Topics for Further Study
- Investigate another significant Renaissance work, Machiavelli's The Prince (1517), which outlines the traits of the ideal leader. To what degree does the Cardinal reflect these traits? What are the advantages and drawbacks of such a ruler?
- Some scholars argue that in writing The Duchess of Malfi, Webster was honoring Queen Elizabeth I, who passed away in 1603, a decade before the play was penned. How did Elizabeth I and King James I differ? Why might Webster have favored a monarch like Elizabeth I?
- London's Globe Theatre, one of the venues where The Duchess of Malfi was originally performed, has been meticulously reconstructed to reflect its historical design. Explore how the type of theater and the conventions regarding casting plays would have made a 1613 performance in London distinct from modern-day productions in major theaters.
- Contrast the Duchess's circumstances at the play's start with the social norms followed by British aristocracy today. For instance, how freely can members of the Royal Family marry anyone they choose, regardless of social class or other factors? How much influence might family exert over one's choice of a spouse?
- Though The Duchess of Malfi is set in sixteenth-century Italy, it was crafted for a seventeenth-century English audience. Considering the basic outline of the Duchess's tale, what changes would a playwright need to make to situate the story in the twenty-first-century United States? How might American cultural values alter the story's outcome?
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