‘The Duchess of Malfi'

‘The Duchess of Malfi' by Frederick Wedmore

The Independent Theatre has staged Mr. Poel's rearranged version of The Duchess of Malfi, pleasing some and displeasing others. The author defends Webster as a classic of noble conception, citing Swinburne's praise of his moral stature, Gosse's ranking of the play second only to King Lear, and Lamb's admiration for its power to move horror and touch the soul. He notes Webster's faults: unclear exposition of character relations and minor events, the coarseness permitted by his era, and frequent scene-shifting within acts, uncorrected until French construction methods later taught English dramatists better. Mr. Poel's version is called reverent and tasteful, rearranged for the modern stage without additions, though the author doubts the modern public and modern players will respond to Webster's imagery and style, preferring inflation to poetry and familiarity to wit. He singles out the line "Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young" as needing an audience willing to meet the writer half-way. The play has hints of lightness but no actual comedy, and its tortures, suited to the temperament the author describes as never more inventive than when spurred by cruelty, including the crazed voices and the dead hand offered to the Duchess, risk provoking titters from an unimaginative audience. Mr. Poel trained an intelligent company: Mr. Bassett Roe played the Cardinal with dignity, Mr. Murray Carson filled Daniel de Bosola well, Miss Mary Rorke brought dignity and pathos to the Duchess, and Miss Hall Caine gave Cariola sunny, sympathetic intelligence. Mr. Arthur Dillon's "Dance of Death" struck some as too horrible, though the author found it both beautiful and macabre. He concludes that horrors burdened with Literature are preferable to the Independent Theatre's past offerings of horrors unburdened with Literature.

By Frederick Wedmore · Genre: Tragedy, Gothic Horror, Psychological Drama · 1,282 words

First lines

The Independent Theatre has pleased a few, and, it is to be feared, displeased many, by its production of Mr. Poel's version of _The Duchess of Malfi_. But it is the ill-advised whom on one account or another it has now vexed; it is the wisest whom it has at last done something to satisfy. I said ‘at last. ' That was ungrateful. For, once, at least, before, the Independent Theatre -- eschewing mere eccentricity and the ‘experimental' drama (a pretty word, very, for the dull or the unseemly) -- once before was it occupied with work of genius and high literary art, or with work at all events by a writer whose genius, here and there, is not to be gainsaid. Did it not give us, for a change, what is at all events the lucid realism of M. Zola?

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Jacobean drama · tragedy · revenge · betrayal · death · torture · horror · madness · cruelty · theater review · theatrical production · literary merit

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