Influences Of Niccolo Machiavelli's The Duchess Of Malfi

John Webster, the great Elizabethan dramatist was little admired during his life time. The Elizabethans failed to appraise his genius as a dramatist and after his death he fell for nearly two hundred years into the lap of oblivion to be brought back into the limelight by the criticism of such distinguished critics as Lamb, Swinburne, Rupert Brooke, who popularised his works and establised his claim to be recognised as a great dramatist of Elizabethan age. But now the tide has turned in Webster 's favour and he is recognised today not as a dramatist who carried forward the revenge theme in drama but as a great poet, and above all, a great moralist, who held aloft the moral vision of life at a time when the dramatists of the age were piling horror and glorifying murder into a fine art. This tragedy THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, the revenge is further degraded and the moral motive of the dramatist come to the forefront. There are some influences of other Elizabethan authors. In this journal we can thrash out the influences of Shakespeare and Machiavelli in the tragedy, The duchess of malfi.
The Machiavellian note in the play: Niccolo Machiavelli was a statesman who flourished in Florence during the years 1469-1527.His book the PRINCE was the most popular work of the time and had wide influence . His doctrine may be thus summarized:
(1) One should not allow oneself to be hampered by any kind of moral considerations in the pursuit