Early Modern Discourses of Lycanthropy and John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi

This article surveys discourses of lycanthropy in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. The lycanthropic imagination underwent significant changes in the seventeenth century. With the rise of a reformed belief that emphasized rationality, werewolf discourses were wedded with medical discourses, particularly those of humoralism, and scholars believed that lycanthropy was a result of excessive black bile, or melancholy. In The Duchess of Malfi Webster follows this discursive trajectory, but his understanding redirects its development; for this playwright, who had an extensive legal education, lycanthropy is an issue raising the question of sovereignty as a lacuna formed within the constitutional body.