BEGC - 107

British Poetry and Drama:

Indira Gandhi
17th and 18th Centuries
National Open University
School of Humanities

BLOCK-1
John Webster: Duchess of Malfi
BLOCK-2
John Milton: Lycidas, Sonnet XIX,
L’Allegro, Il Pensoroso 51
BLOCK-3
John Dryden: Mac Flecknoe 129
BLOCK-4
Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock 179
 BEGC - 107
British Poetry and Drama:
Indira Gandhi
17th and 18th Centuries
National Open University
School of Humanities

Block

1
DUCHESS OF MALFI
UNIT 1
The Jacobean Drama and John Webster: An
Introduction 7
UNIT 2
John Webster: The Playwright and his Dramatic Art 17
UNIT 3
The Duchess of Malfi: Textual Analysis 28
UNIT 4
The Duchess of Malfi: Character Analysis &
Critical perspectives 39
EXPERT COMMITTEE
Prof Ameena Kazi Ansari Dr Ipshita Hajra Sasmal Mr Ramesh Menon
Jamia Millia Islamia, Ambedkar University, Symbiosis Institute of
New Delhi New Delhi Management and
Communication, Pune
Dr Anand Prakash Dr Cheryl R Jacob
(Retd) Hansraj College (DU), Ambedkar University, Prof. Malati Mathur
New Delhi New Delhi Director, School of Humanities
Dr Hema Raghavan Dr. Chhaya Sawhney IGNOU (FACULTY ENGLISH)
(Retd) Principal, Gargi College Gargi College, DU, New Delhi Prof. Malati Mathur
(DU), New Delhi Prof. Neera Singh
Dr. Vandita Gautam
Dr Nupur Samuel Motilal Nehru College Prof. Nandini Sahu
Ambedkar University, (DU), Delhi Prof. Parmod Kumar
New Delhi Dr. Pema Eden Samdup Ambedkar
Dr. Chinganbam Anupama
Dr Ruchi Kaushik Kalindi College (DU), Ms. Mridula Rashmi Kindo
SRCC (DU), New Delhi New Delhi Dr. Malathy A

COORDINATION AND EDITING (Block 1)

Prof. Parmod Kumar,
School of Humanities, IGNOU
COURSE WRITERS
Dr Vipin Chauhan, PGDAV College, DU(Unit 1 & 2)
Arun Awana, Kalindi College, DU(Unit 3 & 4)

SECRETARIAL ASSISTANCE
Mr. Anil Kumar, JAT, SOH, IGNOU

COURSE COORDINATION (BLOCK 2)

Dr. Pema Eden Samdup, School of Humanities, IGNOU

COURSE PREPARATION & EDITING (BLOCK 2)

Dr. Pema Eden Samdup: Unit 1, Unit 3: Sections 3.0 to 3.2;
Ms. Savita Pathak: Aurobindo College, Unit 2, Unit 3: Section 3.6; Unit 4: All Sections except 4.4
Ms. Nisha: Unit 3, Sections 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5, Unit 4, Section 4.4

SECRETARIAL ASSISTANCE
Ms. Munni Naudiyal, Executive Assistant (DP), SOH, IGNOU

COORDINATION & EDITING (BLOCK 3)

Prof Malati Mathur, School of Humanities, IGNOU
The block has been adapted from existing IGNOU study Materials

SECRETARIAL ASSISTANCE
Ms. Premlata Lingwal, PA, SOH, IGNOU

COORDINATION AND EDITING (BLOCK 4)

Prof. Neera Singh, School of Humanities, IGNOU

COURSE PREPARATION
Prof. Hema Raghavan, (Retd.) Principal, Gargi College (DU), N Delhi

SECRETARIAL ASSISTANCE
Ms. Monika Syal, Assistant Executive (DP), SOH, IGNOU

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COURSE INTRODUCTION
This course forms a part of the many core courses devoted to the development of
English Literature through the ages. The 17th and 18th centuries encompass three
major chunks in British Literary History: The Renaissance - or really, the end of
it. The early 17th century is also known as the ‘Jacobean era’ in England. The
Caroline and Restoration periods filled up the latter half of the 17th century. The
first half of the 18th century is also known as the ‘Augustan Era’ or The Age of
Reason. This course will offer a study of Milton, Webster, Pope and Dryden.
The Course BEGC -107, British Poetry & Drama: 17th& 18th Centuries is divided
into four blocks.
Block I: John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi
Block II: John Milton: Lycidas, Sonnet XIX, L’ Allegro, II Pensoroso
Block III: John Dryden: Mac Flecknoe
Block IV: Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock
Duchess of Malfi
BLOCK INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the Study of the play Duchess of Malfi.
Analysts of British Drama have explored the source material for The Duchess of
Malfi and the play’s reception over the last 200 years, and have come out with
the opinion that Webster uses the tragedy to offer a vision of human existence as
chaotic and unstable. In this block, we try to offer you a complete view of this
drama/Play through four units.
The first unit is designed in such a way to offer a brief introduction to Jacobean
Drama and offer insights on major phases in John Webster’s dramatic career and
literary landmarks in Webster’s biography so that his achievements as a dramatist
can be examined against the background of his time and various influences
governing it.
In the second unit, an attempt has been made to (I) understand the underpinnings
of John Webster’s concept of tragedy, (2) his contribution to the tradition of
‘revenge plays’, (3) identify the dominant tendencies of his age, (4) critically
analyze the factors that lead to decline of drama during his age.
In Unit three, we will be analysing the play The Duchess of Malfi from a critical
point of view. We will begin with a brief explanation on how to read the play by
discussing John Webster’s skill in plot- construction and the sources, setting and
themes of the play. This will help us in understanding the play and appreciate its
dramatic appeal. This will be followed by a brief summary of the play. In addition
to this, we will also discuss John Webster’s art of characterization.
The last Unit of the block is aimed at providing a deeper understanding of the
play by analysing the major characters and their function in the play that allows
us to critically examine issues pertaining to gender, nobility, abuse of power and
prevailing corruption. Finally, we will end with a few questions, which will help
us to encapsulate what we have studied so far.
In an oft-quoted line, T S Eliot said that Webster was ‘much possessed by death’.
But The Duchess of Malfi, like The White Devil, is much more than a procession
of morbid horrors. You will be able to acquire complete understanding of all the
myriad facets of the important drama.
Enjoy reading the play to begin with followed by all the units.

6
 The Jacobean Drama and
UNIT 1 THE JACOBEAN DRAMA AND JOHN Johan Webster: An
Introduction
WEBSTER: AN INTRODUCTION
Structure

1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Influences on Jacobean Drama
1.3 A Brief History of English Drama and Tragedy Before Webster
1.3.1 Medieval and Marlowian Tragedy
1.3.2 The Senecan or Horror Tragedy
1.3.3 Shakespearean Tragedy
1.4 John Webster: A Short Biography
1.4.1 Literary Achievements of John Webster, his Age and Influences
1.5 John Webster and his Works
1.6 Let Us Sum Up
1.7 Questions

1.0 OBJECTIVES
Our primary objective in this unit is to offer a brief introduction to Jacobean
Drama and offer insights on major phases in John Webster’s dramatic career and
literary landmarks in Webster’s biography so that his achievements as a dramatist
can be examined against the background of his time and various influences
governing it.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
John Webster (1580-1632) is associated with the age of Queen Elizabeth (1558-
1603) and that of James I (1603-1625). England produced a number of poets and
dramatists, uniquely, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) who could be unmatched
by any of those who were the product of the Jacobean period. Webster who was
born in the Elizabethan age, but his literary career ostensibly began and ended
during the period when James I had been ruling over England. The age of John
Webster can be called-the age of transition because it constitutes the last decade
of the 16thcentury and early decades of the 17thcentury. The Renaissance urge had
fatigued itself, the Elizabethan frolic for life had disappeared, and the Elizabethan
spry and hood had been succeeded by a mood of vexation, disappointment and
defeat. The literature of any age cannot remain unstirred by political condition of
that specific timescale. R.Sundra Raju says, “The mood and the tone of Jacobean
drama were to a great extent influenced by the political situation in England
during the first quarter of the seventeenth century. The glamour of the spacious
times of Queen Elizabeth was over nearly a decade before the great Queen’s
death end a nervous feeling of political uncertainty and a vague feeling of
apprehension of a possible civil war over succession gradually took the place of
joyous contentment in the minds of the people. There seemed to be a large number 7
Duchess of Malfi of contenders for the English crown: James of Scotland, LadyArbella Stuart, The
Infanta of Spain and certain English nobles of royal blood.” In 1602, it was
considered that James I’s - the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Lord Darnley,
and the great grandson of Margaret, daughter of Henry VII claim to produce
himself as probable heir was stronger than anyone else and his claim was based
upon the right of descent. By his elevation, the Crowns of England and Scotland
were united under one king.
Being ruled by unworthy favorites, well-read and shrewd James I gained the title
of the “Wisest fool in Christendom.” Therefore, during his reign, the Court of
England lost all its traditional dignity. State business was a secondary business to
the king, the primary being hunting. His wife had no love for her husband. By
nature, she was profligate and spent a lot of money on mirth. She was a Catholic.
Because of his unpleasant tastes, ways of living and policies, James I had to face
many problems and plots. First unsuccessful conspiracy to depose James was
hatched by Lord Cobham in 1603. Second unsuccessful conspiracy, in order to
force James to grant religious toleration to the Catholics was formed by Waston,
a Roman Catholic priest. Third unsuccessful gun-powder conspiracy to blow up
the King and Parliament together was planned by the Catholics, Robert Cates
and Guy Fawkes in 1605. This resulted in the framing of more severe laws against
the Catholics and the people in the country started feeling themselves more and
more quandary and mystifying. These constant conspiracies against the king
created differences between him and the religious circles and the wise Elizabethan
religious ties broke down. His continuous ignorance of the English tongue and
the consequent failure to communicate with people, his uncouth appearance and
awkward manners, his theory of the Divine Right of kings advanced as a
justification of his despotic rule, and the fact that his queen was a catholic, all
contributed to his unpopularity and the antagonism of the people. In this connection
G. B. Harrison observes: “Sober observers were disgusted by the blatant
scrambling for the many offices and emoluments which were now vacant. Court
officials took bribes to introduce dubious candidates for the knighthoods so
lavishly bestowed. In his first year the King knighted more than nine hundred,
and it was a court joke that an usher had pushed aside the Knights to make room
for gentlemen”.
Neither the Puritans nor the Roman Catholics were favoured by the king. In fact,
he attested his faith in Episcopacy, i.e., government of the Church by bishops
because of his firm belief in the motto- “No bishops, no kings”, if Episcopacy
was overthrown, the monarchy would be endangered. It might be his doubt that
a democratic Church might pave the way for a democratic State therefore he did
not like ‘the Presbyterian’, democratic in character, form of religion. The critical
temper of the age is reflected in its almost all the forms of literature-prose, poetry
and drama.

1.2 INFLUENCES ON JACOBEAN DRAMA

In ‘The Cambridge History of English Literature’,G.C.Macaulay writes, ‘The
court of James I had lost the chivalrous aspirations of the earlier time and the
moral corruption which had been held in check, atleast to some extent, by noble
ideals had become alarmingly prominent in the life of the upper classes of society.
8 Shallowness and frivolity characterized the manners of the court, even where
these were not tinged with gross vices, and a certain superficial brilliancy had The Jacobean Drama and
Johan Webster: An
taken the place of more estimable qualities. Introduction

In the Jacobean age, the literary condition shows a curious complexity and
diversity. A number of writers like Bacon, Shakespeare, Daniel and others although
belonging to the age of Queen Elizabeth, continued to produce works even during
the following period of James I. The coming generation of writers was bound to
be influenced by the great masters like Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Drayton, of
the preceding age. In the hands of Shakespeare, English tragedy had touched
its zenith of perfection and excellence, but after making resounding success,
drama had reached its verge of decline in the seventeenth century. With the
advent of Webster on the literary scene this languishing form got a new ray of
hope and life.
Seneca and Machiavelli are the names who influenced the drama of this age. The
Italian philosopher and dramatist Seneca greatly influenced Webster in Nero’s
time. Webster and his contemporaries found the Senecan theme of revenge most
exciting and catchy for their works. For the early Elizabethan tragedians like
Kyd, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, it was Seneca who provided the model. Seneca’s
plays were mostly based on Greek mythological stories and also, exhibited much
of the formal characteristics of Greek drama. However, the tone and spirit of his
plays were entirely different from Greek plays. In his plays “human motive of
revenge” took the place of the “overmastering fate”. Barbaric and reprisal actions
were reported in stylistic and moralizing speeches.
In England with the publication of the English translations of Seneca’s plays
from 1559 to 1581, dramatists started writing on the theme of revenge. In imitation
of Senecan tragedy Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton produced Gorboduc
(1561), first English tragedy.On the same theme Kyd wrote The Spanish Tragedy
(1587) and Marlowe produced The Jew of Malta (1590) and after these two,
Shakespeare in Hamlet (1599) projected the theme of ‘Revenge’ a philosophical
grandeur. This tradition of revenge was later on followed by Chapman in Bussy
D’ Ambois(1603), by Tourneur in The Revenger’s Tragedy(1607), and by Webster
in The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi.
Another influence on the Jacobean drama was that of Machiavelli’s The Prince
(1532), widely read but its teachings were largely misunderstood. He was
understood to provide a materialistic and satanic interpretation of the world order.
This advice of Machiavelli led the Jacobean dramatists, particularly Webster, to
create characters highly manipulative and intriguing. The White Devil and The
Duchess of Malfi abound in such characters. The invasion of the old cosmology
by the new philosophy brought a sense of disorder and decay. It was an age of
transition in which the old order collided with the new, and Webster was virtually
suspended between two worlds, the old world of decay, and the new world of
progress. Webster’s writings tried to search for a new moral system, for a new set
of values and ideals to replace the old and crumbling ones. He was unable to give
any answer to the baffling problems of life and life after death but he was quite
certain that he regards the Supreme Power, a power which cannot endure evil for
any length of time that finally expels evil, though at the cost of much that is
good. On speaking of Webster’s morality and vision of life, David Cecil writes,
‘Such then is Webster’s tragic vision of the world: a fallen place in which suffering
outweighs happiness and all activities are tainted with sin; where evil is the
controlling force, and good- just because it is good-is inevitably quietest; hoping 9
Duchess of Malfi at best all with luck, to slip through the tempest of existence, unnoticed. Yet it is
also a place where the moral law cannot be thwarted indefinitely. So that finally
evil destroys itself; justice is vindicated,
Let guilty men remember their black deeds,
Do lean on crutches made of slender reeds.
In this, the final couplet of The White Devil, Webster, states the moral truth which
the whole preceding drama has been designed to illustrate. In the end virtue is
glorified, but only beyond death.’
The result, of the collision of these two worlds was the major change in in the
university curriculum. The study of Astronomy, Mathematics, Physics,
Chemistry and other Sciences replaced the study of logic, rhetoric and theology
etc. This is so much so the case that is has become natural to speak of, ‘the
two worlds’ of Webster, one is the fragmented medieval world of Scholastic
‘Philosophy, Science and Metaphysics’ and other is the rising world of the
New Philosophy. Faith in the older world-order was thus shaken, but a new
and more stable order had not yet developed. Man was literally caught between
‘two worlds’. Such uncertainty gave birth to distressed, phobia and anxiety
among the people. Una Ellis Fermor says, ‘Webster brings passionate curiosity
to a consideration of these questions and it is for this reason that he concentrates
upon the moments of high crisis and sufferings, most of all upon the moments
of death. He brings his characters to the verge of death and holds them there,
suspended, subject to his questioning.’

