Webster glorified virtue, morality and justice, and condemned sinful and vicious courses of life in his dramatic works in general and The Duchess of Malfi in particular. Being a child of the Reformation he conceived morality in religious terms and saw life as a struggle between right and wrong in which right had the ultimate triumph. “An act to him was wrong” says Lord David Cecil, “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 God who created man.” Webster held the view that neither sins nor sinful persons could escape punishment; they were bound to be overtaken by the forces of moral life governing the universe.
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In Webster’s play the Duchess of Malfi is young and beautiful. Unfortunately she is reduced to a state of widowhood in her youth and the social codes of the early seventeenth century do not permit remarriage. But against the wishes of her brothers the Cardinal and Ferdinand and the social codes she marries Antonio secretly. The brothers deploy Bosola as a spy and find out the truth. Now the two brothers, aided by Bosola, torment her. To highlight ‘right’ against ‘wrong’ Webster contrasts the beautiful, noble and virtuous Duchess against the cruel and treacherous brothers. If the Duchess is white and heavenly, they are dark and hellish. Of the two bothers the Cardinal is a perfect Machiavellian and hits upon diabolic plans which are carried out by Ferdinand. For her simplicity and innocence, the Duchess has to suffer a lot. She is imprisoned and is tortured mentally as well as physically.
In the play there are melodramatic scenes like the one in which Ferdinand holds out to the Duchess a dead man’s hand, pointing out that it is the hand of Antonio. But the Duchess comes out as a bold and courageous lady and says:
Portia, I will now kindle thy coals again,
And revive the rare and almost dead example
of a loving wife.
Like a caring mother, she requests Cariola to give syrup to her son and let her daughter say her prayers ere she sleeps when the executioners are ready to kill her. She is neither afraid of death nor has lost faith in the final justice. Rather she has a hope of redemption after this earthly life:
Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength,
Must pull down Heaven upon me.
The simplicity, ingenuousness, devotion and courage in the character of the Duchess make her noble and dignified. Whether she is doomed to live or die, she can do both like a prince. Her death gives pangs of remorse even to a stone hearted fellow like Ferdinand who remarks:
Cover her face mine eyes dazzle
She died young.
Webster’s moral vision does not get clouded by the villainies and black deeds of the world. Evil cannot triumph at the end. That is why Webster introduces Act V despite the fact the Duchess dies at the end of Act IV. Some critics such as Leech have considered Act V as an anticlimax but the Act is important as it supports the playwright’s moral vision. In this Act all evil doers receive their ‘rewards’. The Cardinal, who had been the agent of all villainy, is stabbed by Bosola, Ferdinand dies in a scuffle and Bosola’s death comes in the nature of poetic justice and triumph of moral values in the world.
At the top of all this, the evil characters are made to recognise the supremacy of the divine law before they meet their end. Before dying the Cardinal says, “I pray, let me be laid by and never thought of”, Ferdinand realises the power of Merciful and Bosola cries out words of repentance and disillusionment:
O, this gloomy world!
In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,
Doth womanish and fearful mankind live.
Let worthy minds never stagger in distrust,
To suffer death or shame for what is just.
Thus Webster’s moral truth finds way in the final couplet of The White Devil:
Let guilty men remember their black deeds
Do lean on crutches, made of slender reeds.
Thus Swinburne is right when he says, “there is no poet morally nobler than Webster.”
Bosola
By creating Bosola, Webster has definitely added one of the finest portraits to the great gallery of villains in the Elizabethan drama. In the words of Schelling, Bosola “remains the most consummate (skilled) character of The Duchess of Malfi. Bosola is no ordinary villain but a scholar and a man of cleverest possible vision.” The character of Bosola is rather mysterious and enigmatic. Shakespeare’s Iago is without any gain of goodness and without any feeling of remorse and repentance; but in Bosola grains of goodness and repentance are discernible. He does feel a sense of pity, and remorse, and becomes the avenger of the Duchess by killing her inimical brothers the Cardinal and Ferdinand. It appears that Webster has given contradictory traits to Bosola purposely. Sometimes he behaves erratically, moves on the path of villainy, at other times he feels sorry after the commission of crime.
It is very difficult to form a correct opinion of Bosola in the beginning of the play, because different characters have different opinions about him. Delio speaks of his doing “a notorious murder” for which he had to remain seven years in the galleys. Antonio says, “I have heard he is very valiant.” In the beginning of the play it appears that Bosola does not like to do evil things. However, soon the lure of advancement and material glory brings him round and he agrees to be a spy on the Duchess. Gradually a different picture of Bosola comes to the fore. We find some truth in Delio’s opinion about Bosola:
He would be as lecherous, covetous or proud
Bloody, or envious, as any man.
The first thing that Bosola does is to put on the pose of melancholy and gravity so that he may look sober, and people may have faith in him. Not only does he choose to be melancholy, but also to be cynical so that people may take him to be an indifferent person. He also decries (criticizes) a politician to show that he likes virtue:
A politician is the devil’s quilted anvil
He fashions all sins on him,
And the blows are never heard.
