The epistle apologizes for the ill success of the play, on the ground that ‘it was acted in so dull a time of winter, presented in so open and blacke a theater, that it wanted ... a full and understanding auditory’, and complains that the spectators at ‘that play-house’ care more for new plays than for good plays. Fleay, ii. 271, dates the production in the winter of 1607–8, taking the French ambassador described in III. i. 73 as a performer ‘at last tilting’ to be M. Goterant who tilted on 24 March 1607, since ‘no other Frenchman’s name occurs in the tilt-lists. It is nothing to Fleay that Goterant was not an ambassador, or that the lists of Jacobean tilters are fragmentary, or that the scene of the play is not England but Italy. Simpson found an inferior limit in a borrowing from Jonson’s Mask of Queens on 2 Feb. 1609. I do not find much conviction in the other indications of a date in 1610 cited by Sampson, xl, or in the parallel with Jonson’s epistle to Catiline (1611), with which Stoll, 21, supports a date in 1612. The Irish notes which Stoll regards as taken from B. Rich, A New Description of Ireland (1610), in fact go back to Stanyhurst’s account of 1577, and though there is a pretty clear borrowing from Tourneur’s Atheist’s Tragedy, that may have been produced some time before its publication in 1611. Nor was Dekker necessarily referring to Webster, when he wrote to the Queen’s men in his epistle before If this be not a Good Play (1612): ‘I wish a Faire and Fortunate Day to your Next New-Play for the Makers-sake and your Owne, because such Brave Triumphes of Poesie and Elaborate Industry, which my Worthy Friends Muse hath there set forth, deserue a Theater full of very Muses themselves to be Spectators. To that Faire Day I wish a Full, Free and Knowing Auditor.’
Webster’s own epistle contains his appreciation ‘of other mens worthy labours; especially of that full and haightned stile of Maister Chapman, the labor’d and understanding workes of Maister Johnson, the no lesse worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Maister Beamont, & Maister Fletcher, and lastly (without wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious industry of M. Shakespeare, M. Decker, & M. Heywood’. In the final note he commends the actors, and in particular ‘the well approved industry of my friend Maister Perkins’.
The Duchess of Malfi. 1613–14
1623. The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy. As it was Presented priuately, at the Black-Friers; and publiquely at the Globe, By the Kings Maiesties Seruants. The perfect and exact Coppy, with diuerse things Printed, that the length of the Play would not beare in the Presentment. Written by John Webster. Nicholas Okes for Iohn Waterson. [Epistle to George Lord Berkeley, signed ‘John Webster’; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘Thomas Middletonus Poëta et Chron: Londinensis’, ‘Wil: Rowley’, ‘John Ford’; ‘The Actors Names. Bosola, J. Lowin. Ferdinand, 1 R. Burbidge, 2 J. Taylor. Cardinall, 1 H. Cundaile, 2 R. Robinson. Antonio, 1 W. Ostler, 2 R. Benfeild. Delio, J. Underwood. Forobosco, N. Towley. Pescara, J. Rice. Silvio, T. Pollard. Mad-men, N. Towley, J. Underwood, etc. Cardinals Mis, J. Tomson. The Doctor, etc., R. Pallant. Duchess, R. Sharpe.’]
1640; 1678; N.D.
Editions by C. E. Vaughan (1896, T. D.), M. W. Sampson (1904, B. L.), and W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.).—Dissertations: K. Kiesow, Die verschiedenen Bearbeitungen der Novelle von der Herzogin von Amalfi des Bandello in den Literaturen des xvi. und xvii. Jahrhunderts (1895, Anglia, xvii. 199); J. T. Murray, The D. of M. List of the King’s Company (1910, E. D. C. ii. 146); W. J. Lawrence, The Date of the D. of M. (Athenaeum for 21 Nov. 1919); W. Archer, The D. of M. (Nineteenth Century for Jan. 1920).
The actor-list records two distinct casts, one before Ostler’s death on 16 Dec. 1614, the other after Burbadge’s death on 13 March 1619, and before that of Tooley in June 1623. Stoll, 29, quotes the Anglopotrida of Orazio Busino (cf. the abstract in V. P. xv. 134), which appears to show that the play was on the stage at some date not very long before Busino wrote on 7 Feb. 1618:
Prendono giuoco gli Inglesi della nostra religione come di cosa detestabile, et superstitiosa, ne mai rappresentano qualsivoglia attione pubblica, sia pura Tragisatiricomica, che non inserischino dentro uitij, et scelleragini di qualche religioso catolico, facendone risate, et molti scherni, con lor gusto, et ramarico de’ buoni, fu appunto veduto dai nostri, in una Commedia introdur’un frate franciscano, astuto, et ripieno di varie impietà, cosi d’avaritia come di libidine: et il tutto poi ruiscì in una Tragedia, facendoli mozzar la vista in scena. Un altra volta rappresentarono la grandezza d’un cardinale, con li habiti formali, et proprij molti belli, et ricchi, con la sua Corte, facendo in scena erger un Altare, dove finse di far oratione, ordinando una processione: et poi lo ridussero in pubblico con una Meretrice in seno. Dimostrò di dar il Velleno ad una sua sorella, per interesse d’honore: et d’ andar in oltre alla guerra, con depponer prima l’habito cardinalitio sopra l’altare col mezzo de’ suoi Cappellani, con gravità, et finalmente si fece cingere la spada, metter la serpa, con tanto garbo, che niente più: et tutto ciò fanno in sprezzo, delle grandezze ecclesiastice vilipese, et odiate a morte in questo Regno.
Di Londra a’ 7 febaio 1618.
The date of first production may reasonably be put in 1613–14. Crawford has pointed out the resemblances between the play and A Monumental Column (1613) and definite borrowings from Donne’s Anatomy of the World (1612), Chapman’s Petrarch’s Seven Penitentiall Psalms (1612), and Chapman’s Middle Temple mask of 15 Feb. 1613. Lawrence thinks that Campion’s mask of 14 Feb. 1613 is also drawn upon. But it is not impossible that the extant text has undergone revision, in view of borrowings from the 6th edition (1615) of Sir Thomas Overbury’s Characters, to which Sykes calls attention, and of the apparent allusion pointed out by Vaughan in I. i. 5 to the purging of the French Court by Louis XIII after the assassination of Marshall d’Ancre on 14 April 1617. It need not be inferred that this is the ‘enterlude concerninge the late Marquesse d’Ancre’, which the Privy Council ordered the Master of Revels to stay on 22 June 1617 (M. S. C. i. 376).