1.3 A BRIEF HISTORY OF ENGLISH DRAMA AND

TRAGEDY BEFORE WEBSTER
From the eleventh century, not only the English Drama, but also Dramas of other
nations as well were deep-seated/entrenched in the religious/reverent proneness
of mankind. Even the ancient Greek and Roman dramas were mostly worried
with religious ceremonials of people. The earliest dramatic portrayal in England
is believed to have been the performance of a Latin play in honour of St. Katherine
at Dunstable in 1110. By the time of the Roman Conquest (1066), a form of
religious drama had already entrenched itself in France, and it soon found its
way into England. Its purpose was directly heuristic, or edifying; it was the work
of priests who used it as the means of conveying the truths of their religion to the
unlettered masses.
In the beginning, this drama was completely controlled by the church; the church
buildings were used for the performances; the priests were the performers and
Latin was the language employed. This form of Drama was known as the Miracle
or mystery play. The Material for the Mystery plays was drawn from the Bible
and these plays expended the mysteries bound with religion. In the 14th century,
this religious drama outstretched its height in nearly all larger English towns at
the festival of Corpus Christi. These Corpus Christi plays were also known as
‘collective Mysteries’, which were displayed the whole story of the fall of man
and of man’s redemption. In spite of crude in literary quality, these plays strike
both - the note of pathos and the note of tragedy.

10 The third stage, in the history of English drama, is the rise of Morality play. Like
the Miracle play, this was didactic in purpose but its characters were personified The Jacobean Drama and
Johan Webster: An
concepts not being taken from the Bible or from the legends of saints. Early in Introduction
the 16th century, the late product of the dramatic development of the Morality
play was ‘Interlude - It was a short dramatic piece of a satiric rather than of
religious or ethnic nature, and purpose far less serious than the morality play.
The interludes were often acted by the household servants of lords. The Interludes
dealing with the Old Faith gave place to others that set forth the teaching of
Reformation, e.g. Hyche Scorner, Lusty Taventres, New Custom etc. Others
concerned the New Learning, Nature of the Four Elements, The Trial of
Treasure etc.

It was, however, under direct impact of the Renaissance that English comedy
and tragedy alike passed out of these preliminary phases of their development
into forms of art. The Moralities with their mystical characters led to greater
attention being paid to the plot, whilst gradually the abstract personification began
to emerge into real people with individual idiosyncrasies (a strange or unusual
habit). The Moralities, like the Miracles, were adapted to the audience. Comic
scenes were introduced to relieve the seriousness of these medieval “problem”
plays. A number of plays exist in which the transition stages of the Morality can
be plainly discerned as Comedy and Morality in Town Tiler and his Wife, Tragedy
and Morality in King Canbyses and Apius and Virginia, History and Morality in
Bales’s King Johan.

1.3.1 Medieval and Marlowian Tragedy

In pre-Shakespearean drama, Christopher Marlowe, certainly is the greatest
figure. Four powerful tragedies: Tamburlaine, Dr Faustus, The Jew of Malta
and Edward II, were left behind by him. These tragedies carry one central figure
that is consumed by the lust for power, beauty or knowledge. For the middle
ages, tragedy was a thing of kings and princes, but for Marlowe it is a matter of
individual heroes. In the old conception, tragedy delineated the fall of the hero
under the control of fate. It was brought about by the gods and was regarded as
a punishment for his sins. The element of struggle or conflict was introduced
by Marlowe. The medieval conception of tragedy was a decidedly moral one.
By this way, He revolutionised the old conception of tragedy and made it fit for
the needs and new urges of the Renaissance. Marlowe added poetic grandeur
and poetic excellence to tragedy. In place of rhyming lines, he introduced and
perfected the blank verse. He gave English tragedy its true metre and diction. It
can easily be said that Shakespearean tragedy would not have been possible
without the Marlowian blank verse. Marlowe has written no drama of love; he
can be called a poet of love in no sense. The tender emotions and the sentiment
of love were external to his temper. It may even be doubted, if sexual pleasure
had any powerful attraction for him. Dr Faustus’ desire for beauty beyond human
reach is a form of the soul’s desire for power. It’s not a trivial thirst for pleasure
but a longing to achieve the unattainable, and hold in human grasp the bliss
reserved for a god.

In brief, Marlowe’s tragedies are essentially one-man plays. It is about the

mastering passion of the tragic heroes for the impossible, which causes them
terrible suffering and which ultimately drives them to their doom. 11
Duchess of Malfi 1.3.2 The Senecan or Horror Tragedy
In the Elizabethan Age, there was an unequalled revival /amelioration of ancient
learning and masterpieces of Greece and Rome were much studied and translated.
The influence of Seneca predominated and his ten tragedies were translated into
English. The first tragedy of the Senecan school to be written in England is
Gorboduc or Ferrex and Porrexin 1562of Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton.
The first unrelieved but immense popular English tragedy is The Spanish Tragedy
by Kyd in 1587. It is very important for it gave rise to the trend of the revenge
play. These tragedies have the following features:
A. Images are used in plenty with very little of action and much narration.
B. The idea of tragedy is associated/equated with crime.
C. Use of chorus to explain.
D. There is no dramatic relief because it is an unrelieved tragedy.
E. The motif for crime is revenge. In the end, there is retribution, divine
punishment for the same crime.

1.3.3 SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

Shakespeare has penned a number of plays which end in tragedy but among them
four- Othello, Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth are called ‘Pure’ tragedies and
they rank with the greatest tragedies of the world, both of ancient and modern
times. His tragedies are tales of suffering resulting in death, and suffering that
are not caused by fate, destiny or some other outside agency, but by the action of
the tragic hero himself. The ‘tragic flaw’ in his character makes him commit
error after error and these errors spell his doom. That is why a Shakespearean
tragedy has been called ‘the apotheosis of the human spirit’. His tragedy is never
gloomy while it soothes, strengthens and enervates. Shakespeare also introduces
the supernatural. He introduces ghosts and witches who have supernatural
knowledge. The supernatural is always placed in the closest relation to character
and action. There is no poetic justice in Shakespearean tragedy and this is also
the case with Webster. In other words, there is no poetic justice, there is partial
justice. Such was the tradition of tragedy which Webster inherited. He worked
upon it, and made it entirely his own. In this way, he created a tragedy which is
the pride and glory of post-Shakespearean tragedy in England.

1.4 JOHN WEBSTER: A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

John Webster, is among those few, who have secured a place in the hermitage of
fame by producing only a few works in the English Literature. It is not much
known about John Webster, one of the greatest dramatists of the Elizabethan age
which generated a number of poets and dramatists abjectly, William Shakespeare.
Being brought into comparison with the greatest dramatist of all time itself is
recognition of Webster’s greatness.He attempted his skills to write comedies but
could not get success. His prowess was essentially tragic. In the words of Bogard,
“Shakespearean tragedy is individual, with a suggested generality of
application.Websterian tragedy is broadly social, with individuals serving as
12
normative examples of Webster’s conception of life, in this it is like the tragedy The Jacobean Drama and
Johan Webster: An
of Chapman. And it is like Chapman’s further, in that it is not a record of spiritual Introduction
growth through suffering, but of tenacious resistance to oppression.” It is worth
noticing that this eminent position of his is attained merely from two of his plays,
The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. Within his so-called narrow limits,
Webster shows a profound knowledge of human character and a keen sense of
tragic issues of human life.
Nothing certain is known of his parents,wife and children.He may be Johannes
Webster’s son or heir of Johannes Webster of London,who was recorded to have
been admitted to the Middle Temple in 1598.In the preface of ‘Monuments of
Honour’,he says that he was born free of the Merchant Taylor’s company. In The
Duchess of Malfi,which printed in 1623, Ford describes him:
Crown Him a poet, Whom Rome, nor Greece,
Transcend in all theirs, for a master-peace
In the words of Legoius, “Of all the Elizabethans, it is John Webster who, after
long oblivion, was most belauded by the Romantics. About the man it has been
possible to discover hardly anything.It was quite certain that he was born
somewhere between 1570 and 1580 and he disappeared in 1624.”In the words of
David Cecil, “Webster seems to many critics to be a dramatist of blood and
thunder,and a writer of revenge plays and horror dramas,one who is saved from
absurdity by the magnificence of his language and the intensity of individual
scenes. But far from being a mere flamboyant sensation-monger, an unthinking
composer of eloquent melodramas, he is a stern moral teacher whose plays are
carefully designed to enforce the philosophy of human conduct in which he
believes. His vision is a moral one. Webster sees life as good and evil. Here we
come to one of the key facts about him. He was a child of his age; the age of
Reformation: and he conceived morality in religious terms. An act to him was
wrong, not because it interfered with the happiness of man in this world, but
because it was a sin; a breach of the eternal laws established by the God who
created man. Moreover, it was a voluntary breach. Here again he reveals himself
the child of a Christian society. Men to him are not the helpless sport of an
indifferent fate as they were to the Greeks. Possessed of free will, his villains sin
deliberately. These evil voluntary acts are the cause of human tragedy. Indeed,
his subject matter may be summed up as a study of the working of sin in the
world… The world as seen by him is, of its nature, incurably corrupt. To be
involved in it is to be inescapably involved in evil: all its apparent beauties are a
snare and a delusion.”

1.4.1 Literary Achievements of John Webster and his Age and

Influences
His career of literary activities and achievements began from 1602. About him,
one of the renowned critic Emile Legouis comments, “He wrote for the stage
from 1602 onwards, serving for five years a sort of apprenticeship as collaborator
with Heywood, Middleton, Marston and especially, Dekker, but his part, doubtless
a subordinate one, in the works to which he contributed cannot be distinguished.
His two masterpieces were produced between 1611 and 1614. He relapsed after
them to mediocrity, and of his later work only his Roman play Appius and Virginia,
13
Duchess of Malfi which dates from about 1600, has some merit. His authorship of it is today
disputed, certain critics assigning it to Heywood.”
According to Vaughan, his literary activity falls, into three periods: the first, that
of collaboration and apprenticeship (1602-1607); the second, that of the two
great tragedies (1610-1614); the third, that of the tragi-comedies, and, probably,
of Appius and Virginia beginning about 1620, the probable date of the Devil’s
Law Case. and ending at a time unknown to us.”
During the first period of his career (1602-1607) Webster did not produced
independent work as he was in collaboration with other dramatists namely -
Heywood, Middleton, Marston, and especially Dekker.He is supposed to have
collaborated with Middleton and others in the writing of two plays Caesar’s Fall
and The Two Harpies which are not in existence today. Lady Jane is another
play, which he wrote in collaboration with Dekker, Heywood and Wentworth.
He also contributed to the second edition of Marston’s Tin’s Malcontent (1604).By
1607, he had produced two citizen comedies, West-Ward Hoe and North-Ward
Hoe in partnership with Dekker.
The second period (1610-1614) marks the top of Webster’s achievements in
the field of literature. It was during this period he produced his original and
world-famous works. These works were The White Devil or Vittoria Corombona
(about 1619) and The Duchess of Malfi (about 1612) and it was first staged in
1614 by The King’s Men, Shakespeare’s company. It entrenched Webster as a
prime dramatic voice of his age.His genius as a dramatist is best shown in
these two plays. Both these plays are based on the material drawn from the
court-life of Italy. Legouis says, “‘Webster’s genius’ is seen in The White Devil,
especially in his portrait of Vittoria, the courtesan, whose license scandalized
Rome at the end of the sixteenth century. It is she who is the white devil. He
makes her guilt clear, but at the same time conveys an impression of her
fascination, which he seems himself to feel. He is all admiration for this woman’s
beauty, the energy of her ambition and the presence of mind with which she
faces desperate situations. As the wife of a poor gentleman, ‘she is courted by
Brachiano, Duke of Padua and she convinces him that he must marry her, first
ridding her of her husband and himself of his virtuous wife. The double murder
is accomplished, but suspicion rests on those who profit by it.’ Vittoria faces a
trial and is nonetheless condemned to seclusion in a house of convertites, but
escapes from it with her lover’s help. They are pursued by the vengeance of the
Duke of Florence and killed one after the other, Vittoria holding out until she
has exhausted every resource of invention, cunning, and courage. Even in her
First hour she defends herself haughtily and, counting on the effects of her
beauty, bares her bosom and walks to meet her assassins. She dies at last,
confronting Fate with her last words:
My soul like to a ship in a black storm,
ls driven, I know not whither
Beside her is her brother Flamineo, her tool, who has debauched her to advance
her fortunes and whom she uses for her for love-affairs. It is he who causes her
unwanted husband to disappear. He is vice incarnate, but his intrepidity in ill-
doing, his lucid-intelligence and his moments of real valour make him, abject as
14 he is, not altogether mean.”
The death of Brachiano’s wife shows her true and intense love for her husband. The Jacobean Drama and
Johan Webster: An
She would kiss the portrait of her husband every evening. One evening, while Introduction
kissing his poisoned portrait, she breathes her last.
Another important work, which belongs to the second period of Webster’s literary
career is The Duchess of Malfi. In his Cyclopaedia of English Literature, Robert
Chambers says: “The Duchess of Malfi abounds more in the terrible graces. It
turns on the moral offence which the lady gives to her two proud brothers,
Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, and Cardinal, by indulging in generous though
infatuated passion for Antonio, her steward.” Like The White Devil it is also a
revenge play. “The avengers are, however,” says Legouis, “moved by blind,
unreasoning considerations, as, for instance, fury at a misalliance, or they have
low motives, like the desire to get possession of their victim’s fortune. The victim,
The Duchess of Malfi (or Amalfi), is all goodness and innocence, and is driven
to madness and death by her brothers because she has secretly married her steward,
the virtuous Antonio.” In the words of Vaughan, “The plot of this play is perfectly
simple, the characters, if we expect that of Bosala, are drawn with an unfaltering
hand; in unity of tone the play surpasses all others of the period, save those of
Shakespeare.” The Duchess of Malfi is marked advanced upon the earlier one
because the impulse of revenge is bogarted but in a softer, a more human form.
This is because the impact on the imagination is entirely differently.
During the third period (1620-1624) Webster produced five plays out of which
only three could survive. The two lost ones are The Guise and A Late Murther of
the bonne Upon the Mother. They were written in unison with Ford and published
in 1624. The three extant plays are The Devil’s Law Case (1623), Appius and
Virginia (published in 1654), and A Cure for a Cuckold (published in 1661).
None of these plays could reach the heights of perfection to which his two
masterpieces-The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi-had attained. In the
words of Vaughan, ‘All however,contain occasional flashes of the genius which
created The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, though rather of its poetic,
than its dramatic quality.Save in Appius,which owes much to the Roman tragedies
of Shakespeare.Webster is now working under quite other and less inspiring
influences.With him as with other dramatists of the period,the star of Fletcher is
in the ascendant.’ Over all, Webster penned twelve plays few of which have been
lost and he composed a number of poems, an Elegy and a Pageant.

