SOURCE: "Webster," in Jacobean Dramatic Perspectives, The University Press of Virginia, 1972, pp. 97-111.

John Russell Brown on The Duchess of Malfi

The Duchess of Malfi, like Webster's other works, is studded with phrases culled from other authors; here are the words of William Alexander, Chapman, Donne, of Florio translating Montaigne and Grimeston translating Matthieu, of Guevara, Joseph Hall, Jonson, Marston, Nashe, Overbury, Pettie translating Guazzo, Sidney, Whetstone, and others; here, too, are many proverbial sayings. Webster did not use these phrases as fixed counters, but retuned, reapplied, recast them for his own purposes. Some of his subtlest dramatic modulations or hesitations, some of his most lyrical or resonant poetry, are made out of stiff phrases taken from prose read, or half-read, with a commonplace book at his side.

John Russell Brown, in an introduction to The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster, Harvard University Press, 1964.

[Here, Kirsch explains...