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“Shorn and Abated”–British Performances of The Duchess of Malfi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Frank W. Wadsworth
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Extract

Samuel Phelps' revival of The Duchess of Malfi at Sadler's Wells on November 20, 1850 resulted in Webster's tragedy holding the boards in Great Britain and America for some twenty-five years. These performances were enumerated and their casts identified in an earlier article. I want now to attempt a fuller description of some representative productions, both for the light they throw upon the attitudes and practices of nineteenth-century theatre and for the useful insights they give us into the nature of Webster's tragedy itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , November 1969 , pp. 89 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1969

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References

NOTES

1. Wadsworth, Frank W., “Some Nineteenth Century Revivals Of The Duchess of Malfi,” Theatre Survey, VIII, no. 2 (November, 1967), 67–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. British Museum Additional MS 43031, vol. CLXVII; Folger Shakespeare Library promptbook, Cat. No. D.b. 5–9; The Duchess Of Malfi; A Tragedy In Five Acts. By John Webster. 1612. Re-Constructed For Stage Representation, by R. H. Home, Esq….As Produced At The Theatre Royal, Sadler's Wells, November 20, 1850. Published By John Tallis And Company, London and New York, 1850. The volume contains a “Preface,” “Prologue” and a list of the cast. The text is in double columns. The volume was reviewed in the Athenaeum for December 7, 1850. Various re-issues followed (see Wadsworth, ‘Nineteenth Century Revivals,” p. 82, n. 6). Differences between the three texts are minor. References unless otherwise noted are to the Tallis printed text. References to the Websterian original are to John Russell Browns edition (Cambridge, Mass., 1964).

3. For information on Home see in addition to the D.N.B., Shumaker, Eri J., A Concise Bibliography of the Complete Works of Richard H. Home, Granville, Ohio, 1943Google Scholar; Boas, F. S., “R. H. Home: His Plays and ‘Farthing Epic’,” Essays by Divers Hands, Being the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom, New Series, vol. XXI (1944)Google Scholar; and Cyril Pearl, Always Morning; The Life of Richard Henry “Orion” Home, Melbourne, n.d.

4. It is revealing also that Home wrote a good deal of Shakespearean criticism, including three articles on Lear's madness. See Shumaker, , Bibliography, p. 9Google Scholar and passim. Incidentally, Judas Iscariot was not published in Hewitt's Journal of Literature and Popular Progress as Shumaker indicates; it was merely reviewed.

5. The Tallis edition spells the promptbook's Bosola with an extra “s”; thus Bossola.

6. For example, Antonio and Delio each explicitly states that Antonio and the Duchess have been married for two years at the beginning of Act II, and Antonio refers to his “lovely daughter.” He follows this observation by commenting to the Duchess about “When heaven shall next to thy maternal breast/Vouchsafe [another child] (II, i) and “Another such event” (II, ii). These references, plus the elimination of her third child, help to make more acceptable to the audience the Duchess' role as—to use Webster's words–”an excellent/Feeder of pedigrees.”

7. Certainly, for the scientific-minded, an improvement on Webster's belated, Desdemona-like expiration. But the credit, it appears, belongs to Phelps; the promptbook, in Home's hand, and the Lord Chamberlain's copy, have the Duchess die off-stage. The dying re-entrance and the melodramatic “Mercy” are added in Phelps’ hand.

8. Forster, John and Lewes, George Henry, Dramatic Essays, London 1896, p. 121Google Scholar (written November 30, 1850).

9. Or perhaps more correctly his prejudice, for long before Archer Lewes was comparing Webster to Madame Tussaud, using such phrases as “ludicrously absurd,” “clumsy ignorance,” and concluding that “The Duchess of Malfi is a nightmare, not a tragedy” (Dramatic Essays, pp. 120–121).

10. Something of Home's attitude toward dramatic language may be inferred from the new lines he wrote for Antonio and the Echo: “Ah, me! alas!”

11. Found opposite the scene of the Duchess’ murder (IV, ii, opposite p. 137).

12. The final carnage among Ferdinand, the Cardinal and Bosola occurs on a darkened stage. The Duchess, Cariola and Antonio are all “attacked off-stage.

13. Ferdinand retains something of the mystery that marks so many of the original characters. Although he tries to explain his motives, he remains, unlike Home's Bosola and Cardinal, a complex “villain,” emotional, self-doubting, haunted, so that the final scene, when he takes the dead Antonio's hand in his, becomes sentimental but not improbable, Ferdinand having acted sentimentally throughout the tragedy.

14. The Duchess of Malfi: A Tragedy in Five Acts, Adapted from John Webster, Davidson, London, n.d.

15. Lines that Home predictably omits.

16. Lewes, , Dramatic Essays, p. 122.Google Scholar See Wadsworth, , “Nineteenth Century Revivals,” pp. 73–75Google Scholar, for a summary of opposite views, and for a brief description of Miss Glyn's contemporary reputation.

17. Our Recent Actors, 2 vols., 1888, II: 61–62.

18. See, for example, the Illustrated London News, November 23, 1850.

19. See, for example, an untitled clipping dated April 12, [15?], 1855 in the “Standard” boxes of the Enthoven collection; also the Times for April 14, 1868.

20. The Duchess of Malfi, p. xxxv.

21. See Wadsworth, , “Nineteenth Century Revivals,” pp. 70–71.Google Scholar

22. A subsequent article will describe the American productions.