ABSTRACT
Throughout the book, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi has shown itself to be a representative example of early modern playwrights’ construction of playgoing. In fact, each chapter uses examples from this play to demonstrate its argument. The Coda attempts to tie together all the individual techniques playwrights used to control the audience: performative stage utterances, positive exemplum, anti-mimetic stage-orations, etc. An analysis of The Duchess of Malfi then shows the coherence of the construction of playgoing in the early modern era. This section of the book also contrasts The Duchess of Malfi with Hamlet, showing that while both plays are putting forth a detailed and coherent theory of playgoing, Webster’s play is much more normative than Hamlet’s understanding of performance. The study ends by suggesting that we should decenter Hamlet to produce a more accurate understanding of the culture of drama in early modern London.
