Further Reading
- Allison, Alexander W., "Ethical Themes in The Duchess of Malfi," Studies in English Literature 4, No. 2 (Spring 1964): 263-73. (Examines the designs of the plot structure and patterns of character relationships in The Duchess of Malfi, within a larger ethical scope in order to clarify several of the play's misunderstood ethical themes.)
- Brooke, Nicholas, "The White Devil" and "The Duchess of Malfi," in Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy, pp. 28-47, 48-69. London: Open Books Publishing Ltd., 1979. (Examines how Webster's use of various modes of laughter in The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi clearly conveys the pain and violence that the plays present in both a moral and social context.)
- Camoin, François André, "Webster," in The Revenge Convention in Tourner, Webster, and Middleton, edited by Dr. James Hogg, pp. 64-91. Salzburg: Institut Für Englische Sprache und Literatur Universität Salsburg, 1972. (Analyzes Webster's non-traditional, yet innovative use of the revenge convention in The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi.)
- Champion, Larry S., "Webster—The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi," in Tragic Patterns in Jacobean and Caroline Drama, pp. 119-151. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1977. (Describes how Webster's use of dramaturgical devices in The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi not only "develop[ed] and sustain[ed] the spectator's interest in various protagonists," but conveyed his own tragic perspective toward the changing political and philosophical views of seventeenth-century England.)
- Doebler, Bettie Anne, "Continuity in the Art of Dying: The Duchess of Malfi," Comparative Drama 14, No. 3 (Fall 1980): 203-15. (Discusses the dramatic effects of Webster's use of the ars moriendi tradition in structuring the death scenes of The Duchess of Malfi.)
- Goldberg, Dena, Between Worlds: A Study of the Plays of John Webster. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1987, 167 p. (Focuses on "Webster's dramatic treatment of the theme of individualism and social order, especially as it is expressed in the commentary on the philosophy and practice of law in his time.")
- Hurt, James R., "Inverted Rituals in Webster's The White Devil," Journal of English and Germanic Philology 61 (1962): 42-7. (Argues that Webster's use of witchcraft imagery in The White Devil—mainly in the form of satirizing sacred rituals—present[s] "the inverted, evil-oriented nature of the society of the play.")
- Jenkins, Harold, "The Tragedy of Revenge in Shakespeare and Webster," Shakespeare Survey 14, (1961): 45-55. (Contrasts Shakespeare's use of revenge themes, plot structures, and dramatic organization in his Hamlet with that of Webster in The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi.)
- Morris, Brian, ed., John Webster. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1970, 237 p. (Part of the Mermaid Critical Commentary series, this volume contains several critical essays by prominent Webster critics.)
- Pearson, Jacqueline, Tragedy and Tragicomedy in the Plays of John Webster. Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes & Noble Books, 1980, 151 p. (Traces the tragicomic elements of The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi, The Devil's Law-Case, and A Cure for a Cuckold, and argues that "Webster's dramatic interests are in the incoherences of real life, the mixture of modes and the collision of different images and different interpretations of action.")
- Ribner, Irving, "John Webster," in Jacobean Tragedy: The Quest for Moral Order, pp. 97-122, Barnes & Noble Inc., 1962. (Ribner closely examines The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi in order to fully perceive Webster's "agonized search for moral order in the uncertain and chaotic world of Jacobean scepticism.")
- Spivack, Charlotte, "The Duchess of Malfi: A Fearful Madness," Journal of Women's Studies in Literature 1, No. 2 (Spring 1979): 122-32. (Contends that although strong and intellectual heroines of seventeenth-century drama were unduly "victimized by the over-inflated masculine ego of the time," and "therefore acutely buffeted by those conditions conducive to madness," the Duchess transcends this "fearful madness" because of her "integrity of self-hood and the power to transform others.")
- Wadsworth, Frank W., "Webster's The Duchess of Malfi in the Light of Some Contemporary Ideas on Marriage and Remarriage," Philological Quarterly 35, No. 4 (October 1956): 394-407. (Argues that the characterizations of the Duchess in Clifford Leech's 1951 study of Webster are unwarranted and erroneous, and that they had the effect of spawning "a general pattern of uncritical acceptance of certain basic Elizabethan attitudes" that has obscured critical understanding of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature in general.)
- Whigham, Frank, "Sexual and Social Mobility in The Duchess of Malfi," PMLA 100, No. 2 (March 1985): 167-86. (Examines various sexual themes in The Duchess against the background of the moral ideology of Jacobean society in order to "articulate and construe the friction between the dominant social order and the emergent pressures toward social change.")
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