Themes Malfi/Streetcar

Corruption Quotes - Malfi

“a prince’s court Is like a common fountain, whence should flow Pure silver drops...poison’t near the head, Death and disease through the whole land spread”- Antonio  (1.1.12) 

“He and his brother are like plum trees that grow crooked over standing pools.” - Bosola (1.1.48) 

“I would hang on their ears like a horse leech till I were full, and then drop off” - Bosola (1.1.51) 

“Then law to him is like a foul black cobweb to a spider” - Delio (1.2.88)

Streetcar images of light -

• I can't stand a naked light bulb​

• Paper lantern over the light bulb ​

• Merciless glare ​

• I like it dark. The dark is comforting to me​

• I don't think I've ever seen you in the light.​

• Let’s turn the light on in here​

• [fearfully]: Light? Which light? What for? ​

• I don't want realism. I want magic!

Malfi image of light -

• Stains the time past lights the time to come​

• Your darkest actions, nay your privat’st thoughts will come to light​

• Dark lanterns​

• My rule is only in the night ​

• When she is imprisoned – the Duchess is plunged into darkness and when her brother comes to see her we are told ‘He comes I’th night / And prays you gently neither torch nor taper / Shine in your chamber.​

• Ferdinand attacks his own shadow ​

• Mine eyes dazzle

Presentation of Men in Malfi -

Stanley -

[Animal joy is in his being]  

[he stalks into the bedroom] 

• Sister Blanche is no lily 

• She has been washed up like poison  

• I’d like to have seen her trying to squirm out of that one 

• God honey it’s gonna be sweet when we can make noise at night 

• Coloured lights going 

• Animal joy ​

• There's something downright--bestial--about him!​

• Delicate piece she is ​

• Licks his lips (stage directions) ​

• Oh boy oh boy! ​

• I’ve got a little birthday remembrance for you  … Ticket back to Laurel​

• Maybe you wouldn’t be so bad to interfere with ​

• Tiger! Tiger! ​

• Drop the bottle top​

• [shuffling the cards]

Mitch -

• ‘I like you exactly the way you are’

• ‘what I have been missing all summer’

• ‘this one with paper thing on it - he tears the lantern off the light bulb, she utters a frightened gasp’

• ‘you’re not clean enough to bring home to my other’

Madness in Streetcar -

Madness in Malfi -

• ‘lycanthropia’ (doctor) 

• ‘with the leg of a man on his shoulder’ 

• ‘Said he was a wolf’  

• ‘a wolfs skin was hairy on the outside his on the inside’ (doctor) 

• ‘To drive six snails before me’ (Ferdinand) 

• Ferdinand (throws himself on the ground) 

• Are you mad my lord? Are you out of your princely wits? (doctor) 

Female Sexuality in Streetcar -

Female Sexuality in Malfi -

Power/Status in Streetcar

• He’s common (Blanche) 

• He has an animals habits (Blanche) 

• ‘Bestial’ (Blanche)  

• ‘don’t hang back with the brutes’ (Blanche) 

• ‘I’m the king around here’ (Stanley) 

• The Kowalski’s and the Dubois have different notions (Stanley) …. Stella responds ‘Indeed they have’   

• How right you was baby. I was common as dirt 

• I pulled you down off them columns and how you loved it 

Power/Status in Malfi

• If you will know where breathes a complete man … turn your eyes / and progress through yourself’ (The Duchess about A) 

• ‘Whether I am doomed to love or die I can do both like a prince (Duchess) 

• I am Duchess of Malfi Still 

• ‘Pull and pull strongly’ (Duchess)  

• Quotes relating to Status 

   

   

  • ‘Sway your high blood’ (Cardinal)  

  • Ambition, madam, is a great man’s madness’ (Antonio) 

  • ‘a saucy and ambitious devil is dancing in this ring’ (Antonio) 

   

  • This goodly roof of yours is too low built … Raise yourself / or, if you please, my hand to help you 

   

  • You are a Lord of Misrule (The Duchess) 

  • My rule is only in the night (Antonio)  

  • For a long time, absolutely NOBODY suspects that Antonio is the lover / husband – Bosola thinks he must be ‘The Duchess’ bawd’ (like a brothel keeper) 

  • ‘He that can compass me and now my drifts / May say he hath put a girdle about the world’ (Ferdinand’s excessive arrogance)  

  • Rather to examine men’s pedigrees than their virtues (Bosola questioning the value of pedigree over merit)   

  • ‘Now for this act I am certain to be raised’ (Bosola -  desire for status – achieved by nefarious means) 

  • Bosola feels ‘like Tantalus’  

  • (Pilgrim) ’who would have thought so great a lady would have attached herself to so base a person’ 

  • ‘Our value never can be truly know / Till in the fisher basket we be shown’ (The Duchess – that annoying Salmon and the Dog Fish story) 

  • ‘Antonio? A slave that only smelled of ink and counters’ (Ferdinand)  

  • Heavens gates are not so highly arched as princes palaces; they that enter there must go on their knees’ ( Duchess)  

End of Malfi

• Mine eyes dazzle​

• what a tedious thing is a conscience​

• like a leveret​

• Give me some wet hay; I am broken winded ​

• I do account this world but a dog kennel ​

• My sister. Oh, my sister!​

• like diamonds we are cut from our own dust​

• Thou hast thy payment too​

• I do glory / that thou which stood like a huge pyramid / Begun upon a large and ample base / Shalt end in a little point /A kind of nothing ​

• These wretched eminent things leave no more fame behind ​

• in his mother’s right

End of Streetcar

• I shall die of eating an unwashed grape​

• I’ll be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sheet​

• I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley ​

• Is it the gentleman I was expecting from Dallas?​

• [lurid reflections appear on the walls … The Varsouviana is filtered into weird distortion]​

• [seizes the paper lantern … she cries out as it the lantern was herself]​

• [She screams and tries to break past the matron] ​

• I have always depended on the kindness of strangers​

• [Blanche walks on without turning] ​

• [his fingers find the opening of her blouse’​

• This game is a seven card stud

Critic of Malfi and Streetcar -

‘My plays are pleas for the understanding of the delicate people’

‘The tragedy that unfolds is one in which men are ultimately shown not as active agents of redemption from this suffering, but as its cause’ (Samuel Tapp)

A sexulised female is a ‘threat to masculinity and therefore engenders anxiety’ (Stephen Bywater)