The Jacobeans on Television: The Duchess of Malfi and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore at Chastleton House

Despite Shakespeare's domination of televised early modern drama, critics have argued that the small screen is particularly well-suited to the psychological and spatial interiority of other Jacobean and Caroline tragedians. To test the claim, this essay examines two BBC productions filmed on location at Jacobean Chastleton House: Webster's Duchess of Malfi, directed by James MacTaggart (1972), and Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, directed by Roland Joffé (1980). While the films' use of Chastleton resembles the type of conservative 'heritage' programming that would rise to prominence in the 1980s, their narratives undermine and scrutinise such 'country house' values. MacTaggart's Malfi is shot studio-style, evoking simultaneously the theatre and the claustrophobic environments called for in Webster's text. The interiority of the characters' suffering is conveyed in a smoothly naturalistic style that re-envisions the play, previously thought of as an 'absurdist, savage farce'. Meanwhile, Joffé's more cinematic 'Tis Pity exploits Ford's vagueness of setting to stage its disruptive violence among the stiff domesticity of a Victorian estate. Where Malfi looks inward to produce a coherent Jacobean vision, 'Tis Pity turns its Caroline heritage outwards to destabilise the upper-class society of both the Victorians and the ascendant Thatcherism of 1980.