Essays on The Duchess of Malfi

The two plays Othello and the Duchess of Malfi were performed in the period of the Renaissance which it knew as (Early Modern), the word Renaissance means rebirth and it refers to a cultural and educational movement that begin in Italy in the fourteenth century. The English Renaissance was famous for it's drama plays. For the novella, Candide was written in the age of Enlightenment (the period of reason) in the18th century, and the writing was about travels and journeys.…

Webster presents and scrutinizes women and their behaviour in various lights, sometimes critical but often sympathetic to the unattainable dichotomies that women are expected to fulfil. The Duchess herself is described by various (predominantly male) characters and is contrasted with other women such as Cariola, the old woman and, principally, Julia to accentuate her own attributes or lack thereof. The effect that his exploration of female autonomy would have had on a 17th Century audience would have been augmented by…

To some respect, both Milton and Webster present their characters with certain motives of ambition. Milton once said "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. " highlighting that ambition is an internal cause, simply a human flaw and cannot be ignored and can cause tragedy in some respect to what is good or perhaps manipulate the way of thinking in men. Paradise Lost In Paradise Lost, Milton shows us…

The world in which The Duchess of Malfi is set is riddled with corrupt practices and people. There are 3 major types of corruption that occur throughout the play: moral corruption, political corruption and mental corruption. The idea of corruption is introduced in Antonio's first speech. He comments on how a well governed, noble palace should be, then contrasts this with the idea of a court where " some curs'd example poison't near the head, death and diseases through the whole…

With thousands of visitors per day, Madame Tussaud's is probably the most famous wax museum, with branches all over the world. It has grown to become a major tourist attraction in London, displaying waxworks of historical and royal figures, as well as others celebrities such as actors, pop stars or scientists. Its history begins back in 1777 when Marie Tussaud created her first wax figure, Voltaire. However, it wasn't until 1835 when Marie opened a museum in Baker Street. Fifty…

This paper tries to explore and examine how making use of animal images in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi draws out the themes and exposes the persona of characters like Duke Ferdinand, the Cardinal and their accomplice Bosola. The animal imagery offers natural expression to the basic (animal) impulses that dominate the play from beginning to the end. The world according to the Duchess is a "tiresome theater", but to Ferdinand, the abject villain, it is "however a dog-kennel.…

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."1 Concerning Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel, Brave New World, readers find themselves thinking the theme of the novel is not of proper conduct and it would not take place in their current world. Brave New World follows a futuristic society, the World State, where citizens are mass-produced and conditioned to suit the ways of the government and the society as a whole. Everyone is born…

Bosola from Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and Hamlet from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, both present elements of Aristotle’s model of the tragic hero; through both of the characters, Shakespeare and Webster use the features of the tragic hero to engage Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences in an exploration of issues linked to the Renaissance, religion and philosophy. This essay will explore how the playwrights present the tragic flaws in their heroes’ character and how they face struggles due to their inner conflict…

Facing Life While Fighting For an End Every one of us will stare down the face of death at some point in our lives; however, some will face it in much more unpleasant circumstances then others. We all have a right to choose what we want to do with our bodies. We even have the right to decide that we no longer wish to endure the pain and suffering of a terminal illness. Terminal illness is when someone is suffering…