Webster- “The Duchess of Malfi”.doc

Webster- “The Duchess of Malfi”

Written in 1640, example of Jacobean play, Jacobean tragedy = revenge tragedy,

SENSATIONAL PLAY:

·         certain motifs dominates à  adultery motive in combination with revenge motif

·         deals with the upper class à princess and duchess

·         use of sharp contrast

·         no balance between elements in the play à sensational tragedy

·         malcontent\ melancholy man à a typical character à here Bosola

·         political and moral corruption or sexual transgression à here adultery

SENSATIONALISM:

·         no balance between elements in the play

·         use of certain rhetorical strategies that operate on contrast

·         use of sharp contrast

·         supposed to make the reader react emotionally,à feeling and emotion is meant to shock;

·         extreme situations( poisoning, murdering, secret marriages, adultery)

·         uncertainty to what is important and the world begins to be filled with violence

·         connected with the political crisis of the period

·         contingency dominates(you have possibilities but you don’t know if they will be realized, everything happens by chance, nothing is  planned

·         things happen in the same way  & nothing is to take its place

·         world driven by a blind chance, there is no script, here we don’t have any plan

BOSOLA- A MELANCHOLY FIGURE

·         A melancholy figure

·         appear on the stage wearing black clothes

·         presented as sb in the stage of disintegration

·         contrast in his character- he is a nobleman but he escaped from gallers

·         criminal

·         he is associated with melancholy- in that times it was a disease

·         observer of reality, he gives satirical view of it but is powerless to change it

·         he criticized old women and says that they are only deceptive

·         he seize the reality as a chaos, but he can’t change it

masque:

·         the plot is limited

·         destroyed order

·         elements of chaos introduced

·         everything ends well- order is bring again and the play ends with a dance

·         written to celebrate sth

·         of joyful character

·         ends with dance of fairies

ANTIMASQUE- it is the way of entertainment. audience is involved, It is an antimasque parody of a masque; its aim is to shock.

·         Usage of costumes,

·         There is no order, chaos, tortures- to scary the duchess. à (in masque the order appears)

·         Instead of wedding we have her murder. à celebration of death

·         It is a horrifying spectacle.

·         There is no happy ending.

THEATRUM MUNDI- The world is regarded as a theatre. People are actors and the only one thing they have to do is to play well. People only have to play their roles. There is a script to each of these role and even the person who writes the script have a role for himself there. Everything is planned and people can’t change anything. They have only to act.

-the corruption spread from the rulers.

PARODY 

·         The Third Madman's insistence that "He that drinks but to satisfy nature is damned" functions as a parody of Ferdinand's attitude to the Duchess's natural impulse to remarriage

·         this play has the ingredients for serious revelations of human motivation and character, but simply loses steam and falls back on one dimensional caricatures of good and evil.

CONCEPT OF POWER

·         it means that when people are bad their examples spread out all over the city

·         This includes the concept of power between men and women, those of different social statuses