Critical Perspectives on 'The Duchess of Malfi':

JW LEVER:
1. cultural materialist critics.
2. Focused on play's power relations.
3. "the tragedy of state." (Lever.)
4. Viewed the play as a radical critique of the existing political order.
5. The court of Amalfi presents in miniature the court of Whitehall.
6. Ignored the question of tragic femininity.
R.S WHITE:
1. Argues the Renaissance belief that literature was intended to teach and delight should be taken seriously.
2. The play portrays distinct moral and political positions rather than amorality.
3. Play = a series of moral awakenings e.g. the strangulation of the Duchess through which Webster condemns the destructive manipulations of the society around her.
ANDREA HENDERSON:
1. The play anticipates the tumultuous events later in the century e.g. the closing of the theatres 1642.
2. Duchess represents emergent bourgeois values while her brothers represent aristocratic values of decadent self- display.
3. Duchess represents the private sphere of family and the non-discussed private sphere of sexuality.
4. The play = product of ideological transition - change from the world of court to the family.
KATE AUGHTERSON:
1. Ending defeats and punishes the forces of corruption, disorder and evil in the play e.g. major characters die and acknowledge the evil of their actions.
2. Webster's ending is ambiguous. Leaves the fate of Malfi in the hands of a young boy, representative of rebirth and hope but easily manipulated.

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