Duchess of Malfi - thematic quotations, critical interpretations, and context Flashcards
(15 cards)
Quotations that support the theme of women and gender - 20
Ferdinand - “I would not have her marry again”
Duchess - “Diamonds are of most value,/They say, that have past through most jewellers’ hands”
Duchess - “Let old wives report/I winked and chose a husband”
Cardinal [to Julia] - “still, you are to thank me”
Ferdinand - “A sister damned: she’s loose i’ th’ hilts”
Ferdinand - “excellent hyena”
Duchess - “When I choose/A husband, I will marry for your honour”
Ferdinand - “her guilt treads on/Hot burning coulters”
Antonio - “Indeed, my rule is only in the night”
Duchess - “your shears do come untimely now/To clip the bird’s wings that’s already flown”
Duchess - “Were I a man,/I’d beat that counterfeit face into thy other”
Bosola - “You may discern the shape of loveliness”
Duchess - “Puff! Let me blow these vipers from me”
Bosola - “send her a penitential garment”
Duchess - “I am Duchess of Malfi still”
Duchess - “Pull, and pull strongly”
Cariola - “I will not die! I must not!”
Bosola - “oh sacred innocence that sweetly sleeps/On turtles’ feathers”
Bosola [of Julia] - “I will work upon this creature”
Cardinal [to Julia] - “No more! Thou shalt know it”
Quotations that support the theme of secrecy and deceit - 18
Antonio [of Cardinal] - “observe his inward character”
Antonio [of Ferdinand] - “what appears in him mirth is merely outside”
Antonio [of Ferdinand] - “he speaks with others’ tongues and hears men’s suits/With others’ ears”
Cardinal - “wisdom begins at the end”
Antonio - “You have made me stark blind”
Bosola - “we delight/To hide it in rich tissue”
Bosola - “I have bought some apricots”
Bosola - [with a dark lantern]
Ferdinand - “I have this night digged up a mandrake”
Ferdinand - “a false key/Into her bedchamber”
Cardinal - “Doth she make religion her riding hood?”
Duchess [to Bosola] - “why dost thou wrap thy poisoned pills/In gold and sugar?”
Ferdinand - “The darkness suits you well….You were too much i’ th’ light”
Ferdinand [to Bosola after Duchess’ death] - “why didst not thou pity her?”
Antonio - “I have got/Private access to his chamber”
Malateste [of Ferdie] - “if you move and the sun shine”
Cardinal - “thou’rt poisoned with that book”
Cardinal - “there is the master key”
Quotations that support the theme of death and mortality - 18
Duchess - “lay a naked sword between us, keep us chaste” vs [poniard]
Ferdinand - “Till of her bleeding heart I make a sponge”
Duchess - “frights the silly birds/Out of the corn…./To the nets”
Duchess - “With such a pity men preserve alive/Pheasants and quails when they are not fat enough/To be eaten”
Ferdinand [during dead anatomy scene] - “you shall have the heart too”
Duchess - “There is not…one wish/I stay for after this”
Duchess - “entreat him live/To be executed again”
Duchess - “The robin redbreast and the nightingale/Never live long in cages”
Duchess - “I am acquainted with sad misery/As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar”
Duchess - “And Fortune seems only to have her eyesight/To behold my tragedy”
Bosola [ref birds] - “Now everything is still”
Cariola - “I will die with her”
Duchess - “come, violent death… [my brothers] then may feed in quiet”
Executioner [to Cariola] - “here’s your wedding ring”
Bosola - “Do you not weep?” vs Ferdinand - “Mine eyes dazzle”
Cardinal [to Julia] - “I have bound thee to’t by death”
Bosola [soliloquy] - “security some men call the suburbs of hell”
Quotations that support the theme of madness - 13
Cardinal - “The marriage night/Is the entrance into some prison”
Cardinal [ref Duchess’s marriage] - “Can this be certain?”
Cardinal - “Are you stark mad?”
Antonio [points the pistol at Cariola]
Servant [of Ferdinand] - “forced him to laugh/And so th’ impostume broke”
Ferdinand - “a good actor many times is cursed/For a villain’s part”
Bosola - “you, not I, shall quake for’t”
Bosola - “a perspective/That shows us hell”
Doctor [of Ferdinand] - “with the leg of a man/Upon his shoulder, and he howled fearfully/Said he was a wolf”
Doctor [of Ferdinand] - “a wolf’s skin was hairy on the outside/His on the inside”
Ferdinand - “I will throttle it”
Bosola - “the weakest arm is strong enough that strikes/With the sword of justice”
[an echo from the Duchess’s grave]
Quotations that support the theme of status and hierarchy - 26
Antonio [of the French court] - “some cursed example poison’t near the head/Death and diseases through the whole land spread”
Antonio [of Bosola] -“the only court-gall”
Ferdinand - “laugh when I laugh”
Cardinal - “sway your high blood”
Duchess - “the misery of us that are born great/We are forced to woo, because none dare woo us”
Bosola - “man stands amazed to see his deformity/In any other creature but himself”
Bosola - “when a man’s mind rides faster than his horse can gallop, they quickly both tire”
Cardinal - “I have taken you off your melancholy perch/Bore you upon my fist, and showed you game”
Antonio - “The common rabble do directly say/She is a strumpet”
Duchess - “I will plant my soul in mine ears to hear you”
Ferdinand - “You have shook hands with Reputation/And made him invisible”
Cariola - “I do not like this jesting with religion”
Duchess - “[the birds] live/Happier than we, for they may choose their mates”
Duchess - “my laurel is all withered”
Duchess - “The church enjoins fasting/I’ll starve myself to death”
Duchess - “Remember, my curse hath a great way to go”
Ferdinand - “That body of hers/While that my blood ran pure in’t”
Bosola - “thou art a box of wormseed”
Ferdinand - “By what authority didst thou execute/This bloody sentence?”
