Critics

• The Duchess 'speaks of her own sexuality with admirable common sense' which is 'refreshing'

  Anita Pacheco
• 'Draws a large distinction between the private sphere ... and the public world'


  Curtis Perry
• Duchess was imprisoned in a glass cubicle in which all her actions can be seen


  Almeida theatre 2020 - directed by Frecknall
• Court is 'proto-Gothic' - the hidden chambers reflect the 'dangerous psychological interiors of the tyrants who inhabit them' 


  Curtis Perry
• Malfi is 'an indicator of English paranoia concerning royal courts' 


  Alastair Bellany
• Female characters are trapped in a world where the 'patriarchal mindset predisposed to see women in terms of the binary oppositions of angel and whore' dominates. 


  Anita Pacheco
• Malfi is a 'fable of emergent liberalism' 


  Catherine Belsey
• Theme is 'the act of sin and its consequences' 


  David Cecil
• 'His concern is to make his stage a metaphor for the inner lives of his characters' 


  Philip Prowse
• 'No conceivable purpose except just to make our flesh creep' 


  William Archer
• 'Chilling captures the moral wasteland of the human soul' 


  Charles Spencer
• Ferdinand is a 'narcissist and a sadist'


  Charles Forker
• Webster 'saw the skull beneath the skin'


  T.S Eliot
• 'Written by someone with a sadistic streak' 


  Rene Weis
• Webster has an 'unmitigated love of violence and gore' 


  Rene Weis
• 'Unapologetically pessimistic' 


  Rene Weiss
• 'Inhibited by people driven driven like animals ... only by their instincts'


  Rupert Brooke
• 'Resonates with love, fruitful sexuality and a glimmer of hope for mankind' 


  Rene Weiss
• The Duchess's secret marriage is 'the only way she can create a life for herself free of their contamination' 


  Leah Marcus
• 'Not an act of unbridled lust but an act of heroic resistance' 


  Leah Marcus
• 'It is not only her death that inspired universal pity; it was also her life' 


  Middleton
• 'Love is completely removed'


  Declan Donnelly
• 'Each brother is driven by a different obsession' 


  Gibbons
• 'She acts as if her status gave her real power, in this she is proved pathetically wrong'


  Lisa Jardine
• 'Parlous fragility of love and innocence' 


  Callaghan
• 'What governs events is nothing but chance' 


  Bokland
• 'Bosola agrees to murder not because he enjoys it, but because he needs to survive' 


  Koh
• 'When confronted with female power and sexual desire, male characters react with extreme violence' 


  Windsor
• Portrays the Duchess as a 'mannish woman' and Antonio as a 'womanish man'


  Winston
• 'Tragedy of a virtuous woman who achieves heroism through her death'


  R.S White
• The end is a 'maze of death and madness' 


  Brooke
• 'Womanhood and sovereignty are logically incompatible'


  Tennenhouse
• 'The radiant spirit of the Duchess cannot be killed'


  P.B Murray