‘The Duchess of Malfi' by Frederick Wedmore

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?

And now, after a _régime_ more or less of the experimental and unnecessary, we have again a great man's work. The Independent Theatre has once more realised that to be revolutionary is not to be sufficing. We have had a taste of Webster -- Webster, it is true, with the lime-light turned on at the appropriate moment; Webster with a skirt-dance; Webster with a measure of scenic effect, dexterously shocking, or dexterously entertaining, as the case may be, to the modern taste. But still a classic -- a giant in conception and writing -- a strong tower in comparison with a puny earth-work. Excellently has Mr. Swinburne said of him, ‘There is no poet morally nobler than Webster. ' Fearlessly has Mr. Gosse asserted that _The Duchess of Malfi_ is ‘a masterpiece excelled only by _King Lear_. ' And, if I take down my volumes of Lamb's _Specimens_, I find that, in a little footnote, Elia becomes most eloquent and most descriptive when he descants upon this play. ‘To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear... this only a Webster can do. ' And again, contrasting inferior writers with this potent if imperfect master, ‘They know not how a soul is capable of being moved; their terrors want dignity; their affrightments are without decorum.'