Ferdinand - “Get thee into some unknown part o’ th’ world/That I may never see thee”
Bosola - “I served your tyranny”
Bosola - “rather sought/To appear a true servant than an honest man”
Pescara - “Learn, good Delio/To ask noble things of me and you shall find/I’ll be a noble giver”
Julia - “if I see and steal a diamond/The fault is not i’ th’ stone, but in me the thief”
Cardinal - “I have honours in store for thee”
Delio - “ruins of an ancient abbey”
Critical interpretations that support the theme of women and gender - 10
Leah Marcus - “the only way she can create a life for herself free of their contamination is by contracting a private marriage and living it out in a confined world that her brothers have not managed to violate”
Lisa Jardine - “she acts as if her status gave her real power - in this she is proved pathetically wrong”
Grace Windsor - “when confronted with female power and sexual desire, male characters react with extreme violence”
RS White - “tragedy of a virtuous woman who achieves heroism through her death”
Dent - “the Duchess displays more courage than any of the male characters”
Tennenhouse - “womanhood and sovereignty are logically incompatible”
Koh - “the Duchess of Malfi is entrapped as men catch birds”
Callaghan - “the play is not only cultural debate about court corruption but specifically and directly about the status of women”
Lisa Jardine - strong female roles served to act as a terrible warning to their society - draws link to Lady Macbeth
Clifford Leech [on the end] - “unnecessary and anticlimactic extension of what should have ended with the death of the heroine”
Collington [on comparison to slaves in the galley] - “she has become masculine, even muscular, in her ability to withstand pain and sorrow”
Critical interpretations that support the theme of secrecy and deceit - 3
Belsey - “sharp distinction between public and private spheres”
Bradbrook - “Bosola, the chief instrument in the Duchess’ betrayal and subjection, also bears the strongest witness to her virtues”
Gunby - “Bosola is generally recognised as a man divided against himself”
Critical interpretations that support the theme of death and mortality - 4
Todd Borlik - “the Cardinal comes across as a hypocritical Machiavellian rather than an agent of divine retribution”
Rupert Brooke - “the end is a maze of death and madness”
Schieberle - “the murder of the Duchess could be viewed as a necessary evil that reveals her true nobility”
Stoll - “Bosola has a morbid aversion to life and death alike”
Critical interpretations that support the theme of madness - 5
Bergeron - “the madmen could be an outward manifestation of the inner ordeal the Duchess is undergoing”
P Spinrad - “they wander ever deeper into darkness, madness, and despair”
Frank Whigham - “when Ferdinand looks down into his sister’s dazzling eyes, he sees himself, faces his own death”
Critical interpretations that support the theme of status and hierarchy - 5
Brian Gibbons - “each brother is driven by a different obsession; Ferdinand’s sexual, the Cardinal’s is social rank”
Winston - “Webster’s portraits of the Duchess and Antonio as a ‘mannish’ woman and ‘womanish’ man; she is generally decisive and assertive, and he is passive”
1972 James MacTaggart film - when the Cardinal and Julia are in bed together, he is fully clothed and she is naked, symbolising his power
Marxist criticism - “Bosola is particularly vulnerable as an employee of the corrupt Duke. His work dehumanises him”
Gunby - “blood to the Cardinal is synonymous with rank or lineage; but to Ferdinand it is…literally his sister’s blood”
Context that supports the theme of women and gender - 2
Women seen as subservient to men due to projection of Eve in the Bible
Independent women seen as witches - Daemonologie written by King James I therefore topical issue
Context that supports the theme of secrecy and deceit - 1
Malcontent - mistreated, condemns society, willing to discard moral values to progress
Context that supports the theme of death and mortality - 2
Public executions popular as entertainment - suffering often prolonged to maximise pain
Plague often seen as a result of Court corruption
Context that supports the theme of madness - 2
4 Humours - actions of some trigger specific responses in others
Womb movement triggered hysteria - why it was linked to women
Context that supports the theme of status and hierarchy - 4
The Great Chain of Being - God superior, to change social hierarchy to go against his wishes
Conflict between the Church and the State
The Gunpowder Plot
No social mobility - marriage between classes not acceptable
