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
T. S. Eliot religious sensibility." After this, he worked on more "commercial" plays for more general audiences: "The Family Reunion" (1939), "The Cocktail Party" (1949), "The Confidential Clerk", (1953) and "The Elder Statesman" (1958) (the latter three were produced by Henry Sherek and directed by E. Martin Browne). The Broadway production in New York of "The Cocktail Party" received the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play. Eliot wrote "The Cocktail Party" while he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study. Regarding his method of playwriting, Eliot explained, "If I set out to write a play, I start by an act