Key AO5: The Duchess of Malfi
Comparisons + Intertextuality = Blue (AO4)
Critics
Women
‘In studies of the play produced in the 1950s and 1960s, she is portrayed in accordance with
the stereotypes of the highly sexed widow voiced by her brothers, and her marriage to
Antonio is depicted as wilful, wanton and irresponsible’ – Clifford Leech and James L.
Calderwood
Do I agree?
‘It is more easy for a young man or maid to forbear carnal acts than it is for a widow’ –
Henderson and MacManus
Social Class
‘It is the source of cultural conflict that is most frequently and intensely enacted in his plays’
– Elli Abraham Shellist
Link to Chaucer, May decides to have sex with the servant who is of a much lower class. This
would have scared the audience at the time to see how attraction can overpower money
and status. What happens when money and status is not enough?
Marriage
The fact that widows were not firmly under the control of their male relations intensified
their ability to arouse masculine anxieties. When a woman married, she moved from a
position of legal subservience to her father to being legally subject to her husband.
Webster, the son of a wealthy coach-maker, contributed to the heated debate about
whether noble blood or personal merit was more deserving of honour throughout his
theatrical career.
What Can You Learn from Machiavelli – Yale Insights
He was the first theorist to divorce politics from ethics, and giving a certain autonomy to the
study of politics
Before this:
- According to an ancient tradition that goes back to Aristotle, politics is a sub-branch
of ethics
- Ethics was defined as the moral behaviour of individuals
Comparisons + Intertextuality = Blue (AO4)
Critics
Women
‘In studies of the play produced in the 1950s and 1960s, she is portrayed in accordance with
the stereotypes of the highly sexed widow voiced by her brothers, and her marriage to
Antonio is depicted as wilful, wanton and irresponsible’ – Clifford Leech and James L.
Calderwood
Do I agree?
‘It is more easy for a young man or maid to forbear carnal acts than it is for a widow’ –
Henderson and MacManus
Social Class
‘It is the source of cultural conflict that is most frequently and intensely enacted in his plays’
– Elli Abraham Shellist
Link to Chaucer, May decides to have sex with the servant who is of a much lower class. This
would have scared the audience at the time to see how attraction can overpower money
and status. What happens when money and status is not enough?
Marriage
The fact that widows were not firmly under the control of their male relations intensified
their ability to arouse masculine anxieties. When a woman married, she moved from a
position of legal subservience to her father to being legally subject to her husband.
Webster, the son of a wealthy coach-maker, contributed to the heated debate about
whether noble blood or personal merit was more deserving of honour throughout his
theatrical career.
What Can You Learn from Machiavelli – Yale Insights
He was the first theorist to divorce politics from ethics, and giving a certain autonomy to the
study of politics
Before this:
- According to an ancient tradition that goes back to Aristotle, politics is a sub-branch
of ethics
- Ethics was defined as the moral behaviour of individuals
