malfi streetcar context and crit

how are the conventions of tragedy transcended in Malfi

• children crit

• haber x2 crit

• also structure and why

• children - ‘challenge masculine conventions of tragedy’ (smith) - they are better suited to comedy

• Haber - ‘the play’s episodic movement is explicitly connected to the duchess’ pregnancies’ ‘his play indicts the genre of tragedy itself, presenting it as a creation of those in power’

• duchess dies in act 4 - unconventional for a tragic hero to die so early on - comment on ruins and haunting?

what bits in Malfi make it seem like webster is subtly critiquing england?

• prince’s court is like a common fountain

• haunting of church and ruins - duchess as a tragic and doomed catholic figure. also churchyard ruins recall Henry’s destruction of the monasteries

machiavelli

• dramatic stereotype of the malcontent - present in a lot of other plays eg. Edmund, Iago

• Bosola as a machiavellian figure - lies and manipulates for personal gain - bitterness over perceived unfairness in society

• perhaps the duchess does this too to some extent?

social mobility in duchess

• great expansion of unis at the the time to produce a civil service for courts- bosola emblematic of this

• repeated references to blood - great chain of being and body politic

• - whilst duchess perhaps represents ner social order which Bosola marvels at - Webster undermining hierarchical notions?

widowhood in both

duchess: threatened social fabric of society, liminal space which affords unique autonomy - does not fit within roles ascribed to women by patriarchy

blanche: no male figure to rely on, liminal space outside of role of women

duchess gender context

• source material (name it)

• how does the play subvert it

• power

• elizabeth

• arabella

• bandello and belleforest - source material more condemnatory towards duchess for her defiance of male wishes, portrays her as overly lustful and also punished for feigned pilgrimage, whilst to some extent Webster affords her a more sympathetic portrayal - link to her as a martyr figure - and instead seems to condemn male attempts to control her

• The play challenges such attitudes, investing the Duchess with a moving tragic dignity and portraying her as a martyr, despite the very human faults that she displays

• power and femininity incompatible - women who did not adhere to feminine traits seen as a threat to the social fabric - link to blanche ‘tragic radiance’ and also humiliated for her sexuality

• also lady arabella

• elizabeth - ‘semper eadem’ as her motto - stability and continuity - ‘i have the heart and stomach of a king’

decadence, disease and death in Malfi - also public executions

• Metaphors of disease, decay and rottenness convey the moral corruption - can be seen as an implicit attack on James’ court

• Power was hereditary and based on wealth and titles. The rich had extravagant clothing, entertainment, excesses of food, drink, sexual appetite

• Webster leaves us to imagine the exact nature of the ‘chargeable revels’, the ‘triumphs and .. large expense’ of the state visit at the start of the play and the audience would have been able to envisage them from reports or direct experience of the lavish entertainments mounted at court

• Jacobean society was also riddled with disease, violence, and death

• High infant mortality, sexual diseases, plague and all that

• Illness, suffering, disease, violence etc. were simple facts of everyday life 

• State power used in torture, public executions etc.

• Also public spectacles and they enjoyed watching this - the gruesome spectacles offered in Jacobean drama would have been unexceptional perhaps even comic: severed hands, onstage garrotting, poisoned bibles, waxwork bodies

• Imagery of disease and decay was commonplace in Jacobean revenge tragedies

death and religion in Malfi

• Jacobean audience saw the nature of their own society they saw reflected back at them

• In presenting the extremes of human existence from worldly power to abject suffering, placing them in the context of a philosophical debate on the value of relationships and significance of human aspirations, webster invited his audience to question the assumptions and structures on which their society was based

•  changing attitudes to death with protestantism - protestants did away with idea of talking to dead. smith: revenge tragedies take up that space; make u feel like u can do smth for the dead. Refusal of the comforts of the afterlife - bleakness and existentialism. - Greenblatt - stage as purgatory

