The Duchess ofMalfi

Lynn Enterline makes a similar argument about Webster s imagery of poisonous and infectious spectacles in The Duchess ofMalfi see Hairy on the In-side The Duchess ofMalfi and the Body of Lycanthropy, Yale Journal of Criticism 7 2 (1994), 85-129, and later version in The Tears of Narcissus Melancholia and Masculinity in Early Modern Writing (Stanford, Calif. Stanford University Press, 1995). 

On the range of associations with mandragora, see C. J. S. Thompson, The Mystic Mandrake (London Rider, 1934). Other noted literary references to mandrake in the period appear in John Donne s poems Song ( Go, and catch a falling star ) and Twicknam Gardens, as well as Webster s The White Devil and The Duchess ofMalfi. 

Enterline, Lynn. Hairy on the In-side The Duchess ofMalfi and the Body of Lycanthropy. Yale Journal of Criticism 7 2 (1994), 85-129. 

Hunt, Maurice. Webster and Jacobean Medicine The Case of The Duchess ofMalfi. Essays in Literature 16 (1989), 33-49. 

Kerwin, William. Physicians are like Kings Medical Politics and The Duchess ofMalfi. English Literary Renaissance 28 1 (1998), 95-117. 

George Rylands, 6n the Production of The Duchess of Malfi, in The Duchess ofMalfi (London Sylvan Press, 1945), vi, xii. 

Aebischer, Pascale, Shakespearean Heritage and the Preposterous Contemporary Jacobean Eilm Consuming the Duchess ofMalfi in Mike Figgis Hotel (2001) , Shakespeare Quarterly 60.3 (2009), 281-305... 

The Duchess ofMalfi is cited from Kinney (ed.). Renaissance Drama. Subsequent references are in the text. 

Ill discuss this scene and a number of related issues in more depth in My body bestow upon my women The Space of the Feminine in The Duchess ofMalfi , Renaissance Drama n.s. 28 (1999), 133-59, and Desire and Dramatic Form in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge University Press 2009), 71-86. 

Brian Gibbons points out that the actor who played Ferdinand in the original production of The Duchess, Richard Burhage, also played Shakespeare s famous villain-hero, Richard III (The Duchess ofMalfi, ed. Gihhons, 4th edn (New York Norton, 2001), 331). 

See for instance Sara Jayne Steen, The Crime of Marriage Arbella Stuart and The Duchess ofMalfi Sixteenth Century Journal 22.1 (1991), pp. 61-76. 

In The Duchess ofMalfi the equation of women and diamonds is rttade expUcit in the exchange between the Duchess and her brother Diamonds are of most value / They say, that have pass d through most jewellers hands , to which he coimters, Whores, by that rule, are precious . A piece of jewellery also figures the self when the Duchess says to Antonio,... 

A landscape containing religious ruins was, as English writers were well aware, a radically traumatised one, and above all one which spoke of death, as in The Duchess ofMalfi where a rain provides the location for this exchange between the living Antonio and the dead Duchess. 

Webster, John. The Duchess ofMalfi. Edited by JohnRrrssell Brown. Manchester Manchester University Press, 1974. 

---