The Fourth Act of The Duchess
"The first necessity of baroque is that the audience should be
gripped, excited, moved" [1] - so says Ralph Berry. The fourth act of
The Duchess of Malfi certainly succeeds under all these criteria,
being the dramatic crux of the play. The events that occur in the
first scene are undoubtedly crucial, but it is the characters' vastly
varied reactions to them that are vitally important. Rich imagery is
deeply interwoven with the fabric of play - indeed, it is an essential
part of its function - and the scene's proceedings are completely
overshadowed by the telling relationship between Ferdinand, Bosola and
the Duchess that is explored throughout act IV, scene i.
Often, it is in the most trying times that the true nature of people
is allowed to shine through their veiled everyday existence. In this
scene, the Duchess is subjected to imprisonment and cruel tortures by
her malevolent twin brother who is still unable to come to terms with
his sister's independence and intimate relationship with Antonio.
Bosola is beginning to experience emotions he had previously repressed
or never had the capacity to experience in court life. He is forced to
astatically struggle with inner turmoil and design for himself a new
system of morality. Because of these simultaneous occurrences, the
three major characters' rôles are brought out to the front of the
stage for punctilious analysis. "The whole of Act IV is a protracted
dying as, step by step, 'by degrees', the Duchess is made to face the
utmost pain, misery and evil" [2]. As this happens, the very best and
most deplorable characteristics are teased out and, as their
relationship develops, the tensions between these three persons cause
the...
... middle of paper ...
...voked combines with horrors typical of the
period and the complex relationship between the Duchess, Ferdinand and
Bosola elicits responses that have a far greater effect on the outcome
of the play than any other aspect of the drama or events that have
occurred.
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[1] Ralph Berry, The Art of John Webster (Clarendon Press, 1972)
[2] Jan Kott, A personal essay (1986)
[3] Professor John Jump, "The White Devil" and "The Duchess of Malfi"
[4] John Webster, The White Devil, (Mermaid, 1996)
[5] Peter Murray, A Study of John Webster (Mouton, 1969)
[6] Professor John Jump, "The White Devil" and "The Duchess of Malfi"
[7] Irving Ribner, Jacobean Tragedy: The Quest For Moral Order
(Methuen, 1962)
[8] U. M. Ellis Fermor, The Jacobean Drama: An Interpretation
(Methuen, 1936)
shall firstly do a summery of the play and give a basic image of what
Claudio questions, “Didst thou note the daughter of Leonato?” to which Benedick responses, “I noted her not, but I looked on her.” He at that juncture initiates to sort jokes about her look. It is a stimulating argument since Claudio claims to have “noted” her, but has actually only seen her. Benedick recognizes the dissimilarity. Everybody can take in the shallow qualities at a glimpse. One cannot love another, enjoying the worthy establish in them, at a peek. Claudio, who deceptively confidences his wisdoms obliquely without slightly charm to the use of motive, may possibly not be proficient of “noting” whatsoever awaiting at the conclusion he finally does note Hero in the semblance of her cousin. As soon as Hero has been acquired, and the dual proposal to join in matrimony, Claudio says, “Silence is the perfectest herald of joy.” Grasped in the framework of the play. Had individuals enunciated fewer, nothing of this would have occurred. On one supplementary event, Claudio expresses a pronounced line which amounts up the piece and the theme of blather and its results: “O what men dare, what men may do! what men daily do not knowing what they do!” As an on the side, it is symbolic of the superficiality of their bond that one time earned, neither take a thing to say to each other.
Catherine, Catherine is who I am. I am a young American-Italian girl, that loves making people happy. Yet I get hurt easily, and can’t make decisions on my own. I lived with ma aunt (Beatrice) and ma uncle (Eddie). Sadly, Eddie died because he snitched to the immigration bureau on ma husband Rodolpho, but you will find out later exactly how he died. For now, all ya need to know it dat it wasn’t a smooth year.
Written by John Marston, Lewis Machin and William Barksted, The Insatiate Countess’ differing plots might be attributed to the presence of multiple authors. Critic Giorgio Melchiori states the play is based on Marston’s draft, while “Barksted’s hand is more apparent in the tragic scenes, Machin’s in the comic” (16). With several authors, the emulsification of comic and tragic is even more impressive. Interspersing scenes of comedy with tragedy throughout the play not only consolidates them, but also helps the reader draw parallels between them to reach the common theme of loyalty. The weddings in Act 1 involve the tragic character of Isabella as well as the comedic characters of Thais and Abigail, each getting married; and they are all present again for executions in Act 5, although by this time Thais and Abigail are preventing the deaths of their husbands, whereas Isabella is being executed. The distinctions in these plots serve to show Isabella’s divergence from the path of Abigail and Thais: albeit an odd happiness, in saving foolish husbands, the comedic alternative is certainly preferable to being the one on the chopping block, and indeed one who is not saved from that fate. In the severity of their divergence, the comic plot reinforces the message lost on the tragic plot: to be loyal in friendship.
Love is everywhere in the world and the majority of the people will do anything for love. People will push the limits to what they do for love and it just makes you wonder of how much crazy people are out there and are willing to take it to that crazy level. Social media blows up everywhere when they hear about a story that the guy or the girl went crazy in the relationship and just did something crazy. Well there are two poems that author Robert Browning wrote about love and they are called “My last Duchess” and “Porphyria's Lover” and there are a couple things that you can compare and contrast about it like both have very jealous people and another is how crazy people can get and one that’s different is how they handle it.
