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What does Hazlitt (1817) say about the Duke?
He believes that the duke is ‘more absorbed’ in his ‘own plots and gravity’ than ‘anxious’ for ‘the welfare of the state’
What does Knight (1930) say about the Duke?
‘He controls the action from start to finish, he allots as it were, praise and blame, he is lit at moments with divine suggestion comparable with his almost divine power of fore-knowledge, and control, and wisdom’
What does Leavis (1962) say about the Duke?
The duke is ‘a kind of Providence directing the action from above. His attitude is meant to be ours- his total attitude, which is the attitude of the play’
What does Tyrone Guthrie, director of the 1966 production, say about the duke?
‘I suspect he (the duke) is meant to be something more than a glorified portrait of royalty. Rather he is a figure of Almighty God; a stern and crafty father to Angelo, a stern but kind father to Claudio, an elder brother to the Provost… and to Isabella, first a loving father and, eventually, the Heavenly Bridegroom to whom at the beginning of the play she was betrothed’
What does Gibbons (1991) say about the Duke?
‘The Duke is an extravagant piece of bravado, a high-risk venture, and one that emphasises a highly improbable plot’
What does Roger Allan say on playing the duke is Hyntner’s 1987 production?
He says that the Duke ‘most certainly lacked a sense of humour about his public position, his predicament and reclusive nature’
‘Lucio is a particular thorn in his side, who flusters him and pricks his pomposity’
What does Gibbons (1991) say about the Duke?
‘An absolute ruler- once stripped of his power, driven to the most frantic ingenuity in attempting to frustrate the absolute ruler’s tyranny’
What does Smith (1988) say about the Duke?
The duke’s ’last-act amnesties’ seem to bear ‘little relation’ to the facts of the crime committed’
What does Billington say about the duke in McBurney’s 2004 production of the play?
The duke ‘who starts as a tottering relic and ends up a figure of imperial grandeur. Even his final offer of marriage to Isabella becomes a demonstration of brutal authority’
What does Billington write about Doran’s 2019 production of the play in the Guardian?
‘A man who, having temporarily abandoned power, finds himself secretly addicted to it’
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