Major Themes in The Duchess of Malfi improve your English, Pronunciation, Listening#pronunciation#Speaking Skills..
The Duchess of Malfi#John Webster, Tragedy, Plot, Characters Story#summary
The Duchess of Malfi
BY JOHN WEBSTE (1578-1632)
An English writer of plays.
His plays Full of violence and strong emotions
He is best Known for his tragedies
Early is an early Jacobean dramatist.
Often collaborated with other playwrights including Michael Drayton, Thomas Dekker
Tragedies: “The White Devil” (1608), “The Duchess of Malfi”
(1614)- are often seen as masterpieces of the early 17th century.
His tragedies are very macabre, ghoulish, grisly (concerned with or causing a fear of death) and dark pieces that are also disturbing, which seemed to be the beginning of the Gothic Literature of the seventeenth century.
Life was very obscure.



The Duchess of Malfi

Written in 1612-1613, Jacobean era. (When James I 1603-25)
Jacobean revenge tragedy.
Originally published as “The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfi” Based on a real story from 1500s. (War family in Italy)
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 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.
Most of the Webster’s work is quite dark, and has an element of horror and tragedy.
The complexity of the play’s character, 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.
Based in a time when women still had little power (even less so when the real story took place.)



Major Themes of the Play are:

Corruption

Misuse of Power

Revenge

Deception

The Status of women

The argument of blood

The stories of unequal Marriage

Cruelty
Incest and class

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