Malfi theatrical context

• minimal setting and stage directions

• Blackfriars theater - claustrophobic, indoors, darkness - link to SC - confined claustrophobic setting becomes emblematic of the characters’ imprisonment within their societies -2014 ALmeida in the round - no escape - constantly confronted

commonplacing and closet dramas

Commonplacing as a reason for all the aphorisms of the play (common practice in the Renaissance that involved collecting and organizing important passages from books into notebooks) - link to how SC is a closet drama. This is partially why both plays are not purely realist

Johnny web background

alleged to have come from a legal background

acts of revenge in duchess

• revenge and retribution context

• ferdinand and cardinal revenge on duchess

• bossola revenging her murder

• fate takes revenge on Bosola - accidentally kills Antonio - Romans 12:19 ‘vengeance is mine, i will repay’ - justice not for humans to carry out. also bacon ‘revenge is a wild kind of justice’

arabella stuart and rose

• lady arabella: imprisoned by James for marrying against his wishes - ultimately died

• rose - many critics liken her madness to Williams’ sister, whom he was very close with and he also blamed himself

which humours are the characters

duchess - sanguine - excess of blood - too vivacious, lustful

bosola - melancholic - cynical and depressed

TS eliot on Malfi

‘genius directed towards chaos’

Cynthia rodriguez-banedyck

2x

'duchess is perfectly capable of dominance’ - i am duchess of malfi still, also ‘die like a prince’ or smth

‘luminous figure of the duchess’ - ‘mine eyes dazzle’ - contrast with Blanche who is assoc with darkness

Martin white

a production of the play should aim to achieve ‘dismay at the violence but ridicule of its perpetrators’

Jan Kott my bae

• attributes the heightened popularity of Duchess post ww2 to the fact that the gruesome spectacles seemed realistic rather than absurd due to the horrors fresh in collective memory

• link to images of war in SC

• Post-ww2 popularity - the gory nature of the play became pertinent, serious and comprehensible in a way they had not been previously

Frank whigham views ferdinand as

‘a threatened aristocrat’ - link to all the blood and animal imagery he employs

link to blanche who is threatened by the changing social order -’the touch of your hand insults them’ ‘you healthy Polack, without a nerve in your body’

Martin Desens

Duchess uses ‘social differences to override gender differences’ - ‘forced to woo’ ‘this goodly roof of yours is too low built’ - but Stella fails to do so; in marrying a character of a lower class she is ‘pulled off of those columns’ rather than placed in a higher status

Blanche also fails to do so - link to literary references she makes - poe, hawthorne, barrett-browning, whitman?

Frank whigham - duchess class

there is friction between the ‘dominant social order and emergent pressures towards social change’

yes: bosola class thing, also new generation, and motif of ruins - at some point seen as good opportunity, at other points catholic past arguably lamented. social fluidity and great expansion undermines GCOB

no: less so in streetcar - the social change has already occurred and the dominant social order is tragically effacing ‘faded’ - blanche sinking imager

CLifford leech (boo)

criticised duchess for her irresponsible ‘overturning of a social code’

•  At the time, this would probably have been the case. Alternatively, a modern feminist reading could suggest that the Duchess was trying to disrupt the patriarchy and assert herself, though this seems a tenuous argument in the context of 1613.

callaghan argues that

‘webster’s play participates in a cultural debate, specifically and directly about the status of women

RS white on Malfi

the play is ‘the tragedy of a virtuous woman who achieves heroism through her death’

yes: duchess as some ‘reverend monument whose ruins are even pitied’ streetcar - ‘tragic radiance’ ‘this is delia robia blue’ - perhaps heroism? but no - she tries to make herself a tragic hero ‘artificial violets’ - but seems not to resonate with those around her

Lisa Jardine on duchess

‘her strength lies in her fortitude in the face of a doom’

‘pull and pull strongly’ ‘it is mercy when men kill with speed’ vs Cariola’s response which more closely resembles the hysterical response to Blanche about death

