Candlelit murder: Gemma Arterton and the duchesses of Malfi – in pictures

Gemma Arterton as the Duchess of Malfi at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. 'It is one of the great female roles in the canon,' writes Michael Billington in his four-star review, 'and Gemma Arterton brings to it beauty, determination and a sense of moral goodness'
Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Elisabeth Bergner (kneeling) in a 1946 George Rylands production of The Duchess of Malfi in New York
Photograph: Eileen Darby/Time and Life/Getty Images

A backstage portrait of Helen Mirren in Adrian Noble's production of The Duchess of Malfi, at the Royal Exchange theatre, Manchester, in 1980. In his review, Michael Billington praised Mirren for portraying 'a woman of strong sexual instincts who yet has a reassuring nobility of character'
Photograph: Terry Smith/Time and Life Pictures/Getty Images

Bob Hoskins played Daniel de Bosola, opposite Mirren, in the Royal Exchange production
Photograph: Hulton Archive

Sebastian Harcombe as Bosola and Imogen Stubbs as the duchess at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, in 2006. The hardest part of playing the duchess, Stubbs told the Guardian, is 'the madness, and to speak the beautiful lines at the same time' Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Charlotte Emmerson (seen here in 2010 with Nick Blood and Claire Dargo) had 'exactly the right mix of defiance and death-wish, passion and pathos' as the duchess at Royal and Derngate, Northampton, according to Michael Billington Photograph: PR

Claudia Huckle and Andrew Watts in The Duchess of Malfi by ENO and Punchdrunk, staged in a former pharmaceuticals factory, in London's Docklands, in 2010 Photograph: Stephen Cummiskey

Eve Best played the duchess at the Old Vic, London, in 2012. Delivering Webster's lines is like 'learning to eat with a chainsaw' she said Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Gemma Arterton as the duchess with Brendan O'Hea as Pescara. To play the part, Arterton has returned to Shakespeare's Globe, where she had made her professional stage debut in 2007, in Love's Labour's Lost Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian