at the Haymarket Theatre that at last caught the public mood. John Gielgud, as Ferdinand, accentuated the element of incestuous passion in that character's treatment of the Duchess. Cecil Trouncer was Bosola. Edmund Wilson was perhaps the first to note that the play struck an audience differently in the wake of the revelation of the Holocaust; this note is, from 1945 on, continually struck in discussions of the appropriateness of Webster for the modern age. A 1946 production on Broadway did not fare as well; Rylands attempted to duplicate his London staging with John Carradine as Ferdinand and Elisabeth Bergner as the Duchess. W. H. Auden adapted Webster's text for the modern audience. However, the production's most notable innovation was in the character of Bosola, which was played by Canada Lee in whiteface. The production received savage reviews from the popular press, and it fared little better in the literary reviews.
The first successful postwar performance in America was staged at the off-Broadway Phoenix Theatre in 1957. Directed by Jack Landau, who had earlier staged a brief but well-reviewed White Devil, the production emphasised Grand Guignol. As Walter Kerr put it, "Blood runs right over the footlights, spreads slowly up the aisle and spills well out into Second Avenue."
Ashcroft returned as the Duchess in a 1960 production at the Aldwych Theatre. The play was directed by Donald McWhinnie; Eric Porter played Ferdinand and Max Adrian the Cardinal. Patrick Wymark played Bosola. The production received generally favourable but lukewarm reviews. In 1971, Clifford Williams directed the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Judi Dench took the title role, with Geoffrey Hutchings as Bosola and Emrys James as the Cardinal. Dench's husband Michael Williams played Ferdinand, casting which highlighted the sexual element of the play's siblings.
In 1980, Adrian Noble directed the play at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. This production received excellent notices; it was transferred to London, where it won the London Drama Critic's Award for best play. Helen Mirren played the title role; Mike Gwilym played Ferdinand, and Bob Hoskins played Bosola. Pete Postlethwaite was Antonio. Mirren's performance received special acclaim.
The actor-centred troupe led by Ian McKellen and Edward Petherbridge chose Webster's play as one of their first productions. The production opened in January 1986 in the Lyttelton Theatre of the Royal National Theatre and was directed and designed by Philip Prowse. The staging was highly stylised, the scenic backdrop segmented, and the actors' movements tightly controlled. The result, as Jarka Burian noted, was "a unified, consistent mise-en-scene...without enough inner turbulence to create a completely satisfying theatre experience." Eleanor Bron played the Duchess; McKellen played Bosola, Jonathan Hyde Ferdinand, and Petherbridge the Cardinal.
In 1995, Juliet Stevenson and Simon Russell-Beale played the Duchess and Ferdinand respectively in a production at Greenwich Theatre, directed by Philip Franks.
In 2010, the production was staged for Stage on Screen at the Greenwich Theatre, London. It was directed by Elizabeth Freestone and starred Aislin McGuckin in a production that set the play in the first half of the twentieth century. In The Guardian, the reviewer noted that 'Much of the pleasure of this revival lies in re-encountering Webster's language...full of savage poetry.' The production is now available on DVD.
In July 2010, English National Opera and Punchdrunk collaborated to stage the production, which had been commissioned by the ENO from composer Torsten Rasch. The production was staged in a promenade style and performed at a mysterious vacant site at Great Eastern Quay in London's Royal Albert Basin.
From March to June 2012, London's Old Vic Theatre staged a production, directed by Jamie Lloyd and starring, amongst others, Eve Best.
In January 2014, Shakespeare's Globe staged a production directed by Dominic Dromgoole and starring Gemma Arterton as the Duchess, James Garnon as the Cardinal, David Dawson as Ferdinand, Alex Waldmann as Antonio, and Sean Gilder as Bosola. It was the first production performed in the Globe's Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. The production was filmed and broadcast on BBC4 on 25 May 2014. This production coincided with a representation of the aforementioned Theobald text of 1736 as part of the Globe's Read Not Dead series – directed by David Oakes.
In 2018, a production was staged in Stratford-upon-Avon by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

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