SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

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potential problem of having a female as monarch is quickly converted in a conservative
expression of the upholding of the established, God-approved social order—patriarchy.
The upholding of patriarchy is again reaffirmed in John Webster’s 1612 revenge
tragedy The Duchess of Malfi, but with a very different outcome. The old order is not
restored in a happy ending. In fact, to those who desire to maintain traditional social
order, the outcome is the worst possible—the son of a lowly steward sits on the throne.
Other revenge tragedies such as Hamlet, The Spanish Tragedy, and ‘Tis Pity She’s a
Whore also include the conventions of madness, violence, and murder, but The Duchess
of Malfi is distinctive because of a peculiar manifestation of lunacy. In this play¸
Gower’s worst fears come to fruition; the beast breaks through the restraints of reason
and self-control and emerges to bring disaster to the entire court. Elizabethan and
Jacobean revenge tragedy is informed by the plays of Seneca—bloody revenge, ghostly
visitations, mutilation, insanity real or feigned, a play-within-a-play, and violent deaths—
in the way that much medieval literature is informed by Ovid and other classical authors.
The desire for revenge sometimes begins to seem like a semi-religious quest that must be
accomplished at any cost, even the death of the avenger. The avenger may be motivated
to act by the injustice of the crime committed against him. This injustice, unaddressed,
may drive him to the brink of insanity, as in Hamlet, where the ghost of the murdered
king commands the prince to “Revenge [my] foul and most unnatural murder” (Hamlet
I.5.30). But the introduction of mad, perverted sexual desire in The Duchess of Malfi
adds a new and sinister element to the mix.