Discuss The Duchess of Malfi as a
revenge tragedy
The
Revenge Tragedy : Its Meaning and Origin:-- A revenge tragedy is
a tragedy, as its name implies, in which the tragedy is brought about by the
pursuit and accomplishment of revenge taken, for some wrong or wrongs, either
the person wronged himself or by someone else on his behalf. The revenge
tragedy originated in the Latin drama by Senece, a playwright of the 1st
century A.D. The first revenge tragedy in English was Kyd’s Spanish tragedy.
After Kyd the type can be traced in a number of plays, e.g. in Shakespeare’s Hamlet,
Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge and The Malcontent, Tourneur’s The
Revenge Tragedy and Webster’s two tragic masterpieces, The White
Devil and The Duchess of Malfi.
The chief
features of Senecan tragedy:- The chief features which we find in a Senecan
tragedy are-
1.
Strong revenge motif
2.
Sacredness and solemnity
3.
Supernatural
4.
Crude and horror scenes
5.
The imagery of violence and terror
6.
The role of a Machiavellian Malcontent
7.
Sympathy for the revenger
The Duchess of Malfi as a revenge tragedy:-
The Duchess of Malfi like, Webster’s earlier play, The White Devil, is a
revenge tragedy. It has several features of a revenge tragedy. Let us have a
brief sketch to see how far the play fits the Senecan concept of tragedy :
Firstly,
There is a free exploitation of crude, physical horrors, like the dance of mad
men, the presentation of a dead man’s hand to the Duchess, the showing to her
of the wax figures of her husband and children
as if they were deed, the appearance of the tomb—maker and the executioner with
all the apparatus of death. There are a number of murders by strangling and
poisoning
