DOM critics Flashcards
Horatio Busino on its Christian influence
…saw it as an anti-Catholic libel
Tom Stoppard’s portrayal of Webster in his play “Shakespeare in Love”
…Webster appears as an unpleasant small boy who delights in feeding live mice to cats
The Globes Duchess’ told the ‘Radio Times’…
“It’s like Tarantino. There’s mass bloodshed, incest, violence, lots of kick arse king of stuff- and everybody dies in the end”
G. H. Lewis and Bernard Shaw on the waxwork extravagance of Act 4, Scene 1
“Instead of ‘holding a mirror up to nature’, this drama holds the mirror up to Madam Tussaud’s and emulates her Chamber of Horror’s”
Micheal Neil on the way Webster engages his audience against Shawn’s “Tussaud laureate” criticism…
“(Webster) engages in a provocative and potentially dangerous way with social and political issues of its own day, and does so with a poetic intensity unmatched by any of its immediate rivals”
John Webster addressing “the Right honourable George Hading…to the illustrious Prince Charles”
“I do not all together look up at your title, the ancientest nobility being but a relic of time past, and the truest honor indeed being for a man to confer honour on himself”
Ferdinand on the death of his sister Act 5, Scene 5 Themes (Morality, Sex, Ethics) Analysis: Ferdinand’s last words seem to admit his own incestuous feelings for his sister, and that he caused her death. The first line seems to admit that people are brought down by their own deeds, but could the ‘dust’ be his sister?
“My sister! Oh my sister, there’s the cause on’t! Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with out own dust”
Simon trussler and David Gunby on Bosola’s delight over finding out the Duchess has married Antonio
Trussler points out the Malcontents ‘regard the world as a stage’, ‘putting on an act’, suggesting that this could be his continued flattery. However Gunby points out that as a “mouthpiece for satiric concern” this could be a more honest reaction.
How many times are animals referenced in the play?
86
What does Meyers argue about the significance of animals in DOM? (links with renaissance fascination with anatomy eg) Leonardo DaVinici)
“Webster presents the human body as ecosystem: an animal world lurks beneath the human skin in a human-animal ecology composed of creatures large and small that live on and in the human body.”
Who directed the Globe 2014 Duchess of Malfi?
Dominic Dromgoole
What is significant about the globe’s 2014 performance?
traditional - like original at Blackfriars
How did the Globe 2014 portray 4.2?
wearing white to symbolise purity, highly tragic, cross, creates chiaroscuro affect with light and dark
describe RSC 2018 production
hog creates idea of abattoir, blood represents gruesome Jacobean tragedy
William Archer (contemporary) on Bosola
one of “the most human” of villains
