The Duchess of Malfi - Criticism

F. L. Lucas

Both Webster and his Duchess seem to sit “bayed about with madmen”.

John Wilson

Webster was a “master of scenes”.

William Hazlitt

The Duchess comes “the nearest to Shakespeare of anything we have upon record”.

Charles Kingsley

“The strength of Webster’s confest mastership lies simply in his acquaintance with vicious nature in general … handles these horrors with little or no moral purpose”.

William Archer

“Ramshackle looseness of structure and barbarous violence of effect, hideous cacophonies, neither verse nor prose, Bedlam-broke-loose … poor Webster”.

Sidney Lee

Webster “concentrated his chief energies on repulsive themes and characters”.

T. S. Eliot

“a genius directed toward chaos”

In the poem Whispers of Immortality,

“Webster was much possessed by death

And saw…