1.5 JOHN WEBSTER AND HIS WORKS

Chronology:
A. Writings of John Webster:
1. The White Devil published in 1612.
2. The Duchess of Malfi, performed in1614 and published in 1623.
3. The Devil’s Law Case, staged in1620 and 1623.
B. Partly by Webster:
4. The Malcontent collaborated with Marstron.
5. The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyattcollaborated with Dekker.
6. North-Ward Hoe collaborated with Dekker. 15
Duchess of Malfi 7. A Cure for Cuckold collaborated with Rowley.
8. Appius and Virginia collaborated with Heywood.
C. Plays conjectured to be that of Webster:
1. The Weakest Goeth to the Wall.
2. The Thracian Wonder.
3. Additions to the Spanish Tragedy.
4. The Revenger’s Tragedy.
5. Anything for a Quiet life.
6. The faire Maide of the Inne.
D. Lost Plays:
1. Caesar’s Will.
2. Christmas Comes but Once a Year.
3. The Guise.
4. The late Murder of Whitechapel.
E. Non-Dramatic writings
1. Commendatory verses to Mundey’s translation of palmer in England.
2. Ode Prefixed to Harrisons’ Arch’s of Triumph.
3. Commendatory verses prefixed to Heywood’s Apology for Actors.
4. New Characters of several persons, in several qualities.
5. A Monumental Column.
6. Monuments of Honour.

1.6 LET US SUM UP

In this unit, we have learnt about the history and development of Jacobean drama.
Special focus has been given to various stages in the development of tragedy,
with comparisons and differences drawn between the Medieval and Marlowian
Tragedy, TheSenecan or Horror Tragedyand Shakespearean Tragedy, to give an
overall awareness about tragedy. We have also been introduced to John Webster
and his literary achievements and influences, thereby allowing us to understand
the tradition beyondJohn Webster andhave offered us an appreciation on the
diversity and range oftragedy as a dramatic form.

1.7 QUESTIONS
1. What do you understand by the term Jacobean Drama?
2. What do you think is the origin of Tragedy?
3. Name some of the prominent Jacobean dramatists and attempt critical analysis
of their works.

16
 John Webster: The
UNIT 2 JOHN WEBSTER: THE PLAYWRIGHT Playwright and his
Dramatic Art
AND HIS DRAMATIC ART
Structure

2.0 Objectives
2.1 John Webster’s Concept of Tragedy and his contribution to the Tradition of
the ‘Revenge Plays’
2.2 John Webster’s Contribution
2.3 John Webster and Jacobean Drama: Dominant Tendencies
2.4 John Webster’s Satire
2.5 John Webster’s Pessimism and Morbidity
2.6 John Webster and the Decline of Drama
2.6.1 Loss of Universal Appeal
2.6.2 Absence of the sense of moral values
2.6.3 The inferiority of dramatic technique
2.6.4 Characters
2.6.5 Puritan Opposition to Drama and Other Factors
2.7 Let Us Sum Up
2.8 Hints to Check Your Progress

2.0 OBJECTIVES
In this unit an attempt is made to (1) understand the underpinnings of John
Webster’s concept of tragedy, (2) his contribution to the tradition of ‘revenge
plays’, (3) identify the dominant tendencies of his age, (4) critically analyze the
factors that lead to decline of drama during his age.

2.1 JOHN WEBSTER’S CONCEPT OF

TRAGEDY AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE
TRADITION OF THE ‘REVENGE PLAYS’
John Webster’s concept of tragedy was styled by various factors, conditions and
influences. By his talent and temperament, he was essentially a tragic artist. The
decline of the drama and the renaissance spirit (during his times, i. e., Jacobean
period), the pessimism of the age, and the shattering of old beliefs and ideals
intensified the morbidity of his temperament, all these things collectively made
Webster a tragic artist of worldwide prominence and recognition. The credit of
his success as a dramatist goes to his two great tragedies, The White Devil and
The Duchess of Malfi. His comedy, The Devil’s Law Case, could bring him neither
success nor fame.
Seneca, the Italian philosopher and dramatist, the Elizabethan revenge playwrights,
and Machiavelli, the author of The Prince, were among those who greatly
influenced Webster as a tragic artist. However, all these influences could not
mark his originality. In traditional revenge plays, we find too much of horror,
terror, murder and bloodshed, and also, we sympathize with the avenger, not
17
Duchess of Malfi with the victim. But in Webster’s plays, particularly The Duchess of Malfi, we
feel sympathetic towards the victim, the Duchess, instead of the avengers,
Ferdinand and the Cardinal. The melodramatic element is also closely related to
the central theme. It will not be an overstatement to say that his Duchess remains
the greatest tragic figure in Elizabethan drama, excluding, of course, Shakespeare.
In Webster’s tragedies, there is no divine power to bring ruin and death to-the
hero. It is some social circumstances and the Machiavellian villains, like Ferdinand
and the Cardinal, who in order to satisfy their feeling of revenge and to serve
their personal ends, bring the virtuous and innocent to brink of end. How Webster
took the world and the affairs of man has been summarized by Bogard in the
following manner “Man’s world, as Webster sees it, is a deep pit of darkness, and
mankind is ‘womanish and fearful’, in the shadow of the pit. The causes of the
fear are many but chief among them are oppression and mortality. Oppression is
a social cause; man’s inhumanity to man, the destruction of the individual by
society, represented in the tragedies by a corrupt court of law, perhaps, or the
vicious social system where able men are forced to sycophancy to obtain rewards
from their Prince. Mortality is the natural cause. It too means destruction—the
decay of the living body of disease and the destruction of the dead flesh by worms
and the festering rot of the churchyard.”
Like Chapman’s, the characters portrayed by Webster cannot be designated as
good and evil ones. Their characters are the blend of both the Machiavellian and
the Senecan qualities; and therefore, they are more complicated figures than those
of Chapman or any other of his contemporaries. In this regard Bogard observes:
“The intermingling of good and the evil in the central figures undeniably gives to
Webster’s characters a complexity that suggests the profound studies of good
and evil of Shakespearean tragedy, but Webster’s method of creating character is
not that of Shakespeare.” Unlike Shakespeare, Webster studies mankind as a
whole instead of the individuals. Comparing the tragedies of Shakespeare and
Webster, Bogard writes “Shakespearean tragedy is individual with a suggested
generality of application. Websterian tragedy is broadly social, with individuals
serving as normative examples of Webster’s conception of life.”
John Webster’s tragedy has no tragic hero in the real sense of the term. In The
White Devil or The Duchess of Malfi there is no such character that may deserve
the title of the tragic hero. Differentiating betweenWebster’s and Shakespeare’s
tragedies Bogard says: “Webster’s tragedy is strikingly different from
Shakespeare’s because in the large view no one character stands out as spiritually
most significant; it might almost be said that Websterian tragedy has no tragic
hero. For Webster, a character is important not in terms of the well-being of his
thoughts and actions but in terms of his relationships, the effects of his thoughts
and actions on his fellowmen. Shakespeare’s tragedies were born of splendid,
unwavering acceptance of humanity. Chapman’s characters offer an austere yet
noble pattern of conduct to an ignoble world. Webster’s characters are didactic,
satiric, harshly critical of man’s society. Their core is the condition of that society,
not the growth of the human spirit, and character is important not in itself but
with respect to the relationships which are a formative part of an excoriate world.”
As a tragic artist, the chief concern of John Webster is with the action rather than
the characters of the play. It means that he is more and more interested in the
development of the plot. Whatever methods and means he uses in his plays; he
18 does in order to reveal the story rather than to expose the inner qualities of his
characters. Shakespeare uses soliloquy with a view to reveal the inner being of a John Webster: The
Playwright and his
tragic hero, while Webster makes a use of this device to assist the development Dramatic Art
of plot by clarifying certain obscurities. It may be said that in spite of his paying
too much attention to his plots, Webster’s handling of his plots is generally
imperfect. Both in The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi there are structural
weaknesses which marks the greatness of these plays. In this regard, H. J. C.
Grierson remarks, “his plots are so clumsy that Lamb himself could not have
made tales from Webster, and his construction is so defective that Vittoria, The
White Devil, she almost fades out of the play after the third act.” Of his greatest
work The Duchess of Malfi, Clifford Leach says that there are several structural
weaknesses in this play. Also, he is of the view that it is the weaknesses of the
plot construction that are responsible for Webster’s inferior place as a dramatist
in comparison to Shakespeare. The fifth act in this play ‘has been regarded as
superfluous’ by critics like George Addington Symonds; who observes: “After
the murder of the Duchess, the fate of Antonio, the miserable end of the persecutors
and their accomplices are of little interest. Had the play ended with the fourth
act, the tragic impression would have been yet deeper and more harmonious than
it is. I admit that the fifth act deepens the gloom of the atmosphere still further
and we see nemesis overtaking cruel avengers, yet we must admit that the
dramaticart is badly managed in the last act.”
With all his originality and genius, Webster as a tragic artist is much inferior to
the Colossus of the Elizabethan and the whole of the English drama-Shakespeare.
John Webster’s best and greatest creation, The Duchess of Malfi is reminiscent
of Shakespeare and his works. In this connection, Emile Legouis’s remark is
worth quoting; “The tragedy is full of Shakespearian reminiscences; the Duchess
recalls Desdemona, and Cariola, her woman, Emilia in Othello. Bosola, the master,
the tool of the two brothers is modelled on Iago. The anger of Ferdinand, the
criminal brother, against Bosola, after the murder he himself has ordered, is like
that of King John against Hubert when he believes him to have put Arthur to
death. The remorse of the other brother, the Cardinal, who can no longer pray, is
a parallel to that of Claudius in Hamlet. Every such comparison would merely
show “Webster’s extreme inferiority, were it not that he substitutes for the
psychology, at which Shakespeare principally aims, a search for the pathos inherent
in situations and even in material effects”.
Check Your Progress 1
1. What is John Webster’s concept of tragedy and his contribution to the
tradition of the ‘revenge plays’?
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2.2 JOHN WEBSTER’S CONTRIBUTION

John Webster occupies an important position among the writers of the revenge
plays. Thomas Kyd, Marston, Tourneur, etc., are the eminent revenge playwrights 19
Duchess of Malfi of England. Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Marston Antonio’s Revenge and
Malcontent, Tourneur’sThe Revenger’s Tragedy, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and
Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi are important plays continuing the tradition of
revenge plays.
The Revenge Tragedy, as it is clear from its name, used to be based on taking
revenge by the wronged or the wrongdoer. Such type of tragedy had its beginning
in the ancient Greek tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides; but they exhibited no
trace of horror in them, which, later on, became very prominent in English revenge
plays of the Elizabethan age.
Seneca, the great tragedy-writer of ancient Rome, was first to introduce the element
of horror in the revenge play. Revenge, in the Senecan tragedy is considered as
something necessary and desirable. It is regarded as the pious duty of the survived
to take revenge on the wrong-doer. It is generally the ghost of the murdered who
appears and reveals the secret of his murder to some of his close friend or relative
with a view to instigating him to revenge on the murderer.
Thomas Kyd was the first English dramatist to have been influenced by Seneca.
It was through him that the Senecan influence passed into the Elizabethan theatre.
It was from Seneca that Kyd took over the ghost, the motive of revenge, and the
soliloquy. The common features of this type of plays are the strong revenge motif,
the use of supernatural terrors, violent imagery, Machiavellian manipulations,
murder and bloodshed.
John Webster greatly contributed to the tradition of the revenge play. As regards
the revenge motif, moral vision; supernatural element and pathos, Webster’s
tragedies, particularly, The Duchess of Malfi, stand uniquely. It is pointed out
that his great tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi is a revenge play. Revenge undoubtedly
plays an important part in this play; however, Webster’s moral instinct makes
him degrade the revenge motif from, its original supremacy. In this play revenge
is a nominal theme; and it is again twisted, so as to show its double aspect. In the
words of Hazlitt, “Up to the end of the fourth Act the revenge is for an alleged
outrage on the insensate pride of family, combined (it appears as a second thought)
with avarice, later it takes an altogether different turn when the instrument of all
the atrocities turns to be the avenger of wrongs, which he himself had perpetrated,
under the pressure of a necessity.” Ferdinand and Cardinal, the brothers of the
Duchess, take revenge on her because of the fact that she has married Antonio,
her steward, against their wishes. Bosola, the instrument of revenge, takes his
own revenge on the Cardinal for his being ungrateful to him, and incidentally
Ferdinand is put to death. Unlike the earlier ‘revenge plays’, in Webster’s The
Duchess of Malfi, it is not the avengers, Ferdinand and Cardinal, who gain
sympathy from the audience, but it is the Duchess, the victim, who is sympathized
by all.
Webster makes the revenge not a repugnant, horrible affair, but invests it with a
moral tone. The whole of the last act of The Duchess of Malfi is devoted to the
nemesis which falls upon the avengers. In this way, Webster, by introducing the
tone of moral justice at the end, has elevated the original theme of revenge. His
Duchess of Malfi ranks very high in the development of this class of tragedy. The
clarity of his moral vision is the thing that pronounces Webster’s superiority to
the earlier dramatists of the “revenge school”. Referring to his two great tragedies,
The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, it can be concluded that “characters
20
are often cynical and pessimistic, but his own eyes are never blind to moral truth.” John Webster: The
Playwright and his
The virtuous and the innocent are destroyed in his plays, but at the same time Dramatic Art
novices are allowed to go unpunished.
The Jacobean revenge playwrights knew nothing about pathos. It was Webster
who first introduced it in his plays. By introducing pathos in The Duchess of
Malfi, he has successfully made the tragedy of the Duchess, her children, Cariola
and Antonio highly pathetic and touching. In this connection Charles Lamb
observes: “The death of Duchess moves us more deeply than anything else in
English drama.”
John Webster has beautifully used horror for dramatic purposes. He employs at
times the sensational episodes and the paraphernalia of terror like murder and
execution, the dagger, the pistol, the cord, and the coffin, together with the skull
and the ghost. The devices that he introduces to terrify the Duchess are the dead
man’s hand, the artificial figures of Antonio and his children, and the dance of
madman. All these objects are very gruesome and horrible. However, they serve
dramatic ends. In the words of Allen, “Only the greatest of the world’s dramatists
have succeeded in making physical violence serve the ends of dramatic
atmosphere. Most of the so-called ‘revenge dramatists’ had found it easy enough
to be revolting and some had been at pains to exceed all limits, in repulsiveness.
Webster set himself the infinitely harder task of impressing violence into service
of poetry.”
Thus, Webster through his two great tragedies-The White Devil and The Duchess
of Malfi-has contributed a lot to the tradition of revenge plays. The revenge plays,
before John Webster, used to be the mere tales of terror, horror, bloodshed and
murder. But with Webster’s plays, revenge plays ceased to be merely the tales of
revenge and murders, they had morality and poetry in them. Schelling observes:
“The power of Webster, at his best, is the revealing power of the highest order of
poetry.” In a word, in The Duchess of Malfi, we have the poetry of love, the
poetry of sadness, the poetry of pathos, the poetry of ruin. These poetic touches
take off the edge of the various frightful murders.
Check Your Progress 2
1. Discuss John Webster’s treatment of tragedy vis-à-vis The Duchess of
Malfi?
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2.3 JOHN WEBSTER AND JACOBEAN DRAMA:

