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Title: The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster ISBN: 0-486-40660-1 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 09 June, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A violent psychosexual play
Comment: John Webster's play "The Duchess of Malfi" is a violent play that presents a dark, disturbing portrait of the human condition. According to the introductory note in the Dover edition, the play was first presented in 1613 or 1614.
The title character is a widow with two brothers: Ferdinand and the Cardinal. In the play's opening act, the brothers try to persuade their sister not to seek a new husband. Her resistance to their wishes sets in motion a chain of secrecy, plotting, and violence.
The relationship between Ferdinand and the Duchess is probably one of the most unsettling brother-sister relationships in literature. The play is full of both onstage killings and great lines. The title character is one of stage history's intriguing female characters; she is a woman whose desires lead her to defy familial pressure. Another fascinating and complex character is Bosola, who early in the play is enlisted to act as a spy. Overall, a compelling and well-written tragedy.
Rating: 5
Summary: Necessary background for Agatha Christie & Dorothy L. Sayers
Comment: This is a review of the New Mermaids edition of The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster. Elisabeth M. Brennan edits this edition (ISBN: 0393900665.) I mention this incase it is cross-posted under some other editor's edition.
I bought this after reading snippets of it in other books. I do not recall having to learn this in school. Only now do I intend to read "The White Devil" in anticipation of it being encountered in other works.
Well what do you know? This animal is based on a true story of the Duchess of Amalfi. Evidentially there were several books written on this and he picked one for the outline of the play.
This edition is almost as good as taking a class in its self. The introduction gives you a back ground and the basic story that the play was based on. You get some information on John Webster and some of his other plays. There is even a further Reading List. There are even notes on the text and how to read the notes for the different versions of the play its self. By the time you get to the play you are well prepared to read it.
The play its self has stanzas, line numbers and notes to help you through the difficulty of understanding what the words mean in context. It is almost like reading a bible. You soon pickup speed and then actually get intrigued in the writing and story.
Now I desperately want some local theater to present "The duchess of Malfi"
Rating: 5
Summary: A superb play
Comment: Of the "popular" editions of this play that by John Russell Brown (Revels Student Editions) and Elizabeth Brennan (New Mermaids) are both useful, though it must be said that no edition as yet does adequate justice to Webster's compexity - notably his presentation of Ferdinand. The play is both a tour de force and profoundly searching. It is perhaps the first major feminist play in England, with the Duchess presented as an outstandingly noble even if fallible character, the victim of her two evil "partriarchal" brothers. Of these, her twin brother Ferdinand is among the most intelligently conceived characters to appear on the Jacobean stage. Unknowingly (i.e. in his "unconscious") he is incestuously in love with his sister. Unable to cope with this "taboo" feeling, he tries to "repress" it unsuccessfully, and finally his ... "libido" comes to express itself in a violent wish to destroy her if he cannot ... own her, and he ends up believing himself to be a wolf, attempting to dig up her grave after he has had her killed. Obviously, then, this is a very Freudian work - anticipating Freud's insights brilliantly by some four centuries, and without lapsing into Freud's extravagantly improbable claims about such matters as the Oedipus complex. It is the working of the unconcious, as a reservoir of what we do not understand and cannot control, which is quite central in this play, and Ferdinand's ... confusion is potently contrasted with his sister's openminded, acknowledged and generous ... health. An outstanding play, recommended as among the best of its time (comparable in quality and interest to e.g. *Othello* or *The Changeling*). - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia
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Title: Volpone by Ben Jonson ISBN: 0486280497 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 20 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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Title: Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe ISBN: 0486282082 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 20 October, 1994 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: The Changeling (New Mermaids) by Thomas Middleton, Joost Daalder, William Rowley ISBN: 0393900614 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 1991 List Price(USD): $11.40 |
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Title: The Convent of Pleasure and Other Plays by Margaret Cavendish Newcastle, Anne Shaver, Margaret Cavendish, Margaret Cavendish Newcastle ISBN: 0801861004 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd, Simon Trussler ISBN: 1854593773 Publisher: Theatre Communications Group Pub. Date: August, 1997 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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