Critics (AO5)

‘Their perpetually…

‘Their perpetually…

clandestine marriage’

Dymphna Callaghan

’During the course of the play…

Bosola plays many characters’

Lucy Webster

'The Duchess seeks happiness at the…

expense of public stability’

Lee Bliss

‘Ferdinand is 'a threatened aristocrat frightened by…

the contamination of his ascriptive social rank'

Wingham

'Our attention is drawn not to the horrors but to…

the Duchess' reaction to them; she beholds terror and we behold her'

Peter Murray

'The world seen [by Webster} is of its…

nature incurably corrupt'

Lord David Cecil 

Webster was ‘guilty of…’

sensationalism'

Chris Thorn 

'A powerful critique…

of Jacobean society'

Peter Morrison

the play has a 'perpetual…

graveyard ambience'

Zimmerman

The Duchess is 'repeating the historic…

transgression of Eve'

Dymphna Callaghan

The Duchess 'achieves heroism through…

her death’

R.S White

The Duchess 'acts on human impulses…only to discover she

cannot control the consequences of her actions'

Christiana Luckyj

Bosola's 'previous conduct has been too wicked for us…

to lament his fall as that of a morally good man'

C.V Boyer (1914)

'The exclusion of women and personal happiness from society…

is the sign of absolute corruption'

Dymphna Callaghan

There is a 'sharp distinction between private…

and public spheres'

Belsey

The Cardinal is a 'satiric indictment…

of Catholicism'

Leah S.Marcus 

'Each brother is driven by a different obsession:…

Ferdinands is sexual, the Cardinal's is social rank'

Brian Gibbons

Tragedy stirs 'not only sympathy and pity,…

but admiration, terror and awe'

A.C Bradley 

Without her title the Duchess ‘loses her identity, she becomes…

devoid of all other meaning or value’

Nigel Wheale

'The destructive power of society on…

the sensitive non-conformist individual'

Tennesee Williams 

'Stanley represents the macho…

forward-driving America of the future'

Victoria Elliot 

'It is no accident that the day…the post war hybrid of Stanley and Stella is born is also

the day that the representative anti bellam South, Blanche is raped defeated and destroyed'

Wertheim 

'The play presents Blanche as a tragic figure and…

Stanley as an agent of her destruction'

Kathleen Lart 

'New Orleans becomes the…

melting pot of new ideas'

Thomas E.Porter 

Blanche 'craves magic because the truth about…

post war america is too hard to bear'

P Allan 

'Stanley's assertiveness depends on his ability to crush the…

opposition and his relationship with Stella'

Simon Bubb 

'Stella is genuinely in love with her husband. She puts up with his abuse…because…

she feels helpless to change the way he treats her'

Harold Bloom 

'At first glance Blanche seems superficial…however her

behaviour is symptomatic of society itself'

M.Skiba 

Blanche 'as her own desires, that draw her to Stanley, like a…

moth to a light, a light she voids even hates yet yearns for'

Shirley Galloway 

'Blanche Dubois, already deeply emotionally damaged and economically vulnerable,...suffers a full blown mental breakdown at…

the hands of Stanley Kowalski, one of the great anti heroes of western literature'

Tony Coult  

The 1947 performance 'left the audience feeling that a madwoman has entered an…

alien world, and after shaking the world, had been successfully exorcised'

Susan Spector 

'Mitch cannot break the sexual code…

upheld and policed by Stanley'

Carla McDonough

'Stella's refusal to accept Blanche's story of rape is…

a commitment to self preservation rather than love'

McGlinn 

'Blanche becomes a social outcast because she refuses to conform…

to conventional moral values'

Onyett

'The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That…

is what tragedy means'

Thomas Hardy 

'Stanley, the master player and…

Darwinian survivor, controls all'

Leonard Quirino 

'The sensual brute Stanley, Blanche's young husband Allan, and the naive Mitch together epitomises…

the conflicting masculine identities available in Williams stage world' 

McDonough