DOMINANT TENDENCIES
The Jacobean drama stands nowhere in comparison with the comedies, historical
plays and tragedies produced by the Elizabethan masters, particularly by
Shakespeare. As regards their plots, characters, themes and approaches, Jacobean
21
Duchess of Malfi plays greatly differed from those of the preceding times. The chief characteristics
of Jacobean drama are as under:
The plots of the Jacobean plays were well-constructed and systematically
developed. The plays of most of the writers, particularly those of Middleton,
Fletcher and Massinger, were harmoniously welded. The harmonious development
of plot can well be marked in the domestic dramas of Heywood and Dekker. But
this over attention to the plot-construction was later discovered to be causing a
lack of spontaneity and imagination in the plays of this period.
In the Jacobean drama realism took the place of fancifulness of the Elizabethan
plays. The depiction of the woes and weaknesses of the London society rather
than enjoying in the imaginary world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You
Like It was the popular area to write upon by the writers of this age. Acclaimed
among the realistic writers are Ben Jonson, Heywood, Dekker, Middleton,
Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ford. These writers were enclosed to become satirists
because they have to depict such an evil society of that time. In most of their
works they satirically referred to various vices of their times. Ben Jonson, Marston,
Middleton, Beaumont and Fletcher were chief among those who attacked the
evils of society.
In the plays of this period, there was an abundance of the elements of horror and
revenge. To satisfy the tastes of kings and courtiers, most of the playwrights of
this period were writing on the themes of horror and revenge. The chief horror,
revenge and blood tragedies of the time are Busy D’ Ambois and The Revenge of
Bussy D’ Ambois by Chapman; Revenge of Antonio and Antonio and Mellida by
Marston; The Atheist’s Tragedy and The Revenger’s Tragedy by Tourneur; The
Yorkshire Tragedy by Heywood; The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi by
Webster, The Roman Actor by Massinger; and finally The Cardinal and Traitor
by Shirley. All these plays abound in the scenes of blood, murder, horror and
revenge.
Most of the artificial and stereotyped characters are created during this period.
The dramatists were more interested in producing plays with striking situations
rather than with original and individualized characters. The lustful tyrant and
headstrong monarch are the conventional characters that appear again and again
in the plays of this period. The clown that figures prominently in the Elizabethan
plays seems “to have disappeared from the English stage of the Jacobean period.”
In the Jacobean period, national history ceased to be the source for the themes
and characters of English plays. Most of the plays of this period were based on
Italian, French and Spanish themes and personalities. Webster’s The White Devil
and The Duchess of Malfi also have an Italian background.
The world of Webster’s tragedies is one of unrelieved gloom. We do not get in
him that dramatic relief in the form of the jests and quibbles of the Fool which is
such a marked feature of Shakespearean tragedy. However, there are variations
of mood and emotion which constitute a sort of dramatic relief. Says Una Mary
Ellis-Fermor, “In Webster’s plays, the elasticity of the emotions is preserved by
variations of mood, tempo and force. Again, and again, after a tempest of rage,
the rushing together of two whirlwinds, there is a sudden pause; the speech that
follows seems barely audible by contrast with the thundering passions that have
22 passed, but it falls into the silence with incalculable pathos, solemnity or awe.
Sometimes this is no more than a line, a half-line even, as where Ferdinand, John Webster: The
Playwright and his
looking on his dead sister, perceives her truly for the first time since his rage Dramatic Art
possessed him, or where later on, in the madness that the realization brings, he
moves unnoticing through the crowd of courtiers, his mind turned inward upon
the thought “Strangling’s very quiet death”. The quiet echo-scene just before the
final catastrophe serves a similar purpose.
The only contemporary of Webster who makes such subtle use of contrasts is
Shakespeare. He also in tragedy gives these intervals of gentle, low-toned speech
in the midst of tempest; he alone can at once suspend and emphasize the tragic
tension by the half-heard murmurs of a mind moving absorbed upon the path of
self-discovery that may lead to madness. “I did her wrong’, says Lear in the
midst of the Fool’s babble when the gates of the castle have been closed against
him. Ferdinand echoes it; ‘She died young’.”
John Webster’s is a style that, when the emotion grows intense and the tragic
issues approach their climax, passes into that lucidity, those inevitable phrases
that distinguish the great poetry of the Greek drama, or, in English, the closing
scenes of Hamlet and Macbeth. It is characteristic, too, of the bitter force of
Webster that some of his finest remarks are found in his jests, concentrated flashes
that illuminate the gloom with devastating revelation; the laughter in these plays
like Duke Ferdinand’s, ‘A deadly cannon/ That lightens ere it smokes’. So deeply
is Webster’s style and imagery is woven with the concept of the play, so essentially
is its function of the whole drama, that in the great closing scenes of The White
Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, it is impossible to isolate passages without
losing that essentialness of their effect which they draw from their dependence
upon the whole preceding drama.Una Mary Ellis-Fermorsays, “It is thus the
range and interplay of mood, thought and imagery which gives them their richness
and their variety, arriving at last at that impression and universality of implication
which is an essential of great tragedy”.
Check Your Progress 3
1. What are the dominant tendencies of Jacobean drama?
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2.4 JOHN WEBSTER’S SATIRE

All through Webster’s plays there are scattered comments on life expressed in
true condensed verse. Such maxims and epigrams are at expression of his
reflections on life, and of his efforts to build up a moral system of his own, at
least to bridge the gulf between “the two worlds”, the old that was dying out and
the new that was struggling to be born. Such are his comments, often satirical, on
kingliness and the fate of princess upon statecraft and the nature of nobility,
upon adversity and virtue, upon women, upon policy, and upon a hundred other
aspects of man and his life. Webster’s satire is wide-ranging. His comments make
it quite clear that it is the virtue of resolution which he admires most of all. It 23
Duchess of Malfi does not matter whether a character is good or evil, what matters is that he must
ever remain true to himself. For him, as Delio tells us at the end of the Duchess,
“Integrity of life is fame’s best friend”.

2.5 JOHN WEBSTER’S PESSIMISM AND

MORBIDITY
Literature mirrors the age and this is more so in the case with drama which has to
take into account the tastes and attitudes of the audiences. The age of Webster
was an age in which the old values, ideals and beliefs were breaking down and
had not yet been replaced by new ones. Thus, there was a conflict between the
old and the new, and melancholy and pessimism are the natural consequences of
such a conflict and loss of faith. Webster was literally a man caught between
“two worlds” and he shares the pessimism and gloom and melancholy of his age.
Though the “stars may shine” now and then, there might be occasional flashes of
light, but on the whole the atmosphere of his tragedies is morbid, it is one of
unrelieved darkness and gloom. In The Duchess of Malfi, Bosola again and again
voices the dramatist’s pessimism in such remarks as the following:
(1) “Our bodies are weaker than those paper-prisons boys used to keep flies in:
more contemptible since ours is to preserve earth worms.”
(2) “O, this gloomy world! In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, doth
womanish and fearful mankind live.”
(3) “We are merely the star’s tennis balls, struck and handed which way please
them.”
Check Your Progress 4
1. Critically comment on John Webster’s dramatic art.
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2.6 JOHN WEBSTER AND THE DECLINE OF

DRAMA
In spite of suiting the tastes of the audience and winning loud acclamation at
the theatre, the genetic appeal that can be observed in Shakespearean drama
is missing in the drama written in Jacobean age because these were over
balanced, presented absurd and monstrous situations and unconvincing
characters. The golden days of English drama had passed away with
Shakespeare, the greatest of English dramatists. There was none among his
contemporaries or successors who could shape the plastic material of drama
in the flaskof his imagination with the Shakespearean mastery and knack.
The period following the great Elizabethan age witnessed a sheer decline of
drama. Barring a few plays by Beaumont, Fletcherand John Webster no
24
important dramatic work was produced during the early seventeenth century. John Webster: The
Playwright and his
Shakespeare had used the clown with great skill but after him clownish parts Dramatic Art
are over done;hence the clown disappears from the English stage.Legouis
says, “The characters and situations tend to be less true to nature,the
knowledge of human nature is less correct and has less insight, and so there
is great use of sensationalism. Externals replace reality and truth of
characterisation. They draw nearer to reality in externals while in essentials
they become more remote from it. Comedy shows a preference for eccentricity
and anomalies, and tragedy passed from the epic to the romantic.”

2.6.1 The following reasons are said to have been responsible

for the decline of drama in the age of John Webster:
In the Jacobean period, drama lost its universal appeal as drama based on
national history is no longer written and even content of the drama is now provided
by Italian, French and Spanish romances.John Webster’s two masterpieces; The
Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil,have Italy as their setting. In the preceding
age, it was patronized by feudal lords, but in this period, dramatists mostly
depended on the king and the queen. They would write to amuse the king and his
courtiers. They had nothing to do with the tastes and interests of the common
people. Most of the plays were the mere depiction of court life and manners. It
can safely be said that Beaumont and Fletcher wrote for the courtiers and Ben
Jonson for the educated people. The nation-wide appeal of Shakespearian drama
was not to be found in the drama of this period. The greatness of Shakespeare lay
in the fact that he was able to mix in his plays the temporary demands of the
popular taste with the permanent requirements of great literature. The dramatists
who followed Shakespeare failed to contain his greatness and dramatic skill.They
were great in their own sphere and during their own age but closed their eyes to
the future.They lack universality of appeal;they are transitory products of the
hour having nothing of the permanence of great art.While Beaumount and Fletcher
were writing,the theatre was gradually, but surely,losing its hold on the middle
and lower classes. In Shakespearean plays,the spirit of England had found full
expression; he had spoken for all classes and all classes had been among his
audience.

2.6.2 Absence of the sense of moral values

Was another factor which was responsible for the decline of drama in the past. In
the Shakespearian period a Dramatist’s chief concern was to entertain the theatre-
goers and the courtiers whom their plays were based on. To them chastity and
morality had no value. They in order to please the riff-raff freely adopted the
unpleasant themes such as incest and sexual infidelity. Intrigues and murders,
being the powerful instruments of the kings and courts, had become very common
in the plays of this period, also, the plays were written on the lives of prostitutes
and concubines. The plays, The White Devil and The Honest Whore, are among
the most popular ones of this period.
The drama was bound to decline after Shakespeare. There was no real genius of
the stature of this great master. In the hands of his successors comedy became
eccentric and tragedy lost its epic grandeur. In the field of tragedy, Ben Jonson
could not succeed. Shakespeare, in spite of his writing about kings and princes,
25
Duchess of Malfi was the writer of the common men and the admired of his audience, but the
dramatists of the following period could make no appeal to the masses. They
lacked in art. The rapid decline of the drama was because of mainly three reasons:
Shakespeare left no true successors-none who had the ‘high seriousness’ ofgenius.
The tastes of the city had become vulgarised. The court had set up a new standard
of its own, false and demoralising.

2.6.3 The inferiority of dramatic technique

Can also be said to have been responsible to a great extent for the decline of
drama during the age of Webster. The successors of Shakespeare, in spite of their
advance in construction and sometimes in dialogue could not keep up the ‘mighty
line’ of Marlowe. Their blank verse was weak and tasteless because they failed
to maintain the vital quality of the dramatic blank verse of Marlowe and
Shakespeare.

2.6.4 Characters
Created by the Jacobean dramatists were neither new nor impressive. Certain
stock characters were represented again and again in the plays of this period.
Heroes, lustful kings and manipulative courtiers were certain wooden characters
that were mechanically repeated in various plays. The portraits of kings are
neither from English history nor realor convincing. The monarchs and their
courtiers grow exotic and imaginary,and so also unreal and fantastic.Characters
degenerate into mere theatrical personages; they are missing life and reality.The
main characters of Elizabethan drama are endlessly repeated and carried to
excess.