Brecht’s int of duchess

• greater focus on ferdinand’s lust (freud!) and corrupt environment

Britland on architectural motif

‘provide an illusion of personal, emotional privacy, so characters conceive of themselves and each other as bounded physical spaces’

• ‘goodly roof’ ‘reverend monument’ ‘will remain in constant sanctuary/ of her good name’ - illusion of privacy and protection but ultimately ‘her darkest actions [..] will eventually come to light’ (ferdinand to duchess) - link to illusion of privacy and secrecy though paper lantern motif - similar light imagery

• link to ‘hunting for protection’ - illusion of protection by male figures eg Shep Huntleigh - dichotomy in name - Oklopcic - this is a southern belle thing - safety in other men

• Duchess becomes what she initially resents (link to Blanche judging Stanley but eventually trying a relationship with Mitch): Duchess suffers such extreme torments at the hand of her brothers that she is driven to adopt a position of stoic acceptance - conveyed through the architectural motif. She initially declares that she is not the ‘figure cut in alabaster’ that ‘kneels at [her] husband’s grave’. But then after her suffering Cariola likens her to ‘some reverend monument/ whose ruins are even pitied’. This recalls the Duchess’ earlier rejection of herself as a statue and prefigures her noble death. Also look at her kneeling in 4.2 and ‘I am Duchess of Malfi still’ - this recalls her status as a figure immutably fixed by her husband’s grave, as well as (paradoxically) her autonomy and power.  (juxtapose with Blanche who effaces as the play progresses rather than being remembered as a ‘reverend monument’

stella and duchess’ sexuality at start of play

• both celebrated - happy, touching domestic union

Britland on animalistic similes

• they no only underline the ways in which corrupt humans become beasts but ‘draw attention to the porous nature of human identity’

  • Bosola: ‘hang on their ears like a horse leech till [..] full, and then drop off’

  • Instructed by Bosola to act like a ‘politic dormouse’

  • Bosola: people share their flesh with ‘lice and worms’ 2.1.55

  • F’s lycanthropy draws attention to the porous distinction between the bestial and the human

  • ‘Using images of forced cultivation (eg. apricots), Bosola presents himself not as his own man, but as a dependent constructed by and through his relationship with Ferdinand’

Susan Zimmerman on duchess

‘replete with unsettling, slipper images of the interstitial, the in between’

• wax figures and theatrical context - would have been the actual actors - alive or dead? echo?

• also importance of symbolism for Williams - mexican flower seller

britland on Duchess restriction

‘enmeshed in social and familial structures from which she cant escape’

link to stella

Britland on ferdinand

‘becomes the incarnation of the animalistic similes that fill the play’

Woodbridge on desire in Malf

‘duchess is a champion of desire, defending desire as something wholesome’

• yes - soldier ext metaphor etc.

• stella same - but its a bit more carnal

• blanche - not really tbh - ‘the opposite of desire is death’ ‘that rattle trap streetcar’ -

death in malfi

‘what death means is the play’s ultimate secret’

•  Link to the play’s concern with the power of connection after death as conveyed through the lexis of decay employed and the lingering power of language which is often destructive (ie. marriage vows, rumours etc. drive the plot - can link to streetcar and the power of rumours there). Also how people are often likened to parasites and beasts and the similes ultimately collapse into reality - figurative and real world collapse into each other as in streetcar. also religious context

• Blanche’s fixation with mortality

• frank Dolan

ferdinand calvinism context

• Ferdinand’s line, ‘Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle’ alludes to Calvinistic teaching that dictated that sinners would one day be so dazzled by a vision of God’s punishment that they would be driven mad. Calvin also warned that faithlessness led to the belief that one was surrounded by wolves. Ferdinand of course reflects the image of one of Calvin’s blind sinners

Emma Smith on Bosola

 Bosola talks in prose but in figurative, metaphysical language. Smith: ‘Bosola is a metaphysical poet bringing a jaded eye to what’s going on in the court’

- Bosola’s line, ’new philosophy puts all in doubt’, draws attention to the anxiety evoked by new scientific understanding

