The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster

This is the first play I’ve read by John Webster, a Jacobean playwright and contemporary of Shakespeare. Dated around 1612-1613, it is considered one of the greatest tragedies from the Jacobean era. 

1/ The titular character, oddly enough, doesn’t have a name. She is a widow, and at the beginning of the play, her two brothers, Ferdinand (Duke of Calabria) and the Cardinal try to persuade her not to remarry.  

“FERDINAND You are a widow; 

You know already what man is…” 

(Act 1 scene 2) 

That isn’t how it works, man. 

“FERDINAND […] I would have you to give o’er these chargeable revels; 

A visor and a mask are whispering-rooms

That were nev’r built for goodness; fare ye well; 

And women like that part, which, like the lamprey, 

Hath nev’r a bone in’t. 

DUCHESS Fie sir! 

FERDINAND Nay, 

I mean the tongue; variety of courtship; 

What cannot a neat knave with a smooth tale

Make a woman believe?...” 

(ibid.) 

Tongue, sure. The thing I don’t understand is, out of all possible phallic images, why does he pick the lamprey? I googled it—that thing’s going to give me nightmares. 

2/ The imagery in The Duchess of Malfi (except the above) is very good. 

“BOSOLA […] I will thrive some way: blackbirds fatten best in hard weather: why not I, in these dog days?” 

(Act 1 scene 1) 

Bosola is a man who has just returned from the galleys for murder. He is hired by Ferdinand to spy on his sister, the Duchess. He is cynical and sardonic, reminiscent of Apemantus in Timon of Athens and Thersites in Troilus and Cressida—especially Apemantus, because Antonio says Bosola rails at the things he wants, and would be “as lecherous, covetous, or proud/ Bloody, or envious, as any man/ If he had means to be so” (ibid.). 

“BOSOLA He and his brother are like plum trees, that grow crooked over standing polls, they are rich, and o’erladen with fruit, but none but crows, pies, and caterpillars feed on them. Could I be one of their flatt’ring panders, I would hang on their ears like a horse-leech, till I were full, and then drop off. […] There are rewards for hawks, and dogs, when they have done us service; but for a soldier, that hazards his limbs in a battle, nothing but a kind of geometry is his last supportation.

DELIO Geometry? 

BOSOLA Ay, to hang in a fair pair of slings, take his latter swing to the world, upon an honourable pair of crutches, from hospital to hospital: fare ye well sir. And yet do not you scorn us, for places in the court are but like beds in the hospital, where this man’s head lies at that man’s foot, and so lower and lower.” 

(ibid.) 

Metaphor upon metaphor. Isn’t Webster’s language interesting? 

I can’t write down everything, but here’s some more: 

“ANTONIO […] He speaks with others’ tongues, and hears men’s suits 

With others’ ears: will seem to sleep o’th’ bench 

Only to entrap offenders in their answers; 

Dooms men to death by information, 

Rewards, by hearsay. 

DELIO Then the law to him

Is like a foul black cobweb to a spider, 

He makes it his dwelling, and a prison 

To entangle those shall feed him.” 

(Act 1 scene 2) 

Antonio and Delio are talking about the Duke. The court comes across as a rotten place, a wilderness—the language is packed with animal imagery. 

3/ The Cardinal talks to his mistress Julia about her husband Castruchio: 

“CARDINAL […] Thou hadst only kisses from him, and high feeding, 

But what delight was that? ’Twas just like one 

That hath a little fing’ring on the lute, 

Yet cannot tune it: (still you are to thank me.)” 

(Act 2 scene 4) 

That’s an interesting way to talk about a man who can’t satisfy his wife. The Cardinal, as we can see in this scene, is a misogynist; so are his brother and Bosola. Ferdinand’s anger, when he discovers that the Duchess has given birth, is abnormal.  

“FERDINAND […] ’Tis not your whore’s milk, that shall quench my milk-fire 

But your whore’s blood.” 

(Act 2 scene 5) 

It’s an odd thing to say about one’s sister. 

“FERDINAND […] I could kill her now, 

In you, or in myself, for I do think 

It is some sin in us, Heaven doth revenge 

By her. 

CARDINAL Are you stark mad? 

FERDINAND I would have their bodies 

Burnt in a coal-pit, with the ventage stopp’d, 

That their curs’d smoke might not ascend to Heaven:

Or dip the sheets they lie in, in pitch or sulphur, 

Wrap them in’t, and then light them like a match: 

Or else to boil their bastard to a cullis, 

And giv’t his lecherous father, to renew

The sin of his back.” 

(ibid.) 

Even his brother thinks that’s crazy, and says “I’ll leave you”. This is not the anger of a brother who wants his widow sister to remain unmarried and sees her disobey him—his rage is more like the rage of Othello, Leontes, or Posthumus. You may argue that Hero’s father in Much Ado About Nothing also wants her dead, because of dishonour, but he doesn’t use such language. Ferdinand clearly has some incestuous feelings for his sister. What he says about love potions, in the following scene, sounds as though he has tried them and found them ineffective.  

What’s the significance of him and the Duchess being twins? 

4/ The Duchess of Malfi may be what people today call a sex-positive play. The Duchess doesn’t want to comply with her brothers’ irrational demand, and doesn’t want to remain unmarried for the rest of her life after her first husband’s death. She loves Antonio, and she likes sex.  

“DUCHESS To what rule will you put me? 

ANTONIO We’ll sleep together. 

DUCHESS Alas, what pleasure can two lovers find in sleep?” 

(Act 3 scene 2) 

Wink wink. 

Her maid Cariola chimes in. 