2.6.5 Puritan Opposition to Drama and Other Factors

Besides these wants and weaknesses, there were some other factors which caused
the decline of drama in the age of John Webster. Most prominent among them
was the Puritan opposition to drama. Puritans had been opposing drama since its
becoming popular in England. In their opinion, drama or any other form of
entertainment was devilish and unwanted. According to them those who wanted
salvation had to relinquish their interest in drama and other forms of literature. In
1579, Stephen Gosson, through his School of Abuse, attacked all secular literature.
To him there was no distinction between “poets, pipers, players, jesters”; and he
called them “caterpillars of a commonwealth.” In l583 Philip Stubbes claimed
biblical support for the condemnation of drama. In 1632, Prynne attacked the
stage. And the last and most powerful blow given to drama was by Parliament of
England. In 1642, only twenty-six years after Shakespeare’s death, both the Houses
of Parliament (House of Commons and House of Lords) voted to close the theatres
condemning them as the ‘breeders of lies and immorality.’ A.Nicoll says, “The
wheel in ford has come full circle. The manly temper of that age which saw the
battered ships of the Armada scudding helplessly northward, that age which
produced Shakespeare and Spencer, has given way to a period of effeminacy, of
degenerate thought, of maddened sensuality.” Blood- curdling scenes of crude
horror, bloodshed and violence are wildly introduced. Even so great a dramatist
as John Webster has enough of such sensationalism in his masterpiece The Duchess
of Malfi.”
26
Check Your Progress 5 John Webster: The
Playwright and his
1. Discuss the various factors that led to decline of drama in John Webster’s Dramatic Art

age?
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2.7 LET US SUM UP

This unit has foregrounded John Webster’s art of characterization, his concept of
tragedy and his contribution to the tradition of the ‘revenge plays’. In this
discussion, anattempt has been made to provide a view of John Webster’s literary
backgroundthat would enable us to understand the larger context of Jacobean
drama, its dominant tendencies and the factors that ultimately led to the decline
of drama.

2.8 HINTS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress 1
1. Read Section 2.1
Check Your Progress 2
1. Read Section 2.2
Check Your Progress 3
1. Read Section 2.3
Check Your Progress 4
1. Read Section 2.4 and 2.5
Check Your Progress 5
1. Read Section 2.6 to 2.6.5

27
Duchess of Malfi
UNIT 3 THE DUCHESS OF MALFI:
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
Structure

3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 John Webster’s Skill in Plot-construction
3.3 Sources, Setting and Major Themes of the Play
3.3.1 Sources of the Play
3.3.2 The Setting of the Play
3.3.3 Major Themes: Power, Corruption and Nobility
3.4 The Duchess of Malfi in a Nutshell
3.5 John Webster’s Art of Characterization
3.6 Let Us Sum Up
3.7 Questions

3.0 OBJECTIVES
In this Unit, we will be analysing the play The Duchess of Malfi critically. We
will begin with a brief explanation on how to read the play by discussing John
Webster’s skill in plot- construction and the sources, setting and themes of the
play. This will help us in understanding the play and appreciate its dramatic
appeal.Thiswill be followedby a brief summary of the play. In addition to this,
we will also discuss John Webster’s art of characterization.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
The Duchess of Malfi is so great a work of genius that its author, John Webster,
would have been among the greatest dramatists in the world even if he had not
written anything else. It is both astonishing and unfortunate that the date of birth
of such a renowned dramatist and the date of composition of such a great piece
of art are still unknown. These dates have approximately been fixed on the basis
of certain available evidence and facts.
The White Devil, Webster’s first great tragedy, was produced between 1610 and
1612. And there is indirect evidence to the effect that his second great work, The
Duchess of Malfi was written later than the former. It also has been discovered
that this play was first performed on the stage in 1614. In this performance, the
role of Antonio was played by the actor named Ostler, who died in 1614. Thus,
this is natural to infer that The Duchess of Malfi was written between 1612 and
1614. It was first printed in 1623 in Quarto form.

3.2 JOHN WEBSTER’S SKILL IN PLOT

CONSTRUCTION
The success of two great tragedies- The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfiin
28 spite of the fact that these were produced in the age of decline of English Drama
are the best example of John Webster’s greatness as dramatist. Even the best The Duchess of Malfi:
Textual Analysis
plays of the Jacobean period were found with several weaknesses and faults
because after William Shakespeare, there was no dramatic genius who could
continue the tradition of Drama as successfully and gloriously as he did in the
Elizabethan age. There are several structural weaknesses which makeWebster
inferior to Shakespeare.
Clive Hart comments on the structure of the play:
‘The structure is excellent to start with, but falls away at the end. The first Act
not only establishes the characters of the principal figures, but also in the king
disquisition on the French Court, lays the foundation for the analysis of the
corruption in public life which accompanies the private tragedy. Throughout Act
I and II the action moves rapidly to establish the Duchess in her precarious position
and Ferdinand in his state of furious impotence. The gap of two or three years
between Acts II and III does nothing to disrupt the dramatic sequence, but, on the
contrary. emphasises Ferdinand’s tense, inhibited, emotional state. Act III brings
a splendid climax: The Duchess’s secret is revealed to Bosola in a scene of great
psychological realism which once again raises the theme of public disregard for
private worth. Act IV is a brilliantly integrated whole, but in Act V, Webster finds
himself with too many major characters to dispose of, and too many minor
characters involved in the plot. As a result, the action is diffuse and insufficiently
focuses on the tragedy of the Duchess to allow her personality to brood, as it
should, over the events. The concept of “the well-made play”, which is almost
ineradicably rooted in the minds of modern critics and most modern audiences,
was not, however, of great concern to Jacobean theatre-goers, who would certainly
have been pleased with the ingenious handling of the death of the Cardinal and
with the tragi-farce of Ferdinand’s madness.’
The Duchess of Malfi is parted in two: Amain plot and a subplot. The Main plot
consists of the story of the Duchess of Malfi, who secretly marries Antonio, a
person of no rank and status in the society, despite the warning of her brothers,
Cardinal and Duke Ferdinand. This marriage is taken by her brothers as a disgrace
to their family. Ultimately Duchess of Malfi and her two children are brutally
strangulated. The ‘sweetest innocent’ murder causes a reaction. Ferdinand goes
mad and the tool-villain Basola decides to avenge her death by saving the life of
Antonio and killing both Ferdinand and the Cardinal. He killed Ferdinand and
the Cardinal however Antonio is killed erroneously by him but he himself does
not abscond his own death. Thus, through the story of the Duchess, John Webster
embellishes the fact that sin is accompanied by sure and immediatenemesis.
The sub-plot of the play is the story of Julia who makes a silent and furtive entry
in the Act I. Apart from that she is seen only three times. First in Act II, Scene IV
visiting the Cardinal in Rome as his mistress, and receiving attention and proposal
from Delio. Second in Act V, Scene I, she obtains an estate of Antonio, begged
on her behalf by the Cardinal. Third in Act V, Scene II she courts Bosola, presses
the Cardinal to reveal his secret, and as a consequence is poisoned by him.
Regarding the plot of The Duchess of Malfi, critics have various opinions as
George Adington Symonds takes the fifth act of the play for a superfluous addition
to the complete plot whileDavid Cecil justifies the fifth Act from the moral point
of view but for this Act, all the evil doers would have gone scot-free. In his book,
‘poets and story tellers’, David Cecil writes: “this last section of the Duchess of
Malfi, it may be noted in passing illustrates how little Webster has been exactly 29
Duchess of Malfi understood by his admirers because the play is called The Duchess of Malfi, she
has been looked on as its key figure and her creator has been censured for
continuing the play for another Act after her death. But though she is the heroine
in the sense that she is the chief object of our sympathies, she does not provide
the chief motive force in the action nor is it in her relation to that action, that the
theme of the play is to be found. Thistheme, as always with Webster, is the fact of
sin and its consequences. Till these consequences are followed out to their
conclusion, thedramatist’s intention is not made plain.Moreover,the central
figure,as far as that action is concerned, is the man who murders her, the man
who was chosen against the prompting of his better self to be the devil’s agent in
the drama.Webster, then, was not as wrong about himself asat first sight he might
appear.So far from being a mere flamboyant sensation-monger, unthinking
composer of eloquent melodramas, he is a stern moral teacher whose plays are
carefully designed to enforce the philosophy of human conduct in which he
believes.”
Both the two stories have been aptly interlinked to form a single whole. First, the
same characters figure in the two stories. Julia is the mistress of the Cardinal
who is one of the brothers of the Duchess. Bosola, whom Julia courts, is
responsible for her death. Secondly, there are strong similarities and contrasts
between the sexual behaviour of the Duchess and that of Julia. Clifford Leech
rightly points out that, “both women are direct in their approach; both devise
scenes with a hidden witness, both come to death through what they do.” Yet the
contrast is equally obvious. In Act II, Scene IV Delio’s approach to Julia is
contemptuous:
With good speed: I would wish you
At such time as you are non-resident
With your husband, my mistress.
And before that she had to undergo the Cardinal’s observations on the
unpredictability of women, she owes him for his favour. In Act V, Scene I, Delio
refers to her as ‘such a creature’ and the good Marquis of Pescara echoes him
with calling her a ‘strumpet’. For Bosola she is ‘this creature’, While the Cardinal
sees her as his ‘lingering consumption’ whom he would ‘by any means ....... be
quit of’, he is pleased to poison her for secrecy’s sake using this as an excuse to
free himself.
Thus, the general attitudes to Julia and the Duchess are quite opposite from each
other. Antonio refers to his mistress’ saintliness before her approach to him in
Act I, and whatever his limitations he never slackens in his homage. Cariola,
until her nerves fail, wants to die with the Duchess. Bosola admires her courage,
and his adoring care for her dead body contrasts with the Cardinal’s edgeless
directions for the removal of Julia’s. The two women are opposed also in their
respective fidelity and promiscuousness, in the family relationship established at
Main and the casualness of the Cardinal’s treatment of Julia. “The introduction
of Julia, and the fragments of action that involve her, thus help to govern the
direction and degree of our sympathy in the play. At the same time, we are made
to see how fully involved in the world’s duplicity the Duchess and Antonio become
through their secret marriage, and how erroneous it would be to regard the Duchess
as outside the normal sphere of sexual passion. The Duchess approaches Antonio
30 with enormously more dignity and grace than Julia has in approaching Bosola,
but there is enough similarity between the two actions of the play to keep strongly The Duchess of Malfi:
Textual Analysis
in our minds the force of the passion that urges the Duchess to speak.” Thirdly,
the Julia-story may be taken to be a kind of spoof of the Main plot. Both
Shakespeare and Fletcher introduce such comic parallelisms in their plays, and
Webster; too has done so in this play.J.R. Brown says, “The play also has unity of
atmosphere, a dark sensationalism and menace, contrasted with softness, intrigue,
madness, and moral sayings. It has also the unity of deeply perceptive concern
for the society and characters portrayed.”
Besides skill in construction, the dramatist has succeeded in creating a number
of scenes and situations whose potency on the stage cannot be questioned. Writes
Frederick Allen in this connection, “As a piece of stagecraft the play has many
arresting situations and moments. The whole of Act IV might be regarded as a
theatrical tour de force. Not less wonderful is the management of the secret
spousals with the sudden appearance of Cariola as witness to the marriage per
verba de presenti.” The same “sense of the theatre” is revealed at many other
points. The meeting of Antonio and Bosola in the courtyard of the palace on the
night of the first child’s birth reminds one of the courtyard scenes in Macbeth
with its sense of mystery, suspicion, and fear. Not less effective theatrically is
Ferdinand’s violent appearance at the Cardinal’s palace with Bosola’s letter of
intelligence, nor is that frenzied appearance less sound in psychological conception
than in theatrical effect. There are other entries of Ferdinand that are managed
with similar or even with greater skill. That in the bedchamber scene is a masterly
piece of Stagecraft; there is nothing more tremendous in the play than the moment
when the Duchess, in her surprise at the continued silence of her husband, whose
return she had assumed on hearing the quiet tread behind her, turns about only to
discover that the intruder is not her husband, but her brother, whose hand is
already stealing to his poniard, as if to strike without a word. Another wonderful
entry of Ferdinand is that in which the lycanthrope steals upon the stage, muttering.
“Strangling is a quiet death.” These and many other situations prove beyond
doubt that Webster had an eye extraordinary quick in seizing the right moment,
the, “dramatic moment”.
All this is certainly true but as critics like J.A. Symonds, Grierson, David Cecil
and many others point out, the plot of the play has glaring weaknesses and
shortcomings. Some of these weaknesses may now be considered:
• The motif of the brothers in imposing such appalling torment and death
on their sister is unclear. Family dishonour or concern for ‘degree’. i.e.,
rank and status does not fully account for it. It might have been sexual
jealousy in the case of Ferdinand, but the Cardinal has no such motif.
His malignity seems to be motiveless.
• The delay of two years on the part of the brothers in taking revenge is a
serious flaw in the general design-a flaw that must be attributed either to
carelessness or to lack of constructive skill.
• Too much importance has been given to chance and accident. It is by
chance that Antonio drops the horoscope of his newly born son, Bosola
picks it up and thus comes to know the whole secret. And why does
Antonio not make any efforts to search and trace out the lost horoscope?
• There was no need for the Cardinal to tell Julia of his involvement in the
murder of the Duchess, when he could have easily put her off by telling
a porky. 31
Duchess of Malfi • Whatever may be its justification morally, Act V is a mere plethora of
horrors from the structural point of view. The main business of the play
is over with the death of the Duchess in Act IV which is the climax, and
Act V comes as an anti-climax and weakens the effect of the masterly
Act IV. It is an abdication of art for the sake of morality.
To conclude it can be said that Webster’s plays are not masterpieces of
construction, and it is one of the reasons why he is considered inferior to
Shakespeare.

3.3 SOURCES, SETTING AND THE THEMES OF

THE PLAY
Let us try to unravel the various sources of the play in addition to a closer analysis
of the setting and the themes in order to gain a fuller understanding of the various
forces shaping and influencing the dramatist and his response to these forces
reflected in the play.

3.3.1 Sources of the Play

As regards the sources of The Duchess of Malfi, Webster, like most of the other
Elizabethan dramatists, went to the works of art existing in his age. Instead of
inventing stories himself he took them up from others’ works. However, the plays
produced by him had their originality because he moulded all the available material
in the crucible of his tragic art and imagination. William Painter’s The Palace of
Pleasure (1566-67) is the chief source of the main action of his Duchess of Malfi.
In other words, The Duchess of Malfi is a dramatized version of a story from The
Palace of Pleasure. This story of Painter intends to warn women against their
inclination to sensual pleasures. A few scenes in the fifth act of this play seem to
have owed their inspiration to Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia. D. C. Gunby
summarizes the sources of The Duchess of Malfi as follows: “The story had a
wide currency in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature-it occurs in George
Whetstone’s An Heptameron of Civil Discourses (1582), Thomas Beard’s The
Theatre of God’s Judgements (1597), and Edward Grimestone’s translation of
Goulart’s Admirable and Memorable Histories (1607), to name only works that
Webster had read-but the dramatist’s primary source seems to have been William
Painter’s collection of tales, The Palace of Pleasure(1566-67). Painter, in turn,
derived his account from Francois de Belle forest, which included the story in
the second volume of his Histoire Tragique (1565) … From other prose works
Webster borrowed sparingly. The device of the dead man’s hand may well derive
fi-Om Barnabe Rich’s translation of The Famous Histories of Herodotus (1584),
while other features of the torturing of the Duchess seem to come from Cinthio’s
Ecatommiti and Sidney’s Arcadia. The latter is also Webster’s richest source of
verbal borrowings.”
Down to the death of the Duchess, Webster has followed painter’s narrative with
little change and rearrangement. However, whatever additions or changes he has
made, have added to the beauty and significance of its plot and characters. The
following are some significant additions made by Webster to the original story
by William Painter-(l) The brothers of the Duchess strictly instruct her not to
marry second time; (2) the role which Bosola plays prior to his putting Antonio
32 to death; (3) Duke Ferdinand’s sudden visit to the bed-chamber of the Duchess;
(4) the spectacular ceremony at Loretto; (5) the Cardinal-Julia-affair; (6) the The Duchess of Malfi:
Textual Analysis
offering of a dead man ’s hand to the Duchess; (7) the presenting of the artificial
figures of Antonio and his children before the Duchess to give her an impression
that they are dead; (1) the madmen’s song and dance; (9) the tomb maker and the
bellman-episodes, etc.

