2. Write one sentence summarising how love is presented by Shakespeare in the Elizabethan Era. Use your notes to help if necessary.

6. Who was Webster and what was typical of the Jacobean period? Read through the social and historical context on your handout. What do you think is significant? How would you summarise the period?

7. What happens in The Duchess of Malfi? The play is set in the court of Malfi Italy over the period 1504 to 1510. The recently widowed Duchess falls in love with Antonio, a lowly steward, but her brothers, not wishing her to share their inheritance, forbid her from remarrying. She marries Antonio in secret, and bears him several children. The Duchess' lunatic and incestuously obsessed brother Ferdinand threatens and disowns her. In an attempt to escape, the Duchess and Antonio concoct a story that Antonio has swindled her out of her fortune and has to flee into exile. She takes Bosola into her confidence, not knowing that he is Ferdinand's spy, and arranges that he will deliver her jewellery to Antonio at his hiding-place in Ancona. She will join them later, whilst pretending to make a pilgrimage to a town nearby. The Cardinal hears of the plan, instructs Bosola to banish the two lovers, and sends soldiers to capture them. Antonio escapes with their eldest son, but the Duchess, her maid and her two younger children are returned to Malfi and, under instructions from Ferdinand, die at the hands of executioners under Bosola's command. This experience, combined with a long-standing sense of injustice and his own feeling of a lack of identity, turns Bosola against the Cardinal and his brother. The Cardinal confesses to his mistress Julia his part in the killing of the Duchess, and then murders her to silence her, using a poisoned Bible. Next, Bosola overhears the Cardinal plotting to kill him (though he accepts what he sees as punishment for his actions), and so visits the darkened chapel to kill the Cardinal at his prayers. Instead, he mistakenly kills Antonio, who has just returned to Malfi to attempt a reconciliation with the Cardinal. Bosola then stabs the Cardinal, who dies. In the brawl that follows, Ferdinand and Bosola stab each other to death.

8. Analysing The Duchess of Malfi Despite her brothers’ threats, the end of Act One, Scene One sees the marriage between The Duchess and her chief steward, Antonio. At the time, it would have been expected that a wealthy widow remain unmarried, but she is determined to marry beneath her social status and at times seems driven purely by lust. In this extract the Duchess calls Antonio to write her will. This leads to a discussion about marriage and the Duchess gives her ring to Antonio to soothe a bloodshot eye (the cold metal of the ring was supposed to soothe it). The Duchess declares her intentions and with Cariola as a witness, she believes they do not need the Church to make it any more binding or legal. Read the extract from Act One, Scene One which describes the Duchess’ marriage proposal. What type of love is Webster presenting the audience with?

9. Analysing The Duchess of Malfi We see forbidden, lustful and yet romantic love. The Duchess could be criticised for not following the conventions of the time and ignoring the responsibilities and expectations of her position. She lies to her brothers and defies the church by proclaiming that no church is needed to formalise her marriage. However, the Duchess can also be seen as a powerful, determined woman who is beyond her time as she will not be bound by social conventions. She remains bold and dignified until the end-even in the face of death.

11. The Duchess performs a lengthy and important speech where she discusses the woes and misfortunes of being nobility and capable of love. What does the Duchess complain about in this speech? What reaction in Antonio do you think this speech is designed to provoke?

13. To finish the lesson… What have you learnt about love in The Duchess of Malfi? How is love presented by Webster? Taking account of social and historical context, why might he have presented love in this way? Is this similar/different to the way love is presented in the other time periods we have studied? Homework: Complete your extended answer: How is love presented in the extract from Act One, Scene One of The Duchess of Malfi?

15. What do they need to improve?

18. How the characters interact with each other

20. To finish the lesson… In Webster’s time, most widows did not remarry; wealthy widows even less-not least because, for the first time in their lives, they found themselves truly independent with the means to enjoy it, their identity no longer derived from either husband or father. The Duchess’ passion drives her to challenge conventional chastity. Despite the marriage being fruitful and beneficial, the marriage is ultimately destroyed. What is Webster’s message about love throughout the play? Comment on the scenes you have studied. Why does the Duchess ultimately die? Homework: Essay: Compare the ways Shakespeare and Webster present forbidden love in two extracts of your choice.

22. What does it suggest about John Donne’s views of love?

23. Is this similar or different to the views of love we have seen by other writers?“He is stark mad, whoever says, That he hath been in love an hour,Yet not that love so soon decays, But that it can ten in less space devour “

26. What is metaphysical poetry? Metaphysical poetry typically employs unusual verse forms, complex figures of speech applied to elaborate and surprising metaphorical conceits. Donne’s poetry exhibits each of these characteristics. His jarring, unusual meters; his abstract puns and double entendres; his often bizarre metaphors (in one poem he compares love to a carnivorous fish; in another he pleads with God to make him pure by raping him); and his process of oblique reasoning are all characteristic traits of the metaphysicals, unified in Donne as in no other poet. Metaphysical poetry is concerned with the whole experience of man, but the intelligence, learning and seriousness of the poets means that the poetry is about the profound areas of experience especially - about love, romantic and sensual; about man's relationship with God - the eternal perspective, and, to a less extent, about pleasure, learning and art. Metaphysical poems are lyric poems. They are brief but intense meditations, characterized by striking use of wit, irony and wordplay. Beneath the formal structure (of rhyme, metre and stanza) is the underlying (and often hardly less formal) structure of the poem's argument. There may be two (or more) kinds of argument in a poem.

27. John Donne and Metaphysical poetry John Donne's Songs and Sonnets do not describe a single unchanging view of love; they express a wide variety of emotions and attitudes, as if Donne himself were trying to define his experience of love through his poetry. Love can be an experience of the body, the soul, or both; it can be a religious experience, or merely a sensual one, and it can give rise to emotions ranging from ecstasy to despair. Donne is both a great religious poet and a great erotic poet, and perhaps no other writer strove as hard to unify and express such incongruous, mutually discordant passions. As such, he often contradicts himself in his poetry.

28. THE BROKEN HEART.by John DonneHe is stark mad, whoever says, That he hath been in love an hour,Yet not that love so soon decays, But that it can ten in less space devour ;Who will believe me, if I swearThat I have had the plague a year? Who would not laugh at me, if I should say I saw a flash of powder burn a day?Ah, what a trifle is a heart, If once into love's hands it come !All other griefs allow a part To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;They come to us, but us love draws ;He swallows us and never chaws ; By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die ; He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry. If 'twere not so, what did become Of my heart when I first saw thee?I brought a heart into the room, But from the room I carried none with me.If it had gone to thee, I knowMine would have taught thine heart to show More pity unto me ; but Love, alas ! At one first blow did shiver it as glass.Yet nothing can to nothing fall, Nor any place be empty quite ;Therefore I think my breast hath all Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;And now, as broken glasses showA hundred lesser faces, so My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, But after one such love, can love no more.

29. What is John Donne saying about love in this poem?

30. What is John Donne saying about love in this poem? The poem declares that any man who claims to have loved for an hour is insane. The man is insane, not because love “decays,” but because love “devours.” The poet uses an analogy of the plague and ignited gun powder to love. Similar to the plague and gun powder, love is violent and swift.

32. Structure/form

33. Features of metaphysical poetry (use your handout to help you)If you finish, make notes exploring the similarities and differences between how the writers present love through the different time periods we have studied.

36. What is typical about the presentation of love at this time?

37. Are there any common features it shares with other time periods?Homework: Write a detailed analysis of the ways John Donne presents love in his poetry.