Question- What is the themes of the play the "Duchess of Malfi" by John Webster ?

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"Duchess of Malfi" is revenge play. Discuss it.
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What is corruption in the "Duchess of Malfi"?

Answer -

"Duchess of Malfi" themes of blood, lust, violence and intrigue set within the Jacobean age. "The Duchess of Malfi", is a revenge plays that portrays the violence inherent in any society that functions on a blood nobility structure. The play focuses on both the physical and mental aspect of this violence.

Hell on Earth : The Duchess of Malfi is a play replete with darkness, both literal and figurative. There are good figures, and these characters are associated with light. On the other hand, the brothers, who exhibits, unrelenting evil, are associated with motifs of darkness, fire, the devil and sin. The idea that the brothers have unleashed hell on Earth is most apparent in the fourth Act, which includes utter horrors like fake corpser, a severed hard, a plethora of madmen and most centrally, the vicious murders of the Duchess and her children. The Duchess, a symbol of motherhood and light, unfazed by these horrors because she believes her family already dead, but she does explain that "the earth" seems made of "flaming sulphur". And when Bosola tells her she must keep living, she makes it clear that hell is truly on Earth- that's the greatest torture souls feels in hell/in hell that they must live and cannot die.

Both brothers, the Cardinal and Ferdinand are also even more directly connected to hell through constant associations with the devil. Antonio says, "the devil speaks in" the Cardinal's lips and Bosola describes Ferdinand's manipulation as: The devil / can dies all sins over."

Disguise : Disguise masking reality, hiding one's true intentions, presenting a false front-is a major theme in the Duchess of Malfi. The most obvious symbol of this is Bosola. The distinction between what he says and how he acts is so vast than even the audience, who is given access to his private thoughts through soliloquies and asides, has trouble understanding his motivations.

He is a spy, and is thus constantly disguising his motives and his true feelings. Further, in the fourth act, he literally disguises himself as an old man. However he also repeatedly shows disgust for the act of disguising. He reluctant to take on the role of spy, and notes that "the devil/candies all sin over, thus associating the act of disguising with evil, and he scorns how men "delight/To hide", their "rotten and dead body", "eaten up of lice and worms", "in rich tissue". Thus he is both the character who most thoroughly employs disguise, and the one most aware of its sinful, unattractive nature. Diguise is so prevalent in the play that even the Duchess, the paragon of light, must employ it. In her first appearance on stage, she tells her brothers, "I'll never marry" and then before the scene is even over, she has proposed to and married Antonio - clearly, she had disguised her true intentions from them.

The Fertile Woman : Even in the Duchess of Malfi is a powerful and pervasive force that manages to destroy almost all that is good, but it is not all - powerful. At the end of the play, the Duchess's oldest son survives to carry on her and Antonio's legacy, which provides a symbol of hope tied in with the play's greatest force for good: the fertile and reproductive female. Once all the evil has been done, all that remains of this family that had epitomized domestic bliss is its eldest son. In the midst of all the destruction, this product of love and the reproductive woman, will be raised as a testament to the goodness of his mother. Thus, her power as a good mother, in the end is greater than her brother's evil.

The Perversion of Justice : In The Duchess of Malfi justice fails completely as a force for good; instead it is corrupted into a tool for Ferdinand and the Cardinal. The rules that govern their world are perverse and immoral; so the justice they seek to enact inherently becomes perverse and immoral itself. 'Delio' prepares the audience for this in the first act, when he says of Ferdinand,

Then the law of him
Is like a foul black lobweb to a spider
He makes it his dwelling, and a person
To entangle those shall feed him.

The law, which should uphold peace and fairness is instead a "foul trap that Ferdinand uses to benefits himself. Once the Duchess is dead and Ferdinand is overcome with regret, he himself points out how he has misused justice, when he asks, 'Did any ceremonial form of law/Doom her to not- being?"

Class : The importance of class and rank is questioned throughout the Duchess of Malfi. Those characters who place the most value on it are those who do the most damage to the word of the play, while the Duchess fights for the idea that a man's worth is reflected by his actions and character, not by his tille.

The Duchess's marriage to Antonio is clearly a happy one, at least until exposed to the machination of her brothers. They have three children and a clearly-expressed love for each other. Ferdinand and Cardinal's disgust about her marriage is thus particularly repulsive, especially since their only specific complaint revolves around his lower class.

The costs of Evil : Evil is incontrovertibly destructive in the Duchess of Malfi, taking a loving family of five and reducing it to one young survivor. It is also, however, deeply destructive to those who perpetrate it, and not just their victims. Not only do the three pillars of evil in the play the Cardinal Ferdinand and Bosola - all die by the end of fifth act but they also each pay a special penance that elucidates just how terrible evil can be to those who employ it. Ferdinand is the most obvious example. Throughout the play his anger is so intense that he seems almost deranged, but he does not truely lose his mind until the murder of his twin sister. For the Cardinal the costs are more subtle. He pays with his life of course, but he also gives up what he values most throughout the play-his reputation. The price Bosola pays is more complicated, in the same way that his participation in the evil is more complicated. Thus the characters who employ evil in the play ultimately pay for it with more than simply their lives.

Reputation and Legacy : The characters in The Duchess of Malfi are deeply concerned about reputation and legacy. Ferdinand and the Cardinal are obsessed with the Duchess's reputation, and how it affects their own. When they warn her not to be "lusty widow" before leaving her alone in Malfi, they are driven by a fear that her behaviour will 'poision' her fame'. Later, when they discover that she has had a child, it is partially the tainting of their "royal blood" that concerns them. Ferdinand tells the Duchess that, having parted from her good reputation. He will never see her, his twin sister again.

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