The Duchess of Malfi

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1614

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Summary

Background

Act Summaries & Analyses

Dedication-Act I, Scene 1

Act II, Scenes 1-5

Act III, Scenes 1-5

Act IV, Scenes 1-2

Act V, Scenes 1-5

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Background

Genre Context: The Jacobean Revenge Tragedy

Revenge tragedy is a sub-genre of tragedy, which is a type of drama that dramatizes the downfall of the protagonist. A common truism is that comedy starts with death and ends with a wedding, while tragedy starts with a wedding and ends with death—this is true of The Duchess of Malfi. While tragedy can take on many forms and subgenres, revenge tragedy explicitly traffics in the most visceral aspects of human nature. The genre was originated by first-century Roman statesman and dramatist, Lucius Seneca the Younger.

Common features of revenge tragedy are a quest for vengeance, acts of violence, and motifs of ghosts and madness. While all of these criteria apply to this play, Webster’s work is unique among revenge tragedies for subverting several of these criteria. For instance, rather than a heroic man pursuing revenge (as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet), Webster’s plays feature a heroic woman being unjustly subject to revenge by corrupt and power-hungry men.

Another key characteristic of the revenge tragedy is that they are often loosely based on real-life events. The Duchess of Malfi is based on the early 16th-century death of Giovanna d’Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi, who secretly married her household steward, Antonio Beccadelli. They and their three children eventually fled from her brother, Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona. The family was separated; Antonio escaped, but there was no further record of the Duchess and her children. It is likely they were murdered at the Cardinal’s direction.

Literature, art, and drama produced during the reign of King James I of England (1603-1625) are called “Jacobean.” While the revenge tragedy proliferated in Jacobean England, it was re-introduced to early modern England in the Elizabethan era. Popular Elizabethan revenge tragedies include Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (1592), Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (1589), and William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (1594) and Hamlet (1602). Revenge tragedies continued to be performed through the Jacobean era: for example, Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606), Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606), and Webster’s The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1623).

Authorial Context: John Webster

Webster was an English dramatist who lived from roughly 1578-1623, though neither his birth nor death date is known precisely. His father was a carriage maker and guild member, and his maternal grandfather was a blacksmith. Little is known of Webster’s life; however, his working-class background likely affected his plays’ themes of state and religious corruption and his critiques of hierarchies of power.

Webster wrote during the height of English drama and had both collaborations and rivalries with other well-known dramatists. He co-wrote Caesar’s Fall with Thomas Middleton, Michael Drayton, Anthony Munday and Thomas Dekker, and collaborated on four other known plays with Dekker. In 1604, Webster and Dekker wrote a salacious comedy called West-ward Hoe, which elicited the 1605 publication of the even more salacious Eastward Hoe by rival dramatist Ben Jonson and his theatre company, the Admiral’s Men. Not to be outdone, that same year Webster and Dekker wrote Northward Hoe.

Webster’s most well-known works are two revenge tragedies he wrote alone later in life: The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. Both plays tell the real-life story of the murders of prominent Italian women after perceived transgressions of what was then considered acceptable female sexuality. These plays were written during the rule of James I, who strongly advocated for traditional gender roles, royal absolutism, and the disempowerment of Parliament. Though Webster dramatized past events in Italy, he used them to comment on his contemporary England. His plays criticized state and religious hierarchies in which power is collated in single individuals, who are easily corrupted. The Duchess of Malfi begins with Antonio critiquing courts in which the corruption of the “head” spreads throughout the rest of the institution. Though his plays do not openly critique the English monarchy or state, they obliquely refer to them and paint a picture of a world that is relentlessly bleak and violent.

While The White Devil was performed by the Queen’s Men in the Red Bull Theatre to poor reception, The Duchess of Malfi was performed with much greater success at the intimate, indoor Blackfriars Theatre and the newly-constructed Globe between 1612-1614 by the King’s Men. Some of the best stage actors of the generation were involved in its performance, including Richard Burbage, who played Ferdinand. The Duchess of Malfi eventually became the first English play to be published with a list of actors assigned to their roles; this speaks to the popularity and renown of the actors Webster’s company had at their disposal.