‘[Stanley is] a sexual terrorist, a tiger on the loose’
Back
Card 7
Front
‘It’s a horror story about the abuse of power, as relevant today as it was in Webster’s own time’
Back
Card 8
Front
‘The society of the play, like Webster’s own, is male-dominated, corrupt and clearly not the meritocracy that the Duchess seems to advocate’
Back
Card 9
Front
‘Webster was much possessed by death and saw the skull beneath the skin’
Back
Card 10
Front
‘Bosola plays all the characters of a revenge tragedy (alienated intellectual, malcontent, intelligencer, tool-villain, murderer, revenger’
Back
Card 11
Front
‘He creates numerous roles for the Duchess – as a caring mother, passionate lover, loyal wife, distant sister, tortured victim’
Back
Card 12
Front
‘Their relationship is fundamentally exhibitionist’
Back
Card 13
Front
‘They are playing out grandiose fantasies that are the culmination of lives in the public eye’
Back
Card 14
Front
‘[Cleopatra] embodies the play’s central conflict – the personal vs the political’
Back
Card 15
Front
‘She is exotic, luxurious, voluptuous, pleasure-principled, “barbarian”/scary non-European, “hysterical”, mad, female: all the things that un-man, un-Roman and disarm Antony’
