Product Description

One of the most haunting tragedies written in the Jacobean period, The Duchess of Malfi (1614) adapts the true story of a noble Italian widow who secretly marries her steward and has children with him. Her two brothers, enraged by this act of female self-determination, begin to spy on the happy family, entrap them and subject their sister to fiendish psychological torture before they have her strangled. Unlike his sources, Webster does not condemn the Duchess for lasciviousness, nor does he allow her brothers to live. As the introduction to this edition shows, the play is replete with reverberations of earlier tragedies, most prominently Hamlet and Othello, and has few equals as a skilful and stirring rendition of Jacobean dramatic fashions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8379 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 184 pages

Customer Reviews

Contemporary
Written by one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, many might recognize John Webster as the rat loving boy in "Shakespeare in Love". His strange fascination with taboo subjects comes to the forefront in this play, incest, murder, the character of Bosola seemingly unable to identify where his loyaltyies lie, the Duchess herself under the strain of being a good ruler when all she wants to do is live as she wants. More gutsy one might say than Shakespeare's plays - with the exception of Titus perhaps - and certainly the issues within are still relevant in this day and age. And many still controversial. Webster may not have received the commercial success of Shakespeare, but he certainly deserves some sort of cult status, a sort of Jacobean Martin Scorsese - refusing to accept the conventions of how a revenge tragedy shoud go - killing off the main part an act before the finish, having a murderous assassin with a conscience - and exploring what he wanted to. And not necessarily what the public wanted to see.

Learn to love tragedies!!!!
As a teenager English Literature is one of the most mind-numbing subjects to study - or so I thought until I was introduced to this book. Despite being written in a completely different period, each character would fit in perfectly with the world today, and has far more twists than any soap-opera or sit-com.
Perfect for all those wonderful people who find murder, incest, power seeking, lust, mad men singing and blatant insults even mildly amusing.

Get used to the Jacobean speech, and this is one hell of a play. Read this one, and then find yourself some more Webster!!!!!

Necessary background for Agatha Christie & Dorothy L. Sayers
My preferred version is the New Mermaids edition of The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster. Elisabeth M. Brennan edits this edition (ISBN: 0393900665.) I mention this, as it does not seem to be readily available. However this version will do.

I bought this after reading snippets of it in other books. I do not recall having to learn this in school. Only now do I intend to read "The White Devil" in anticipation of it being encountered in other works.

Well what do you know? This animal is based on a true story of the Duchess of Amalfi. Evidentially there were several books written on this and he picked one for the outline of the play.

The Elisabeth M. Brennan edition is almost as good as taking a class in its self. The introduction gives you a back ground and the basic story that the play was based on. You get some information on John Webster and some of his other plays. There is even a further Reading List. There are even notes on the text and how to read the notes for the different versions of the play its self. By the time you get to the play you are well prepared to read it.

The play its self has stanzas, line numbers and notes to help you through the difficulty of understanding what the words mean in context. It is almost like reading a bible. You soon pickup speed and then actually get intrigued in the writing and story.

Now I desperately want some local theater to present "The duchess of Malfi"