3.3.2 The Setting of the Play

As far as the setting of The Duchess of Malfi is concerned, it is provided by the
contemporary court life of Italy. The actions and reactions of the corrupt, intriguing
and manipulative Italian courtiers form the plot of this play. The Italy represented
in this play is like a hell full of murders, intrigues and manipulations. This Italy
is in sharp contrast to the Italy that we find in a number of plays by Shakespeare.

3.3.3 The Major Themes of the Play: Power, Corruption and

Nobility
The theme of this play can be said to be the persecution of the good and the
virtuous at the hands of the greedy, the avaricious, and the Machiavellian
manipulators. “The theme is persecuted virtue, a variant on the so popular one of
revenge.” (Legouis). Legouis continues to say, “There is again a question of
vengeance, accomplished, as in The Spanish Tragedy, by strange means. The
avengers are, however, moved by blind, unreasoning considerations as, for-
instance, fury at a misalliance, or they have low motives, like the desire to get
possession of their victim’s fortune. The victim, the Duchess of Malfi (Amalfi),
is all goodness and innocence, ......”

3.4 THE DUCHESS OF MALFI IN A NUTSHELL

The Duchess of Malfi is Webster’s most important play on which his greatness as
a dramatist entirely rooted. This play profuse in horror, tantalize, manipulations
and murders. The play opens with a discussion between two close friends - Delio
and Antonio who has recently come back from France after a long stay over
there. Antonio speaks very high of the French Court and King. When they are
busy talking, Bosola, the villain, the Cardinal, the Prince of Aragon and brother
of the Duchess arrive on the scene. After a brief interruption, Antonio and Delio
resume their chat. Antonio has very bad opinion about Ferdinand and the Cardinal,
while he eulogizes the Duchess their sister, too much.
The Duchess is a young widow of about twenty. With a view to capturing her
whole property, her brothers strictly deny her to re-marry. They appoint Bosola,
their spy to keep a non- stop watch on the Duchess. Being a lady who loves to act
according to her own will, the Duchess reveals her intentions to her maid servant,
Cariola. Antonio, her steward comes to her to get some documents signed. She
offers to marry him. He is afraid of the Duchess’s brothers. However, their marriage
is solemnized without any formal ceremony. Cariola is the only witness to this
marriage. This is kept secret to the extent it is possible but Bosola suspects the
Duchess being pregnant. He confirms it by offering her apricots. The Duchess
gives birth to her first child. Antonio somehow drops the horoscope of the newly
born baby; and Bosola picks it up. The horoscope bears no name as the father of
the baby. Castruccio is sent to Rome by Bosola to inform the Duchess’s brothers
of the birth of the baby to the Duchess. Hearing of the birth of a son to their sister
both the brothers get angry and make up their mind to take revenge on her. 33
Duchess of Malfi After some time, the Duchess gives birth to two more children - a son and a
daughter. Antonio discloses this fact to his close friend Delio. All know of the
birth of the children to the Duchess but they do not know about her husband. So,
there are rumours about the Duchess’s becoming adulterous. Ferdinand decides
to enter the bed-chamber of the Duchess to find out who is really her lover or
husband.
At night the Duchess and Antonio indulge in love-making. The Duchess feels
excited and orders her maid-servant to leave them alone. She goes out. But with
her Antonio has also gone out of the bed room. The Duchess, not knowing this
fact, under sexual excitement expresses her feelings of love and talks about her
secret marriage and her children. Ferdinand coming towards her bedroom has
overheard all about her marriage and birth of the children. No response comes
from Antonio. The Duchess is taken aback to find Ferdinand in her bedroom. He
offers her a dagger to put an end to her life. Also, he abuses her husband.
The Duchess, thinking of danger to her husband’s life, advises him to go to Ancona
with her first child. She pretends to dismiss Antonio from his stewardship. When
he is dismissed, all her courtiers and flatterers start abusing Antonio. But Bosola,
the spy, is the only man who speaks very high of him. He does all this as a part of
his trick. His trick succeeds. The Duchess, taking him into confidence, talks all
about her plans to send Antonio to Ancona. Bosola, falsely sympathizing with
the Duchess, advises her to feign a pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Loretto,
which is hardly seven leagues from Ancona. Thus, he advises her to have a meeting
with her husband at Ancona. Cariola does not approve of her jesting with religion.
But the Duchess pays little heed to her faithful Cariola’s objection.
The Duchess goes to Ancona, and Bosola to home to inform her brothers of all
this. Accordingly, Ferdinand and Bosola reach Ancona. Ferdinand sends a letter
to the Duchess asking her to send Antonio to him. She, apprehending danger to
his life, sends him to Milan with her eldest son. Soon after Antonio’s departure,
royal forces of Ferdinand led by Bosola arrive on the scene. The Duchess is
arrested.
Now the Duchess of Malfi is a prisoner in her own palace and is tortured in
different ways. To frighten her Ferdinand visits her in the darkness of the night
and offers her a dead man’s hand. Wax images of her husband and her children
are shown to her indicating the deaths of all of them. Madmen are placed around
her palace to make unbearable noise to keep her in constant pangs and disturbance.
All this drama of pains, horrors and revenge reaches its climax with Bosola’s
murdering the Duchess. He comes to her with executioners who with, a cord,
strangle her to death. Cariola, her maid-servant, is also murdered.
Seeing her sister strangled, Ferdinand becomes sad and to repent for his act, he
does not give any reward to the villain, Bosola and asks him never to come again
to him. Bosola then goes to the dying Duchess and reveals to her that her husband,
Antonio is not dead. She gets pleased, and dies in peace. Bosola then goes to
Milan to seek reward from the Cardinal.
Bosola is asked to eliminate Antonio by the Cardinal and he concede to do so.
Cardinal kills Julia by asking her to kiss the Bible whose cover is spread over
with poison. The Cardinal’s planning is to kill Bosola when he will have
performed the deed of putting Antonio to death but Bosola somehow overhears
34 his plan. And therefore, in the darkness, taking a figure to be of Cardinal stabs
it. Mistakenly, Antonio is murdered by Bosola. He then kills the Cardinal. The Duchess of Malfi:
Textual Analysis
Ferdinand has gone mad. He while passing, cannot understand what the Cardinal
actually cries for. Then Bosola kills Ferdinand who, in a scuffle, has already
given death wounds to the Cardinal and Bosola. Thus, die Ferdinand, the
Cardinal and Bosola. The play ends with the enthronement of the eldest son of
Antonio and the Duchess.

3.5 JOHN WEBSTER’S ART OF CHARACTER-

IZATION
Webster’s greatness among Jacobean dramatists lies in the fact that he is usually
bracketed with Shakespeare. It itself is a sign of great merit to be compared with
the bard of Avon. Saintsbury says, “Of cheerfulness Webster himself knows
nothing, his comedy whenever he attempts it, is forced guffaw, his passion of
love, though powerful, has nothing bright or ethereal about it, but shares the
luridness of his other motives, and he is most at home in the horror almost
unmitigated.”
The plays, by John Webster abound in characters of various types and natures,
and moods and temperaments, without any doubt are the evidence of his great
skill in character adumbration. Although not so great as Shakespeare, Webster
must rank very high among the character delineators in Elizabethan tragedy. In
spite of his ambit and uncluttered range, he has depicted male and female, lofty
and sinful, and innocent and sneaky characters. As a dramatic artist; Webster is
not so much concerned with formal beauty and technical perfection as with the
creation of the picture of the world, consistent and accurate, in which his characters
live and move. It is a world created of their thoughts and the deeds which are the
outcome of those thoughts. His purpose is to make us intimately familiar with
his characters and their world as quickly as possible and with this end in view a
variety of techniques, such as set sketches of character, dramatic revelation or
repeated analysis of one character by others, are followed. Mostly this familiarity
is achieved by the end of Act I. Action and reflections go on simultaneously,
illuminating and stimulating each other. “And ultimately”, says Una-Fermor, “it
is the reflections that are his main interest; those that his people, in moments of
illumination, make upon their own discoveries, and those that he under the thinnest
of choric disguises, makes upon them. This accounts in part for his habit of
grouping his characters almost in series, returning to re-handle a certain study in
fuller or modified form in the next play; it accounts also for the deep attention he
gives to certain reflective types, for his tendency to examine some characters so
exclusively from one aspect that he sometimes ends by making them appear
inconsistent.”
In the world of Webster, we get the interplay of thought, the meeting of mind and
mind in the double and simultaneous expression of action and reflection. About
his range Schelling observes: “His range of characterization may be narrow, but
the intensity with which he has conceived strong and masterful human character.
In the certainty of his touch in moving alike the deepest and the loftiest of human
emotions, Webster must rank not below Shakespeare himself.” His characters
have been portrayed in such a way that they reveal his psychological approach to
his heroes and villains, and to his female characters both good like the Duchess
in The Duchess of Malfi and evil like Vittoria in The White Devil. 35
Duchess of Malfi “Webster’s genius,” observes Emile Legouis, “is seen in The White Devil
especially in his portrait of Vittoria, the courtesan, whose licence scandalized
Rome at the end of the sixteenth century. It is she who is the white devil. He
makes her guilt clear, but at the same time conveys an impression of her
fascination, which he seems himself to feel. He is all admiration for this woman’s
beauty, the energy of her ambition and the presence of mind with which she faces
desperate situations. As the wife of a poor gentleman, she is courted by Brachiano,
Duke of Padua, and she convinces him that he must marry her, first ridding her of
her husband and himself of his virtuous wife. The double murder is accomplished;
but suspicion rests on those who profit by it. Vittoria is summoned before an
imposing court, over which the Duke of Florence and his brother, Cardinal
Monticelso, afterwards Sixtus V, preside. Accusations, precise and overwhelming,
are heaped upon her, but she meets her judges superbly, and with head held high
turns their attack against them, reducing their proofs to nothingness and causing
more than one of those present to waver. Vittoria is none the less condemned to
seclusion in a house of convertibles, but escapes from it with her lover’s help.
They are pursued by the vengeance of the Duke of Florence and killed one after
the other, Vittoria holding out until she has exhausted every resource of invention
and courage. Even in her last hour hours, she defends herself haughtily and
counting on the effect of her beauty, bares her bosom and walks to meet her
assassins. She dies at last, confronting fate with her last words.
In sharp contrast to evil and shrewd Vittorias the good and innocent Duchess in
The Duchess of Malfi, she falls a victim to the ill-will and vengeance of her own
brothers, Fedinand and Cardinal, who drive her even to madness and death. This
exhibits Webster’s different psychological approaches to different characters.
Unlike Vittoria “her tone”, observes Frederick Allen, “to her executioner, is that
of fearless command. She has not a temple for their instruments of torture. In the
very moment of her horrible death, she stays at the hands of her executioners that
she may bow her knees before the gates of heaven, and her last cry is a prayer of
thanksgiving for the mercy of God.”
As regards the types of Webster’s characters, David Cecil remarks: “His characters
are ranged in moral divisions. There are the good and there are the bad. But,
since to act strongly one must believe in the value of worldly activities, only the
bad are active and dynamic. They are of two types. The first-Vittoria, Brachiano,
Ferdinand, the Cardinal, are the creatures of some ruling passion, lust, or ambition
or avarice or hatred. Possessed by an insatiate desire to satisfy it, they break
every law, shut their eyes to every scruple. The second group is actuated less by
passion than by cynicism. Flamineo, Bosola are not blinded by the violence of
their desires. On the contrary they are cold and calculating. But they have a
Machiavellian disbelief in human virtues. Mankind to them is made up of fools
and knaves all equally struggling for their own ends. The only solid goods are
material wealth and success and, deliberately rejecting every moral consideration,
they set to work to get them. Opposed to these two types of villains, stand the
good characters, Isabella, Marcello, Cornelia, Antonio, the Duchess, noble, pitiful
and courageous. ln contrast to the bad, however, they are passive, they cannot
identify themselves with the activities of the sintainted world. Once she has
married Antonio, the Duchess initiates no action. The other good characters never
do anything at all. Helpless victims they are and are swept into the turmoil set up
by the furious energy of the wicked. In the end, more often than not they are
36 destroyed by them.”
Regarding characterization Webster seems to have followed Aristotle’s views The Duchess of Malfi:
Textual Analysis
expressed in his Poetics. Aristotle pleads for the characters to be life-like. By
life-like what he means to say is that the behaviour of a character should be in
harmony with his nature and temperament. Most of the characters of Webster’s
are drawn from the court life of Italy. They are real and natural, but at the same
time they are true to their own nature. His characters have a marked tendency
to fall into series. This is so because he wants to explore fully some particular
territory of the mind, and the exploration is carried on from one play to another.
There are, first of all, the politicians or Machiavellians, as Flamineo in the
White Devil and Bosola and the Cardinal in The Duchess of Malfi. There are
strong, clear-minded masculine feminine figures like Vittoria and Julia, and
the more passive feminine figures as Isabella and the Duchess. Then there are
chorus characters like Delio and Pescara, just and honest, their rectitude running
like a tonic-infusion through the nightmare world created by Ferdinand and the
Cardinal. Of these the politicians or Machiavellians are the most interesting
and considerable attention is devoted to their growth. Their Machiavellians is
sharply distinguished. For example, Bosola stands for a reflective clearheaded
politician, worthy to stand by Machiavelli’s politician, Cesare Borgia (in The
Prince). Though Webster’s characters are types, they are also individuals. They
are not monsters of wickedness or goodness, but complex living, breathing,
human beings. Even the best has some weakness and the worst are humanised
by a trace of good. Thus, the Duchess is a Machiavellian in as much as she
marries secretly, Ferdinand is full of remorse and goes mad and even the
Cardinal, at least once, feels a pang of remorse. Bosola is the only one of the
characters of Webster who change and grow under the stress of circumstance,
and he grows into an avenger from a tool-villain.
To conclude we can refer to Una Elia fermor’s observation on Webster’s
characters: “When we think of Webster’s characters we find that, even in the
limited group of the three main plays there is a marked tendency for them to fall
into series. This may be partly due to limitation in sympathy, but it is also, I
think, due to a desire to explore a certain territory of the mind more fully than the
compass ofa simple play will allow; in nearly every case the later study is an
extension or modification of the earlier and not a contraction. The true plot of his
play is not the events which proceed upon the surface and are flung off, as it
were, as a casual expression, but the progress of the minds of the central figures
towards deeper and deeper self-knowledge, the approach to the impenetrable
mystery of fate perceived in the moments of intense suffering and action, which
are also the moments of clearest insight. Our interest in the figure of Bosola, for
example, is not mainly because, in the services of Ferdinand’s mania, he murders
the Duchess and brings about unwittingly the death of Antonio, but because of
the strange discrepancy between the man he appears, the man he would be, and
the man that, unknown to himself he really is. “

3.6 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, we have focused on the play and analysed it by focussing on John
Webster’s Skill in Plot-construction. The next section gives us a critical
understanding of the sources, setting and major themes of the play, which allows
us to understand the play and the purpose to which John Webster has used
them. This has been followed by a detailed and comprehensive summary of the 37
Duchess of Malfi play and John Webster’s art of characterization. The Unit has attempted to give
a concise and succinct understanding of the play to help us grapple with various
issues raised in the play.

