YMMV / The Duchess of Malfi

• Narm:
  • The play. You've got to love a play where someone gets poisoned by a Bible, there's an echo-ey grave, mad men are cavorting around outside a jail, the heroine holds a dead man's hand ... And a mad incestuous Prince thinks he's a werewolf and later says, "I account this world but a dog kennel." The Cardinal's reaction on being stabbed? "You have hurt me." Oh, dear. The doctor tries to cure Ferdinand of his madness and thinking he's a dog by... trying to fight him. Also, the number of people hiding behind tapestries.
  • Bosola is with both the leads when they die... and has howlers both times. With the duchess, he responds to her brief revival and subsequent final death with a mildly frustrated, "Oh, she's gone again!" With Antonio, he gets the following tactless exchange:
    "Thy fair duchess and two sweet children—"
    "Their very names kindle a little life in me."
    "Are murdered."
• Narm Charm:
  • As with a lot of Renaissance tragedies, the narm is kind of the point. The sympathetic characters alternate between being goofily ridiculous and intensely sympathetic (because the artificial conventions of Jacobean drama recquire them to act weird sometimes and Webster is a smartass who needs to joke about it). Meanwhile, the villains get a Villainous Breakdown that's delicious to watch after their acting like terrifying tyrants or a Smug Snake for four full acts.
  • Special mention for the moments where the Duchess is showing what a dorky Good Bad Girl she is when she tries to make a dirty joke in front of her brothers (and, predictably, fails miserably), then tries to woo the wilfully oblivious Antonio, Antonio's relatable Lovable Coward reactions everytime someone threatens him or his family, Cariola's tragi-comic attempts to avoid execution with gradually more outlandish excuses and the cardinal's Classic Villain Deadpan Snarker persona… which completely crumbles when threatened. Also the morally bankrupt, over-educated, ruthless, perpetually tired Butt-Monkey Bosola's rants about being a cosmic plaything AND NOT GETTING A RAISE are remarkably affecting to a Millenial audience (or so claims the crowd who had to study it for the French Agrégation Externe Anglais).
• Tearjerker: Ferdinand, upon the death of the Duchess: "Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young."
• Values Dissonance: The play revolves around a forbidden marriage and what we would nowadays consider to be an honour killing. While her behavior in disobeying her family, marrying her steward, and actually proposing to him rather than vice versa, would have met with strong disapproval from most contemporary audiences, Webster is clearly depicting her as the noblest character in the play, the only one who didn't do anything seriously wrong; the rest of the court is populated by scheming tyrants, incestuous brothers, hypocrites, and murderers — the anti-hero protagonist is a killer-for-hire. This was a very radical play when it premiered. Nowadays sympathies are with the lovers.

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