Smith on metatheater

‘has one eye on its own fictionality’ -

link to blanche as an actor, williams subverting southern belle trope by presenting it as an act

smith on gender

‘gender is crucial to the way the tragedy unfolds’

the sententia that summarise scenes

almost seem inappropriate, cannot tidy the chaos of the play - just as Blanche cannot absolve herself merely through bathing and dressing up

link to how she dies in act 4

Characters stop speaking in their own person to come out with truisms such as Duchess: ‘diamonds.. Have the most value that have passed through most jewellers hands’ - not from the characters’ learned experience - given as a truth to the characters by their cultures - received wisdom. Tells us about their society - gives a voice to their society (similar to greek chorus)

Haber quotes

4x

2x on structure and 1x on metatheater 1x on light

• the distinction between the play and reality is repeatedly blurred’ - night cafe link

• ‘his play indicts the genre of tragedy itself, presenting it as a creation of those in power’

• ‘the play’s episodic movement is explicitly connected to the duchess’ pregnancies’

• ‘heat and light are precisely the qualities with which the duchess is repeatedly associated’

Williams on symbols

‘symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama’

‘symbols say a thing more beautifully than it could be said in words’

williams on rape scene

‘a pivotal, integral truth, without which the play would collapse’

‘ravagement of the tender [..] by the savage and brutal forces in modern society

rose crit

rose lobotomised due to how sexually provocative she was deemed and williams felt super guilty

rose ‘haunts most of his writing’ - bess rowen

cultural context for streetcar

• second red scare and mccarthyism - kazan even forced to testify - link to Stanley and xenophobia

• medicalisation of homosexuality - mental illness within both cultural and medical contexts

• deemed unacceptable to depict sex - esp female sexuality and extramarital affairs

• americal dream - individualism and capitalism, aspirations of social mobility - working class now entitled to this because they are heroes of WW2

• hollywood production code changes ‘hays code -  conversations around homosexuality, ‘intimacies with strangers’ changed to ‘meetings’- sexuality inappropriate for unmarried women. Even in film version, where Stella seems less hesitant to believe Blanche, Blanche must leave the home and Stanley remains

• socially conservative -social stagnancy and reversion to nuclear family and tradish gender roles - post war American heroism exclusively

other plays at time of SC

‘oklahoma! ‘harvey’ - rural america, musicals, nostalgia - escapism rather than confrontation of reality

original titles for SC

• ‘poker game’ - tribal and exclusive nature of masculinity

• also ‘primary colours - importance of colour symbolism, bright colours associated with insanity and also agressive male sexuality

expressionism

• objectification of subjective experience - internal realities conveyed through the distortion of external realities

• lighting, music

blanche’s name - and quote from the play

• du - denotes nobility

• white of the forest - vulnerable, prey - ‘shep huntleigh

•  “It’s a French name. It means woods and Blanche means white, so the two together mean white woods. Like an orchard in spring!” - colonial? ‘white’ - race - dichotomy

heightened realism

• williams well known for this

• draws out the more abstract intangible dramatic qualities of the scene

• highly prescriptive stage directions, musical motifs to suggest characters’ memories and emotions

• he introduced the gauze into his sets - semitransparent, liminality

elysian fields context -

greek mythology, seen as resting place of virtuous heroes

Blanche as tragic hero

blanche arguably arrives here seeking peace and maybe even heroic glory but is instead confronted by a rowdy purgatory

naturalism

focusses on how society influences individuals and reality

what is interior panic and give me a quote from it

• one act play by williams

• provided the basis for SC

• ‘it is through her sense that the play is projected’ - makes clear the distortion in our viewpoint - link to Haber quote on play' structure

civil war context

• corrupt - civil war

• less than a century after it

• question about what the south was

• south distinct from rest of american culture

McRae quotes

1 - stanley

2 - tragedy of

3 - most important theme

‘stanley is the future of america’

