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
Eric Robertson (literary critic) Eric Robertson (literary critic) Eric Robertson is Professor of Modern French Literary and Visual Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research focuses primarily on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and the visual arts, with particular emphasis on European Modernism and the avant-gardes. He is the author of "Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor" (2006), "Writing Between the Lines", a study of the bilingual novelist and essayist René Schickele (1995), and various articles and chapters on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and visual arts. He is also the co-editor of "Yvan Goll - Claire Goll: Texts and Contexts" (1997),