3.7 QUESTIONS
1. How successfully does Webster match language and character in The Duchess
of Malfi?
2. How does Webster satirize the Catholic Church and its corrupt practices in
the play?
3. Discuss The Duchess of Malfi as a tragedy of transgression.
4. What clues are given to us about the society’s attitudes to women in the
play?

38
 The Duchess of Malfi:
UNIT 4 THE DUCHESS OF MALFI: Character Analysis &
Critical Perspectives
CHARACTER ANALYSIS &
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
Structure

4.0 Objectives
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Main Characters in the Play
4.2.1 The Duchess of Malfi
4.2.2 Antonio Bologna
4.2.3 Duke Ferdinand
4.2.4 Cardinal
4.2.5 Bosola
4.3 Let Us Sum Up
4.4 Questions

4.0 OBJECTIVES
This Unit is aimed at providing a deeper understanding of the play by analysing
the major characters and their function in the play that allows us to critically
examine issues pertaining to gender, nobility, abuse of power and prevailing
corruption. Finally, we will end with a few questions, which will help us to
encapsulate what we have studied so far.

4.1 INTRODUCTION
In this unit we’ll look at how characters have certain functions and roles to play.
The characters epitomize the socio-political milieu and their interactions allow
us to gain insights into the age and times in which they are created. Let’s take a
deeper look at character analysis in the sections that follow.

4.2 MAIN CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY

Let us have a closer look at major characters of the play.

4.2.1 The Duchess of Malfi

The Duchess, strong-willed, brave, passionate, proud, and aloving wife and mother
is the most psychologically complex female Character portrayed with great insight
and poetic power.A noble and courageous Duchess is the source of all action in
the play. Because of her beauty,boldness,sincerity,love,devotion,patience and
tolerance, she is placed as one of the best and immortal characters in the world
literature. She has a charming and fascinating personality. It is she who is the
source of all action in the play and appears before us in various roles-as a noble
and courageous Duchess, as a passionate beloved and devoted wife, end as a true
and compassionate mother. Her beauty, boldness, sincerity, love, devotion, 39
Duchess of Malfi patience and tolerance are some of her natural or acquired virtues which place
her among the best and immortal characters in the world literature. Webster’s
fame and recognition as a dramatist can appropriately be said to have depended
on The Duchess of Malfi and its heroine, the Duchess.
In Antonio’s opinion the Duchess is “the right noble Duchess” so very different
in temper from her brothers:
You never fixed your eyes on three medals
Cast in one figure, of so different temper
Antonio has high words of praise for the Duchess, her sense of dignity and honour,
and her pious life. He pays the following glowing tribute to her:
For her discourse, it is so full of rapture,
You only will begin then to be sorry
When she doth end her speech, and wish, in wonder
She held it less vain-glory to talk much
Than your penance to hear her:
She, who has son from her deceased husband, has unfortunately become a widow
in the prime of life, whenshe is still in the full bloom of youth. Her two brothers,
theCardinal and Ferdinand, are against her marrying any man below her dignity
or rank only to have all her property and wealth after her death. In spite of giving
words to her brothers, she falls in love with her own steward,Antonio.Even when
she encounters her executioners,sent by her brothers,she thinks of safety of her
husband and her children than her own life and sends Antonio along with her
eldest child to Milan for the same. Even on the verge of her death, she prays to
God in thankfulness. She instructs her maid Cariolato look after her daughter
and son.
She says:
I pray thee look thou giv’st my little boy
Some syrup for his cold, and let the girl
Say her prayers, ere she sleep.
One of the dialogues between Bosola and Duchess at the time of when he reaches
her to put her to death, he asks her, ‘Does not death fright you? ‘Her reply is full
of optimism and elevated thinking. She says:
Who would be afraid on’t?
Knowing to meet such excellent company
In th’ other world.
Duchess is a thoroughly virtuous woman. Legous says: ‘The victim, theDuchess
of Malfi, is all goodness and innocence, and is driven to madness and death by
her brothers because she has secretly married her steward, the virtuous Antonio.’
In her innocence, purity and pathetic death, she is often compared to Shakespeare’s
Desdemona, but she is a lady of great tact, courage resourcefulness and heroic
endurance. Her nature is like sweet herbs, it gives out most sweet fragrance when
it is crushed. Adversity brings out to the greatest advantage, her passionate
40 tenderness and heroic fortitude.
In the words of Frederick Allen, “The horrible tortures, however, inflicted by The Duchess of Malfi:
Character Analysis &
her brothers serve to save her mind already half-crazed with grief. Each new Critical Perspectives
horror seems but to strengthen the resistance of her anguished soul. Even when
life has truly become for her the most horrible curse that one can give, her
Spirit remains unconquered and unbroken. “I am Duchess of Malfi still”, she
says. In the presence of death itself, her strength of spirit might seem superhuman
and unnatural but it is humanised by the exquisite tenderness with which it is
combined. Her tone to her executioners is that of fearless command. She has
not a tremble for their instruments of torture. In the very moment of her horrible
death, she stays the hands of her executioners that she may how her knees
before the gates of heaven, and her last cry is a prayer of thanksgiving for the
mercy of God.”
At the moment of death, her last words clearly bring out her faith in religion and
the grace of God. She is deeply religious and this gives her strength to bear the
horrible textures that are inflicted upon her and the cruel death that is her lot.

The question is often asked as to why the Duchess was murdered. Was she really
lustful, immoral and irreligious as her brothers think her to be? She was living in
a corrupt court, and is there anything surprising or unnatural if its general
corruption has also infected her? No concrete answer can be given to these
questions but as there is enough evidence in to play to show that she is chaste,
virtuous, pure and religious. Perhaps the real answer lies in the fact that Ferdinand
felt incestuous love for her, and it was sexual jealousy and not any fault of the
Duchess herself, which prompted the murder. Also, both the cardinal and he
himself felt that she had disgraced the family by marrying below her ‘degree’ or
rank and status.

4.2.2 ANTONIO BOLOGNA

Antonio Bologna, young and smart, wise and intelligent, and honest and
virtuous, better known as Antonio who plays a very important role in the play
and in the life of the Duchess. It is by virtue of his virtues that he is favoured by
Delio, admired by Bosola, and liked and loved by the Duchess, who elevates
him to the position of her husband. He is a very keen observer of characters
and courts. His observations about the French court and courtiers are worth-
praising; and, in this case, he undoubtedly seems to be the mouthpiece of the
dramatist.
Antonio is very honest and virtuous. It is not only the Duchess and Delio who
are greatly impressed by his honesty but the Cardinal and Bosola also have a
very high opinion of his virtues. The Cardinal’s words-”His nature is too honest
for such business”—are sufficient evidence to his integrity. Bosola, although in
order to please the Duchess, speaks very high of his good qualities in the following
manner.
Sure he was too honest..................
He was an excellent
Courtier, and most faithful; a soldier, that though it
As beastly to know his own value too little,
As devilish to acknowledge it too much; 41
Duchess of Malfi Both his virtue and form deserv’d a far better fortune:
His discourse rather delighted to judge itself, than show itself.
His breast was fill’d with all perfection, .........
His opinion about Cardinal is, “a Melancholy, Churchman. The spring in his face
is nothing but the engendering of toads: When he is jealous of any man he lays
worse plots for him then ever was imposed on Hercules, for he strews in his way
flatterers, panders, intelligencers, atheists and a thousand such political monsters.”
He says The Cardinal and Ferdinand are twins, not by birth, but in their characters.
How so much diplomatically Bosola might have said all these things about
Antonio, but it cannot be said that his words have no grain of truth in them. “The
virtuous Antonio”, called so by Legouis, himself acknowledges that he has always
been a sincere servant of virtue:
Were there nor heaven, nor hell,
I should be honest: I have long serv’d virtue,
And nev’r ta’en wages of her.
Antonio is a keen observer: His analysis of the personalities of various characters
is accurate and worth praising. His views on the French court and courtiers
sufficiently exhibit his exactness and judiciousness as an observer of things. The
Cardinal and Ferdinand tire immoral and unkind. Antonio sketches their characters
in a very few words. Of the Cardinal be appropriately says:
...........he is a melancholy churchman. The spring in his face is nothing
but the engendering of toads: where he is jealous of any man, he lays
worse plots for them, than ever was impos’d on Hercules : for he strews
in his way flatterers, panders, intelligencers, atheists: and a thousand
such political monsters.........
And what he says of Duke Ferdinand is equally impressive and correct. He
observes that Ferdinand is
...........a most perverse and turbulent nature;
What appears in him mirth, is merely outside,
If he laugh heartily, it is to laugh
All honesty out of fashion.
His views on the character and personality of Bosola and his eulogizing the
Duchess aptly show that he observes the things and persons very keenly and
minutely. Besides, he wisely generalizes the tendency of the flatterers in the
following lines:
Right the fashion of the world:
From decay’d fortunes every flatterer shrinks,
Men cease to build where the foundation sinks.
Antonio is devoted lover of the Duchess and has very high regards for her. It is
his sincerity, honesty and devotion that leave a lasting impression of his good
image on the heart and mind of the Duchess. The limits of respect and dignity
for Duchess is never be crossed by Antonio even after his marriage with her.
42 He rules her during the nights, but in day time he obeys her like the most
dutiful retainer of hers. When the Duchess says to him, “you are a lord of The Duchess of Malfi:
Character Analysis &
misrule,” he very lovingly replies, “Indeed, my ‘rule is only in the night.” Then Critical Perspectives
she with one kiss stops his mouth. On this he says, “Nay, that’s but one: Venus
had soft doves to draw her chariot. I must have another” (she kisses him again)
this dialogue between the Duchess and Antonio shows the passion and piety
of love between them. The cares and fears of life are never allowed to enter
their loving minds. Antonio’s devotion to Duchess does not allow him to
disobeys her.
Without any doubt it is clear that Antonio is a very irreproachable man, but the
overall impression of his personality is that of a weak-willed, timid and unheroic
man who has been raised from baseness to honour. He lacks the capacity for
quick decision and vigorous action. He does not act, even when action is not
only a necessity but a duty. He always exhibits an inferiority complex. If he had
been a man of strong will-power and heroic temperament, the Duchess and her
children would not have met the fate they have really done. When the Duchess
advises him to leave her for Milan along with her eldest child, he immediately
agrees saying, “You counsel safely. Best of life, farewell.” However, to defend
his weaknesses and unheroic qualities Frederick Allen’s following views can be
presented: “The character of Antonio was largely determined by the exigencies
of the story. If the play was not to be repulsive, the steward must not be unattractive.
If, on the other hand, it was to fellow the original story of intrigue and counter-
intrigue, then, of necessity, he must not be bold or venturesome and must naturally
assume throughout his relations with the Duchess a subordinate position. The
conditions of the original story demanded passivity rather than activity from
Antonio, and these conditions the dramatist, in his delineation of the character,
was careful to observe, even at the “risk of depicting the steward as somewhat
unheroic.”

4.2.3 DUKE FERDINAND

Duke Ferdinand, one of the two brothers of the Duchess of Malfi, has been
portrayed by the dramatist as a “rash, impulsive, indiscreet”, man lacking in
judgment, “and more or less dependent in his action on the advice of his brother.”
In the beginning of the play Webster, through a dialogue between Antonio and
Delio, appropriately projects his persona. Of him Antonio says:
......... a most perverse and turbulent nature;
What appears in him mirth, is merely outside,
If he laugh heartily, it is to laugh
All honesty out of fashion.
He is not effortless and employs underhand practices in securing his ends. He
weaves round his victims the web of deceitfulness,double-dealing and intrigue,
and entraps them. Antonio Continues:
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. 43
Duchess of Malfi Hearing all this about the intriguing nature and Machiavellian mind of Ferdinand,
Delio presents his own estimate of this cruel and dishonest manipulator:
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.
While delineating his character, the dramatist seems more and more interested in
highlighting his cruelty, manipulative talent, and revengeful nature. He always
forbids his sister, the Duchess, to remarry, and particularly to marry anyone who
is not equal to her status. But, in reality, the position or rank of her husband has
nothing to do with him. What he is actually interested in is the singleness (i.e. the
state of her remaining a widow) of his sister. After the news of her murder, he
sadly admits:
Only I must confess. I had a hope,
Had she continu’d widow, to have gain’d
An infinite mass of treasure by her death:
And that was the main cause; her marriage,
That drew a stream of gall quite through my heart;
By nature, Ferdinand is cruel and tormenting. He applies all the oppressive
measures to torture the Duchess to death. His instructions to Bosola to tease
and kill his sister seem not to have been given by a man who loves her wealth
and property but by one who loves the Duchess herself. He cannot tolerate her
falling in love with someone else. He like a dejected malicious lover seeks to
take revenge on her. He had incestuous love for the Duchess and sexual jealousy
prompted him to torture and murder her. To drive her to madness he orders the
mad people to be placed around her. He himself visits her in the darkness of the
night and offers her a dead man’s hand to frighten her. And ultimately, he gets
her murdered.
Notwithstanding his cruelty and oppressiveness, Ferdinand is kind and remorseful.
When he sees the face of his dead sister he is filled with pity and remorse for her.
He cannot even afford to see her, and regretfully says:
Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle, she died young.
And he even wishes to die with her:
She and I were twins:
And should I die this instant, I had liv’d
Her time to a minute.
He scolds Bosola, the spy and murder, for obeying him and putting her to death.
He would have more pleased him if he had hidden her somewhere instead of
killing her. His following words exhibit his affection for the Duchess and his
pathetic bent of mind:
Let me see her face. again;
Why didst not thou pity her? What an excellent
44
 Honest man might’st thou have been The Duchess of Malfi:
Character Analysis &
If thou hadst borne her to some sanctuary! Critical Perspectives

Or, bold in a good cause, oppos’d thyself

With thy advanced sword above thy head,
Between her innocence and my revenge!
I bade thee, when I was distracted of my wits,
Go kill my dearest friend, and thou hast done’t.
The sudden change in the thinking and attitude of Ferdinand is like that marked
in the other Elizabethan villains. However, change in him is somewhat different
from that in others. They generally change their attitude and behaviour due to
their helplessness and adverse circumstances, but Ferdinand is changed out of
pity and remorse. He even goes mad and dies in madness. But for his too much
dependence on his elder brother, the Cardinal, he would have been a less unkind
man with only a few weaknesses like rashness and outrageousness.