Never to go unnoticed, the name William Shakespeare describes an experienced actor, an exceptional playwright, and a notable philosopher. As one of the most influential men of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, Shakespeare impacted many artists with his riveting masterpieces. Shakespeare captured the attention of the people through his exquisite work in blank verse, and he inspired them with universal truths of the human condition. His sonnet sequence, consisting of 154 poems, is arguably the finest collection of love poems in the English language. Shakespeare continuously impressed his audience with his explorations of life’s complexities. Such an intricate man; however, he never wrote about himself. He would not discuss his composition methods and only through careful analysis could one understand the underlying truths to his work. Shakespeare was often known to use plots from other sources and enrich them to masterpieces with his genuine knowledge of literature. Although he completed many poems in his lifetime, each one of them was rich in quality and very complex in structure. The play, Macbeth, reveals the uniform structure of a typical Elizabethan tragedy with five acts that carefully reflect the pyramid organization of an exposition, a rising action, a climax, a falling action, and a denouement.
Wymer, Rowland. “Suicide, Despair, and the Drama.” Chapter One. Suicide and Despair in the Jacobean Drama. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. 1-36.
Act 3 Scene 4, so called the closet scene, is the first time we see Hamlet and Gertrude together alone. In this scene Hamlet releases his anger and frustration at his mother for the sinful deed she has committed i.e. her marriage to her brother-in-law and the murderer. We can see that Gertrude is unaware of her husband's murder when she says `As kill a King?' and it is the first time she confronts her own behavior. There is a conflict between the two; Hamlet gives powerful replies
Jonson's Volpone, or The Fox is almost exactly contemporary with Shakespeare's Othello and contains aspects that some might view as its comic counterpart. Venetian corruption and the insidious influence of a mincing, unscrupulous servant are themes common to both plays. What, though, has this play to communicate to us? Themes of corruption and materialism, resulting in a misanthropic view of the world, might have been telling in seventeenth-century England, but it is of course extremely difficult to construe them as relevant to the world of today..
In the tale that Geoffrey Chaucer had wrote, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, a man was described as a Knight. This Knight wasn’t like any normal Knight, he messed up and raped a girl. This is a big mistake, giving a lot of Knights a bad name, and having those that look up to them start to be disappointed in them. Usually the punishment that is given to those that rape, or in general any other crime, is death or time in the slammer, however, the Queen says no because he is a good looking guy. Instead of death, he had find out what women most desire from men. He is given a year and a day to find out, and on the last day, when he nearly had given up all hope, he sees an old woman in a field who makes a deal with him. The old lady gives the Knight a choice: to have an old, but faithful, wife, or to have a drop-dead gorgeous woman, but to have her never to be faithful, before she tells him what the Queen wants to know. The old lady and Knight get married and she wants him to sleep with her, like husbands are supposed to do with their wives. They argue and she gives him the two choices again; to have an ugly wife, but she is faithful. The other choice is to have a drop-dead gorgeous wife, but is never faithful. With this, he learns a lesson, and sufficient punishment.
"A View From A Bridge" is a play by Arthur Miller. It is set in 1950s
“Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise” (Carroll 105). This and advice of this kind are often dispensed by the Duchess in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Alice, and like the transition from child to adult, the advice is generally rarely fully understood if not confusingly difficult to wrap logic around. Many illustrators have undertaken the task of conveying a clear picture of the struggle that Alice goes through in order to triumph over childhood and nonsense into the realm of adults and logic. Angel Dominguez shows Alice’s struggle to grow up and out of childhood, a major theme of the text, in such a way that the audience can almost feel her anxiety. The use of the body language of Alice, the Duchess and the supporting animals, in addition to compositional elements such as proximity and framing, is a principal mechanism of Dominguez in evoking Alice’s anxiety and emphasizing the uncomfortable passage into maturity on one’s own while dealing with the pressures and advances of an adult world.
To conclude, though Twelfth Night’s main plot revolves around melancholic romance, what truly makes it a comedy is the erratic mood set by sub-plots to recall that of the festival with the same name. In the play, both Maria and Malvolio, servants to Olivia, show great aspirations to rise high above their social classes. However, Maria, being much more in-synch with the offbeat mood of the household, succeeds easily in marrying a nobleman, while Malvolio, stiff and pompous, just fails miserably. The conclusion to the play, which is contrary to what viewers would ever hope to happen in their real lives, succeeds in bringing enjoyment to all the lower-class people who watched it. Although the play includes many clever paradoxes, it is first and foremost a play created to entertain servants on their fun-filled rare day off.
Act II brings much of the same ambiance. Lady Macbeth has drugged the guards so that Macbeth cannot get caught murdering Duncan and tried to convince Macbeth that all is fine. The Second Scene in this act also shows a speck of her humanity for she couldn’t kill the king, “if Duncan hadn’t reminded me of my father when I saw him sleeping, I would have killed him myself.” (Shakespeare 79). We are exposed to her affection in that moment. When Macbeth has explained his unsettling thoughts to Lady Macbeth, she calls him weak then marches into Duncan’s chamber to plant the daggers on the guards. She has seen what her husband is capable of and it has damaged her mind and worsened her deterioration. Lady Macbeth believes that she can get rid of the
The Duchess Of Malfi by John Webster as A Revenge Tragedy “The Duchess of Malfi” is a macabre, tragic play, written by the English dramatist John Webster. It begins as a love story, with a Duchess who marries beneath her class, and ends as a nightmarish tragedy as her two brothers exact their revenge, destroying themselves in the process. The play is sometimes ridiculed by modern critics for the excessive violence and horror in its later scenes. But the violence and horror scenes give it the touch it needs to be a revenge tragedy.