SOURCE: Bradbrook, M. C. “The Duchess of Malfi.” In John Webster, Citizen and Dramatist, pp. 142-65. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.

In the following essay, Bradbrook focuses on the contemporary context of The Duchess of Malfi to interpret the drama, including the original Jacobean production and the source story for the play. She also compares the style and structure of the play to a masque in order to illuminate the drama as it would have been perceived by its original audience.

In the one predominant perturbation; in the other overruling wisdom; in one the body's fervour and fashion of outward fortitude to all height of heroic action; in the other, the mind's inward constant and unconquered empire, unbroken, unalter'd with any most insolent and tyrannous affliction.¹

[George Chapman, letter dedicatory to his translation of Homer's Odyssey, 1614]

Chapman's comparison of the Iliad and the Odyssey would serve for Webster's...