4.2.4 CARDINAL
Cardinal, the elder brother of the Duchess, is the real villain in The Duchess of
Malfi. He is evil and wicked to the core of his heart. He knows no mercy or pity.
Almost all the murders in the play have been planned by him and executed at his
instance. He is actually a Machiavelli in a cardinal’s robe. Frederick Allen
estimates his character thus: “He has all the besetting sins of the Machiavellian
villain. He is cold, calculating, and treacherous, inordinately ambitious and
factions (III, iii 35), pitiless in his hate, secretive in his lust and in his villainy and
as incredulous of loyalty in others as he is faithless himself (V, ii, 250). He would
seem to regard gratitude as a weakness, and is careful to disappoint his tool of all
reward, and, if possible, to be rid of him when once he has gained knowledge of
dangerous secrets in his criminal service.”
The Cardinal is out and out wicked and devilish. His thoughts and acts are inspired
by the devil himself. He does not hesitate to do even the evilest of the things. Of
him Bosola says: “Some fellows, they say, are possessed with the devil, but this
great fellow was able to possess the greatest devil, and make him worse.”
Describing the mind and personality of this “melancholy churchman” Antonio
substantiates Bosola’s above view of him. He says: “he is a melancholy
churchman. The spring in his face is nothing but the engend’ring of toads: where
he is jealous of any man, he lays worse plots for them, than ever was imposed on
Hercules: for he strews in his way flatterers, panders, intelligencers, atheists: and
a thousand such political monsters.”
He is keen, shrewd and calculating. He is the chief force behind all the murders
in the play. He observes things and characters keenly, behaves with them shrewdly
and makes exact calculations about their ends and means. Ferdinand and Bosola
are merely his instruments; he uses them in the ways he likes. At the time of
appointing a spy to keep a watch on the Duchess, Ferdinand suggests the name
of Antonio, but his (Cardinal’s) shrewd eye sees his honesty as his great
disqualification to be a spy. He says to Ferdinand, “You are deceiv’d in him/His
nature is. too honest for such business.” His face never reveals what is in his
heart. He has a remarkable control over his thoughts and feelings which he can 45
Duchess of Malfi hide to the extent he wants. It is he who shrewdly gets the Duchess tortured and
murdered, gets Antonio banished from Ancona, and then, in the end, asks Bosola
to put him to his sword. When he thinks that Julia may disclose his secret of his
ordering the murder of the Duchess, he puts her also to death by making her kiss
the Bible with a poisoned covering. And his scheming nature is best exemplified
in his instructing all the officers not to come out of their chambers when in the
night they hear any shouts or cries from Ferdinand. Actually, at this time he has
to remove the dead body of Julia to her own dwelling. But unfortunately, he
himself falls a victim to his own scheme and is given fatal wounds by his brother
Ferdinand.
The Cardinal knows no remorse but all revenge. He has no pity for the Duchess,
her children, her husband, or for Bosola or Julia. In order to satisfy his revenge,
he can do anything. He gets his sister killed in cold blood; banishes her husband,
Antonio from Ancona, orders Bosola to kill him and also plans to put an end to
Bosola’s life. He, in order to shut Julia’s lips puts her to death.
This worldly prelate can be said to have almost all the vices in him. In the words
of Frederick Allen, “Popular report endows him with high spirits, personal courage
and gallantry and a reckless passion for gambling. His more intimate acquaintances
know him for a dark intriguer who maintains a veritable army of spies and
treacherous tools.” However, like all the other villains, particularly of the
Elizabethan drama, he, in the end, realizes:
Oh Justice:
I suffer now for what hath former bin
Sorrow is held the eldest child of sin.
Throughout his life he has played the game of deaths and murders, but the
moment he sees his own death before his eyes, he fears and falters like the
most cowardly person. In this connection, Frederick Allen observes, “The
prelate’s cynical audacity deserts him when Bosola proclaims his revengeful
purpose. Unlike most of Webster’s other characters, he falters in spirit at the
threat of death and appeals to his assailant for mercy. But, when he has already
received a fatal wound, something of his old mocking spirit returns : he can
taunt Bosola and pray to be himself, ‘laid aside and never thought of ’ Indeed
nothing in his life becomes him so much as the leaving it, then and then only
does he reveal a trace of unselfishness : “Look to my brother.”

4.2.5 BOSOLA
Bosola, “the most consummate character in The Duchess of Malfi,” is next only
to the Duchess in significance. He is the most complex and complicated character
in the play. On the one hand, he is a well-read scholar, philosopher and worldly-
wise man, and on the other, he is keen, shrewd, witty, manipulating, and cunning,
fit to be appointed a spy to keep a watch on the activities of the Duchess. His
speeches are always characterized by his wit and philosophy. He can safely be
called a ‘spoiled genius’.
He is actually the “court gall” whose “railing is not for simple love of piety:
Indeed, he rails at those things which he wants, would be as lecherous,
covetous, or proud, Bloody, or envious, as any man, If he had means to be
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so.” This assessment of Bosola’s personality is by Antonio is an ample The Duchess of Malfi:
Character Analysis &
evidence of his shrewdness and satirical talent. It is his unfavouring Critical Perspectives
circumstances that have brought him failures and frustrations. And out of
frustration he has become such an unfeeling and unkind manipulator. Having
passed his seven-year term in the galleys, when he comes back to the Cardinal,
at whose instance be murdered someone, the latter responds coldly. Then
Bosola says: “I have done you better service than to be slighted thus. Miserable
age, where only the reward of doing well, is the doing of it!” Hearing this
when the Cardinal says to him, “You enforce your merit too much,” he reminds
him (the Cardinal):
“Ifell into the galleys in your service, where, for two years together, I wore two
towels instead of a shirt, with a knot on the shoulder, after the fashion of a Roman
mantle. Slighted thus? I will thrive some way: blackbirds fatten best in hard
weather: why not I, in these dog days?” ‘
To a certain extent it is the Cardinal’s neglect of Bosola which has poisoned all
his goodness. In this connection, Antonio says:
’Tis great pity
He should be thus neglected, I have heard
He’s very valiant. This foul melancholy
Will poison all this goodness, for, I’ll tell you,
If too immoderate sleep be truly said
To be an inward rust unto the soul;
It then doth follow want of action
Breeds all black malcontents, and their close rearing,
Like moths in cloth, do hurt for want of wearing,
Bosola is an ambitious man who can go to any extent to achieve his goal. He
accepts the offer given by the Cardinal to be aspy in the palace of the Duchess.
Of his ambition and desire for power Frederick Allen writes: “He is certainly not
without ambition, and in his bitterness his only motives for action are
considerations of personal aggrandisement and desire for power. In the world of
practical life, he wilfully disregards conscientious scruples, but he is not altogether
without them.”
As a spy Bosola is intelligent, shrewd and dauntless. He very cunningly confirms
the pregnancy of the Duchess, the birth of the child. and conveys the news to the
Arragonian brothers in Italy. The climax ‘of his shrewdness can be seen when he
praises Antonio while all other officers of the Duchess ridicule and abuse him:
and thus he gains confidence of the Duchess, who discloses all her secrets to
him. He misguides her and gets her arrested at the shrine of Loretta. Towards the
end of the play he intelligently deputes Julia to know the secret of the sadness of
the Cardinal.
His assessments of the personalities of different characters are exact and dauntless.
He is intelligent and fearless enough to present the characters with all their virtues
and vices. He comments on the nature and character of the Cardinal and Ferdinand
in the following way: “He and his brothers are like plum trees that grow crooked
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Duchess of Malfi over standing pools, they are rich, and o’erladen with fruit, but none but crows,
pies, and caterpillars feed on them.” His dauntless tone becomes satirical when
he directly says to Ferdinand:
Your brother and yourself are worthy men;
You have a pair of hearts are hollow graves,
Rotten, and rotting others: and your vengeance.
Like two chain’d bullets, still goes arm in arm;
You may be brothers; for treason, like the plague,
Doth take much in a blood.
Bosola is an unkind avenger. He, at the instance of the Cardinal and Ferdinand,
tortures the innocent Duchess in all the possible ways. When gold is offered to
him, he immediately asks “Whose throat must I cut?” But unfortunately, he works
for the thankless Arragonian brothers, who offer him nothing but abuses and
misbehaviour. After the strangling of the Duchess he is again refused his reward.
His vengeance takes a turn and he plans to take revenge on the Cardinal and
Ferdinand. He asks Ferdinand:
Let me know Wherefore I should be thus neglected? Sir,
I served your tyranny: and rather strove
To satisfy yourself, than all the world;
And though I loath’d the evil, yet I lov’d
You that did counsel it: and rather sought
To appear a true servant than an honest man.
This shows that Bosola, in order to satisfy his desire for power and pelf,
deliberately but reluctantly moves on the path of dishonesty and manipulation.
But when the reality dawns on him he changes his intention with the
determination “I would not change my peace of conscience for all the wealth
of Europe.” He is ready even to provide a new life to the Duchess. Seeing her
stirring again he says, “Upon thy pale lips I will melt my heart to store them
with fresh colour.” He makes up his mind to seek out good Antonio and to
put him into “safety from the reach of these most cruel biters”. Then he
declares, “It may be, I’ll join with thee in a most just revenge.” Thus, Bosola,
who was once the instrument of the Cardinal, becomes later on his own
instrument to take revenge on the Cardinal himself. He reaches him to put
him to his sword; he offers him large sums of money, but he clearly says,
“Thy prayers and proffers are both unseasonable”, and stabs him without
wasting any time.
Bosola is a man of philosophical mind. His statements and conversation exhibit
his philosophy and scholarship. But for his association with the cruel and
Machiavellian Cardinal, Bosola would have been a pure scholar and profound
philosopher. Most of the philosophical assertions in the play have come out from
the mouth of this philosopher turned villain. Some of his reflections on life are as
under:
(1) ...... our bodies are weaker than those paper prisons boys use to keep
48 flies in : more contemptible, since ours is to preserve earth-worms :
 didst thou ever see a lark in a cage ? such is the soul in the body this The Duchess of Malfi:
Character Analysis &
world is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o’er our heads, like Critical Perspectives
her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small
compass of our prison.
(2) We are merely the stars’ tennis-balls, struck and banded.
Which way please them.

(3) We are only like dead walls, or vaulted graves,

That, ruin’d,.yields no echo......
Oh this gloomy world,
In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness
Doth, womanish, and fearful, mankind live?

To summarize all his acts and deeds in the play of Bosola, David Cecil writes:
“There is a strain of good in him; and in the end this strain of good leads him
not to damnation but to repentance. From the first his amorality is shown to be
the result largely of harsh circumstances, and as such more excusable. He is a
middle-aged soldier of fortune, so vexed by poverty, ingratitude, and bad luck
that he is ready to yield to any temptation that comes his way. Why be scrupulous
in a wholly unscrupulous world? Ferdinand and the Cardinal take advantage of
his desperate mood and make him their creature in their plots against their
sister, the Duchess. Under their pressure he proceeds like Flamineo, from crime
to crime. For he spies on the Duchess, who trusts him; then betrays her secret,
then when the brothers begin to wreak vengeance on her, he becomes first her
torturer, after-wards her murderer. But he has never liked his task from the
beginning. As it gets more odious, he recoils more andmore receives the brothers’
orders with a kind of bitter detachment, praises her courage to them, talks to
her, even while he is engineering her torments, with a strange melancholic
irony. Finally, in the magnificent scene when he stands with the Duke Ferdinand
by her dead body, he finds himself unable any longer to shut his ears to the
clamour of conscience”.

4.3 LET US SUM UP

By this time we have finished reading the play The Duchess of Malfi;we have
gone through each unit and are now in a position to see how John Webster has
used his characters to narrate the story of The Duchess of Malfiand how he
deviatesfrom the Shakespearean tragedy popular at the time. The critical analysis
will enable us to understand the various perspectives through which the play can
be read and will help us expand our understanding of the play. However, we
should keep in mind the fact that though we, as 21st Century readers, analyse the
play from our vantage point, and through various 20th and 21st Century critical
tools, what we observe is blatant disregard for a woman’s assertion of her rights
to live as she desires and it clearly explicates the fact that suppression of female
sexuality was the norm then and even today in many parts of the world. Then
again, we keep reading about honour killings and of deaths related to inter caste
marriages in India. It compels us to reflect on whether we have progressed as a
society in real sense of the term or not. 49
Duchess of Malfi
4.4 QUESTIONS
1. What claims does the Duchess have to the status of a tragic protagonist?
Discuss Webster’s portrayal of her from this perspective.
2. Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy abounds in incestuous relationships. How
would you interpret Ferdinand’s incestuous attraction towards his sister?
3. Discuss the dual roles of Bosola as an accomplice of Duke Ferdinand and
the avenger of the Duchess. How does Webster reconcile the two aspects in
the presentation of his character?
4. Which characters in The Duchess of Malfi demonstrate Machiavellian
motives?
5. Compare and contrast different characters in the play? Do you agree with the
Puritans that they are immoral?

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