DOM critical quotes

• Frances E. Dolan


  "The Duchess of Malfi is famous for its remarkable, indeed improbably sustained, secrets"
• Dympna Callaghan

  Antonio and Duchess' marriage is "perpetually clandestine"
• Linda Woodbridge

  suggests "Webster invites us to ask what is wrong with being or marrying a lusty widow"
• Linda Woodbridge

  celebrates the Duchess as a "hero of desire" and suggests that her sovereignty might be "sexy"
• Barbara Correll

  The Duchess "raises Antonio to reciprocity"
• Judith Haber

  The Duchess "effectively positions herself (and Antonio) both as subject and as object, both as penetrator and as pentrated"
• John Knox

  "The nature of female rule was 'unatural'"
• John Aylmer

  "A woman ruler could be 'subject to' her husband"
• Theodora A. Jankowski

  "The Duchess of Malfi is an unusual play because it explores questions of rulership as they relate to a female sovereign"
• Theodora A. Jankowski

  "In this double position of wife and ruler, then the Duchess becomes an uneasy and threatening figure"
• Theodora A. Jankowski

  "She challenges Jacobean society's views regarding the representation of the female body and woman's sexuality"
• Kathleen McLuskie

  The critical history of The Duchess of Malfi reflects an "unease with a woman character who so impertinently pursues self-determination"
• Joyce E. Peterson

  "The Duchess improperly sets the private claims of her body above the public claims of her body politic"
• Theodora A. Jankowski

  "The Duchess of Malfi is a play that is clearly concerned with questions of gender ideology"
• Theodora A. Jankowski

  "We read the family as a Renaissance dynastic unit"
• Theodora A. Jankowski

  "The nature of the Renaissance dynastic marriage served almost totally to objectify the woman"
• Theodora A. Jankowski

  "The Duchess is further represented as manifesting her political authority by engaging in an 'irregular' marriage - one that is not sanctified by any representative of the church"
• Theodora A. Jankowski

  "In her marriage and its ramifications, the Duchess can be viewed as a subversive character"
• Theodora A. Jankowski

  "The Duchess is represented as being radically different from the traditional picture of the Renaissance wife"
• Theodora A. Jankowski

  "Ultimately, the Duchess' marriage and sexual politics are represented as so revolutionary that she must be punished for her actions"
• Theodora A. Jankowski

  "The Duchess of Malfi can be viewed as a subversive plau because it challenges the basic concept of the early modern marriage"
• Smith


  'The Duchess is both culpable and innocent, victim and agent'
• Peake


  'The play begins to reframe conceptions of gender and asks the audience to do the same'
• Peake


  'the enclosure of aristocracy and its disempowering effects on the female body'
• Peake

  'Ferdinand has physically been a shadow of the Duchess'
• Scott

  'Ferdinand and Cardinal's depiction of a sadistic patriarchy twists the noble marriage into something horrific'
• Scott

  'Ferdinand seeks to deprive her not only of her life and political title, but of her very identity'
• Scott

  'the Duchess remained within societal sexual limitations concerning womanhood'
• Callaghan

  'repeating the historical transgression of Eve'
• Hamilton


  "The duchess, while innocent of any criminal guilt, transgresses'
• Chatterjee

  'When Ferdinand learns of his sister's secret marriage, he is incensed to the brink of insanity'
• Chatterjee

  'keeps his own deeds in the dark, the hallmark of a true Machiavel' (Cardinal)
• Murray


  'a perverse and violent pair of Italian devils' (Ferdinand and Cardinal)
• Lever


  'his hatred is less controlled than (the) Cardinal's, but both men are governed by the same murderous enmity' (Cardinal and Ferdinand)
• Lucy Webster

  'Bosola, the hired assassin undergoes a crisis from which he emerges as a moral crusader'
• Gunby

  'salvation and damnation are ever-present realities'
• Billington

  'it is a haunting tragedy about the uncertainty of human existence'
• Alexander Dyce


  Acclaims webster as 'one of the best of our ancient dramatists'
• Hazlitt


  comes 'the nearest to Shakespeare of any thing we have upon record', but the final scenes 'exceed the just bounds' of tragedy
• Charles Kingsley 


  'The strength of Websters confest mastership lies simply in his acquaintance with viscous nature in general' and he 'handles these horrors with little or no moral purpose'