‘it’s a tragedy of gender and of roles’

‘desire is the single most important theme of the play’

louise blackwell

sees williams as ‘making a commentary on western culture by dramatising his belief that men and women find meaning in life through satisfactory sexual relationships

tischner on sc ending

‘we leave the theater outraged rather than soothed’ - stella and stanley, injustice of it all

link to lamenting of Duchess and accidental murder of antonio

Oklopcic

blanche as ‘the last representative of the old aristocracy who tries to survive in hte modern world’

Carla McDonough

the different male characters ‘epitomise the conflicting masculine identities available in williams’ stage world’

Beth rowen on rape scene

‘a physical representation of the triumph of misogynistic brute force’

debuscher on animal violence

stanley reacts to blanche as ‘an animal whose territory is threatened and invaded’

link to ferdinand incestous imagery - also lineage corrupted - sees their royal lineage as his territory, even her body

Welsch SC

‘americans were already familiar with violence’ - ww2

Tilscher on blanche and male authority

‘blanche is a challenge to his authority’

autonomy, subversive nature, widow

Alfie brown on patriarchy and capitalism

‘patriarch and capitalism go together as the two enemies williams wants us to criticise

•  Blanche compelled to go from man to man because of lack of economic independence - post-war reversion to gender roles - economic exchange between men and women intertwined with sexual exchanges.

• ‘Diamonds are of the most value, they say, that have passed through the most women's hands’

• and Blanche when Stella offers her the pocket money given by stanley: ‘i’d rather take to the streets’ - both subversive - financial power through sexual exchanges - but more figurative for duchess than for Blanche

Bess rowen on expressionism and the varsouviana

“Expressionism favours emotional reality over physical truth”

“Varsouviana is a subtle aspect of internal psychology seeping into the external world”

williams’ relationship with his characters

‘smiling accomplice’

•  ‘ poignancy of ‘i have always relied on the kindness of strangers’- link to Webster deviating from painter source material in his sympathetic portrayal of the duchess

• Debusscher

Harold bloom on Williams

‘builds up archetypes then destroys out preconceived notions of them’

• complex attitudes towards stanley, becomes more than the brute man - bosola transcending role of malcontent ascribed to him (have a para on this somwhere) - also blanche not the chase and naive southern belle she presents herself as

Blanche and southern belle

1 southern belle 2 not southern belle

Blanche who, as such, is the embodiment, and the symbol, of the Southern bellehood; the other is the ‘victimized’ Blanche who, by subverting the each and every trait of the Southern bellehood, becomes its antithesis

She perceives herself as a beautiful object which has to be properly decorated in order to sell well. As such, Blanche depends heavily on exterior beauty markers – dresses, hats, jewelry, perfumes, and cosmetics which are, in her brother-in-laws’s discourse, magnified into “solid-gold dress[es,] (…) genuine fox fur-pieces, (…) pearls, bracelets of solid gold, (…) and diamonds” - ‘when i wax grey i shall have all the court powder their hair’”

Vlaspos on stanley

“Stanley profits from staying within the parameters set for him by his sex and class” - Vlaslopos - juxtapose with Antonio and Bosola who do not stay within the parameters set by their sex and class. And the duchess and ant who do neither. Use for an ambition essay!

centrality of bed setting in both

• audience invading private space just as characters do

lighting and sound effects - who was williams influenced by

Chekhov

Belle Reve

Belle reve - plantation name incorrect  grammatically - logical assumption that it would have been ‘belle rive’ - ‘beautiful shore’ - ‘what had been a solid shore is now but an effervescent dream or ‘reve’ - Londre

Blanche’s bathing

•  ‘evokes a purification ritual’

• Londre

Van Gogh painting

all night cafe 1888 - makes poker scene ekphrastic? acting out of the gloomy, claustrophobic atmosphere evoked by the painting

blanche as an actor

• Metatheatricality of blanche’s costume jewelry and stage furs - she even adds her own musical underscoring in scene with mitch by turning on radio