The Duchess of Malfi received generally scathing reviews. William Archer, England's chief proponent of Ibsen's new drama, took advantage of the occasion to lambast what he saw as the overestimation of Elizabethan theatre in general. In 1919, the Phoenix Society revived the play in London for the first time in two decades. The production featured Cathleen Nesbitt as the Duchess; Robert Farquharson played Ferdinand. The production was widely disparaged. For many of the newspaper critics, the failure indicated that Webster had become a "curio"; T. S. Eliot, conversely, argued that the production had failed to uncover the elements that made Webster a great dramatist—specifically
Ioan T. Morar of expression. Ioan T. Morar Ioan T. Morar (; born April 13, 1956) is a Romanian journalist, poet, dramatist, novelist, literary and art critic, diplomat and civil society activist. He is a founding member of the satirical magazine "Academia Caţavencu" (to which he notably contributes art and culture reviews) and, since 2004, a senior editor for "Cotidianul". An amateur actor in his youth, he was also a member of the comedy troupe Divertis from the mid-1980s to 1996. Born in Şeitin, Arad County, Morar graduated as a valedictorian from the University of Timişoara's Faculty of Philology (Romanian-French section) in 1981.