A Contemporary View of The Duchess of Malfi

Abstract

A Contemporary View of The Duchess of Malfi Louis D. Giannetti I It is now acknowledged as a commonplace that the New Criticism produced some disastrous results in the field of drama. Plays were examined as a species of literature; production viewed (if at all) merely as a kind of illustration of the printed text. The word reigned supreme: if “meanings” were not found in the language, they were simply not to be found. T o be sure, in many of the critical essays of this type, there was the inevitable introductory paragraph, suggesting that the text of a play was like an architect’s plans to a building, or, less often, a score to a performance of music. All of this was largely window dressing— a sop to the Aristotelians, who still persisted in the quaint conviction that the soul of drama is action, not language. In a sense, of course, the New Critics were right. A major con­ vention of English drama is articulation: if something or someone is bothering a character, we can usually assume that the character will talk about the problem. This convention seemed equally valid for the highly articulate Hamlet to the stammering strikers of Galsworthy’s plays: they all talk about their problems. Furthermore, from the critics’ point of view, the plays were more accessible in text form, and pro­ ductions (when they were available) were subject to a disconcertingly wide number of variations. Finally, when all was said and done, the text of a play, while not exactly a literary work in the same sense as a novel or poem, was still less incomplete than a musical score or an architect’s drawings. Contemporary theatrical practice has put an end to much of this. Pinter, Beckett, Ann Jellicoe, and others often communicate primarily through non-verbal means, and the critic who approaches such playwrights from a traditional literary stance dooms himself to frustration. The words alone simply don’t make sense. The Theatre of Cruelty, the Theatre of the Absurd, “mixed media,” “happenings”— all of these movements are united by a common desire to return to a non-literary theatrical experience. These plays communicate mean­ ings through actions, gestures, rhythms, spectacle, spatial relationships, visual metaphors, emblems, irrational sounds and noises. Sometimes dialogue is also used. As a result of these practices, contemporary criticism is becoming 297 298 Comparative Drama increasingly polarized: the traditional literary analysts tend to favor period drama, while the avant-garde critics restrict themselves to post-war theatrical practice. We cannot afford to be so pure. Cer­ tainly the tools of literary analysis can be adapted to contemporary dramatic production; and likewise, a non-verbal approach can be profitably applied to period drama. For example, a “ traditional” play like John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi has been criticized on a number of counts. From the literary point of view, the play is, indeed, “flawed,” but the real problem seems to lie with the critical approach, not with the play, which is one of the most complex and subtle works in the entire range of English drama. Its richness lies precisely in its verbal and visual contrasts and juxtapositions. T o approach the play from only one of these points of view is to neglect some crucial meanings. Ironically, the major objections to the play have been directed at Webster’s neglectful “lapses” in craftsmanship: the lack of motivation for the brothers, the “gratuitous sensationalism,” the lack of dramatic focus. The most serious charge, however, repeated even by some of Webster’s warmest champions, concerns the “carelessness” of the play’s structure. All of these criticisms are interrelated, but by combining them into two groups (focus-structure, and motivation-sensationalism), I hope to show that these “shortcomings” are, in fact, inadequacies of a purely literary approach to period drama, that like many con­ temporary dramatists, Webster imparts some of his most important ideas and emotions through non-verbal means. II Many critics tacitly assume that Shakespeare’s tragedies provide a structural standard by which other contemporary plays may be judged. Such commentators deplore the lack of a clearcut sustained protag­ onist-antagonist conflict in The Duchess of Malfi. They tend...