The newly widowed Duchess of Malfi, secretly marries her steward Antonio for love, defying the commands of her brothers that she remain a widow. Their dark motives; including a need to control her fortunes, an irrational obsession with the purity of their blood, and her twin brother’s incestuous desire create an atmosphere of pervasive danger and doom. The play weds sublime poetry and lurid Gothic horror, and has some of most innovative and arresting imagery of any play of its time.