“CARIOLA My lord, I lie with her often: and I know 

She’ll much disquiet you. 

ANTONIO See, you are complain’d of. 

CARIOLA For she’s the sprawling’st bedfellow. 

ANTONIO I shall like her the better for that.” 

(ibid.) 

Hahaha. 

Webster portrays her as a woman with feelings and desires, a woman who asserts her independence and refuses to be controlled by her brothers; he doesn’t portray her as a lascivious, loose woman. Her marriage to Antonio is a secret, but they’re nonetheless married—she is different from Julia.   

I think most readers today would like the nuanced portrait of the Duchess. She even proposes to Antonio!

Throughout the entire play, she stands upright and believes in herself: why can’t she remarry? Does she ask to change customs? What is wrong about her marriage? As Bosola and others throw accusations at her and talk about killing her, she remains dignified, reminiscent of Hermione in The Winter’s Tale. 

“DUCHESS […] I know death hath ten thousand several doors 

For men to take their Exits…” 

(Act 4 scene 2) 

Is that linked to the idea of “All the world’s a stage”? Shakespeare several times compares life to the stage, in As You Like It, in The Merchant of Venice, in Macbeth… The same comparison can be found in Webster. 

“DUCHESS […] I account this world a tedious theatre, 

For I do play a part in’t ’gainst my will.”

(Act 4 scene 1) 

That could be said by Bosola, who is forced to play the part of a spy, and a murderer. 

“FERDINAND […] For thee, (as we observe in tragedies 

That a good actor many times is curs’d 

For playing a villain’s part) I hate thee for’t…” 

(Act 4 scene 2)

And at the end, when Bosola is asked how Antonio is dead:

“BOSOLA In a mist: I know not how; 

Such a mistake as I have often seen 

In a play…” 

(Act 5 scene 5) 

Now that’s meta. 

5/ I can’t help raising some questions—the realist in me gets in the way again. What does the Duchess’s son to her late husband do all this time? How old is he? How old is she? How old are the children of the Duchess and Antonio? How much time passes throughout the play? Why does Ferdinand do nothing after learning about the first child, and let them have another two children before he takes action?

Why does he have her killed, after all that time? 

When Ferdinand looks at her dead body, the lines are good:  

“BOSOLA Do you not weep?

Other sins only speak; murther shrieks out: 

The element of water moistens the earth, 

But blood flies upwards, and bedews the heavens. 

FERDINAND Cover her face. My eyes dazzle: she di’d young.” 

(ibid.) 

The writing is so good. But his guilt and remorse are not quite believable to me. Compare it to Othello: the murder of Desdemona is also premeditated, but everything moves very quickly from the moment Iago first poisons Othello’s ears, and not much time passes between Othello talking about killing Desdemona and the murder itself; he kills her in heated passion, and seems to be in a daze afterwards, and only fully realises what he has done when he hears the truth from Emilia. 

In contrast, Ferdinand first speaks of killing his sister when he learns about the birth of the first baby, but lets her and Antonio have two more children before he has her killed—lots of time has passed, lots of time to think about what he’s doing, lots of time to change his course. He doesn’t feel moved looking at the bodies of the kids. But soon after seeing the body of the Duchess, he changes, realising what he has done, and blames Bosola for not pitying her. Psychologically it doesn’t quite make sense. 

Bosola however is believable. He’s felt torn from the start, but has to do it because he’s hired by the Duke. 

“BOSOLA […] while with vain hopes our faculties we tire,

We seem to sweat in ice and freeze in fire; 

What would I do, were this to do again?

I would not change my peace of conscience 

For all the wealth of Europe. She stirs; here’s life. 

Return, fair soul, from darkness, and lead mine

Out of this sensible hell…” 

(ibid.)

And when she’s truly dead:

“BOSOLA […] Oh sacred innocence, that sweetly sleeps

On turtles’ feathers: whilst a guilty conscience 

Is a black register, wherein is writ 

All our good deeds and bad; a perspective

That shows us hell; that we cannot be suffer’d 

To do good when we have a mind to it! 

This is manly sorrow: 

These tears, I am very certain, never grew 

In my mother’s milk. My estate is sunk 

Below the degree of fear: where were 

These penitent fountains while she was living?

Oh, they were frozen up: here is a sight 

As direful to my soul as is the sword 

Unto a wretch hath slain his father…” 

(ibid.) 

All the faults of characterisation and psychology (or so they seem to me) don’t seem to matter much when the poetry is so good. 

6/ The context is silly, but I like these lines: 

“FERDINAND […] Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, 

Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.” 

(Act 5 scene 5) 

7/ As I haven’t read anything else, I don’t want to make generalisations about John Webster. My impression is that he’s very different from Shakespeare, though I’m not sure how to explain it, and The Duchess of Malfi has a very distinctive atmosphere. The play also has many striking and dreamlike images, such as the scene of the madmen, the scene of Antonio and his friend Delio and the echo from the Duchess’s grave, or the image of the mad Ferdinand thinking he's a wolf. 

It also has a darker vision. 

“DUCHESS […] Farewell boy, 

Thou art happy, that thou hast not understanding

To know thy misery. For all our wit

And reading brings us a truer sense 

Of sorrow…” 

(Act 3 scene 5) 

And: 

“ANTONIO […] In all our quest of greatness, 

Like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care, 

We follow after bubbles, blown in th’air. 

Pleasure of life, what is’t? only the good hours

Of an ague: merely a preparative to rest, 

To endure vexation…” 

(Act 5 scene 4) 

That’s such a great passage. 

Outside the Shakespeare canon, The Duchess of Malfi is probably my favourite of the Elizabethan and Jacobean plays I’ve read.