The Duchess of Malfi on film: Peter Huby's Quietus

In Jacobean Private Theatre (1987), Keith Sturgess gives a fine account of the original staging of The Duchess of Malfi which repeatedly makes reference to ‘cinematic’ aspects of Webster’s technique in handling the complex interactions of groups of characters on the Blackfriars stage.1 The romantic and violent plot, with its strong invitation to sympathetic identification with the Duchess, also indicates considerable potential box-office appeal. So it is perhaps surprising that till now no major attempt has been made to transfer to the cinema screen the most frequently revived play by one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, though the film I am going to examine in detail later on, Peter Huby’s Quietus (2002), has come closest to doing so.