Altogether different in deeds, Bosola plays a trick upon the Duchess by presenting her the apricots. His motive is just to find out whether the Duchess is pregnant. By the activities and the reactions of the Duchess, he guesses that there is something wrong. His doubt is aggravated when the Duchess keeps herself within doors. The shriek of a woman from the lodging of the Duchess at once creates suspicion in his mind; and he moves out stealthily in the night and meets aroused Antonio, exchanging words of bitterness with him. Fortune helps him and he gets the horoscope of the newborn baby heedlessly left behind by Antonio.
Bosola sends the information of the birth of a child to Ferdinand, and devotes his energy to find out who is the father of the Duchess’ child. Like all villains, he employs the instrument of flattery and succeeds in getting out the secret from the Duchess. Having got the secret, Bosola works as a traitor, a faithless treacherous fellow, and brings out the Duchess’ arrest. Then he works for the strangling of the Duchess and meets her in a foul way. He brings the death of the innocent Duchess and her children and acts his part as a hireling of Ferdinand.
After the murder of the Duchess, his attitude undergoes a change for the better. But for the sake of advancement, he again acts on the advice of the Cardinal to bring the end of Antonio. Unwillingly he murders Ferdinand, but later on he turns his rapier on the Cardinal. He then falls on terms of philosophy with a scholarly wisdom, cries out words of repentance and disillusionment:
O, this gloomy world!
In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,
Doth womanish and fearful mankind live.
Let worthy minds never stagger in distrust,
To suffer death or shame for what is just.
But these words come too late when he has reached the end of the journey. One is sorry to say that there were seeds of goodness in Bosola. Had he not been employed by Ferdinand, he would have been a different man. He had no motiveless malice of Iago. He was acting all through as a faithful servant of his master, but was taking human lives for a little advancement. That was really a blot on him and hence in spite of all his scholarly words and words of repentance uttered by him, the final impression that is left on our mind about Bosola is that “he is an informer, torturer and murderer”. Mixture of good and evil in him drags him close to reality. He is a complex human being with a lot of vices in him. He is undoubtedly one of the finest studies in villainy in Jacobean drama.
The Duchess
The character of the Duchess of Malfi has been presented by Webster with great poetic insight and sympathy. She towers far above all other heroines of Webster, and is much superior to Vittoria (heroine of The White Devil), who plans the death of her husband. The Duchess is an embodiment of virtue, nobility, patience and love. She is almost a goddess type of the young innocent widow in whose look:
There speaketh so divine a countenance
As cuts off all lascivious* and vain hope!
She is contrasted with her brothers the Cardinal and Ferdinand who are the embodiments of cruelty, treachery and wickedness. If they are dark and hellish, the Duchess is white and heavenly. Antonio hints the nobility, grace and gentility in the Duchess when he calls her “the right noble Duchess”. Further we are told that her days are practiced in such noble virtue that her sleep is like heaven. The Duchess has her “youth and a little beauty” which she will not allow go waste. For gratifying her youthful desires, and have a husband of her liking, she can be bold and adventurous, and takes all possible risks and bears all dangerous consequences. The Duchess marries her noble steward Antonio and surrenders herself to him like a woman who truly loves a man. She remains faithful to Antonio after marriage and defends him in the best way possible. She makes provision for his safety and gives him wealth. She is so devoted to Antonio that she cannot bear the report of his death. When she is made to believe that her husband is murdered, she bursts out:
Portia, I will now kindle thy coals again
And revive the rare and almost dead example
of a loving wife.
If the love of the Duchess for Antonio is noble and her role as a wife is commendable, her part as a mother is not less touching. When she is to be strangled, her first thought goes to her children, and to Cariola she entrusts the care of her children:
I pray thee, look thou giv’st my little boy
Some syrup for his cold, and let the girl
Say the players ere she sleeps.
The simplicity and guilelessness* in the character of the Duchess make her noble and dignified. She is not a worldly wise woman as she puts faith in Bosola and takes him into confidence, when he flatters her by praising Antonio and her marriage with a noble person. She is innocent and cannot fathom out a villain, who takes out her secret from her by praising her in false words.
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For her simplicity and innocence, the Duchess has to suffer a lot. But once the suffering falls on her, she bears that nobly with heroism and courage. She also meets her death with forbearance* and fortitude (courage). She prepares for her doom in the hope to meet better company in Heaven. When she is being strangled, she points out to the executioners:
Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength,
Must pull down Heaven upon me.
Even after her death there is dazzle of sublimity radiating in her eyes and face, so that even her stone hearted brother Ferdinand cannot help tears:
Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle
She died young.
“All her actions to the end of her life,” says Dr Barrett, “illustrate her supremely inspiring divine qualities. She anticipates every diabolic plan of her brothers, and remains always on the defensive, nor does she retaliate (oppose).”
However Leech has noticed some shortcomings in her character. First: ‘she promises to her brothers that she will not marry, but she marries.’ ‘She gives way to sexual passions and is guilty of violating the code of conduct prescribed for the windows in the 17th century.’ Apart from this, the Duchess is a simpleton who fails to understand the villain in Bosola. She lacks the subtle analytical and penetrating vision of a quick witted woman. She has to suffer for all these shortcomings in her personality. But in her suffering Webster presents the picture of a noble woman. She meets her fate with stoical fortitude and wonderful patience. She exemplifies in her character the truth of Shakespeare’s remark in King Lear:
Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their
Coming hither
Ripeness is in all.
———
Meanings:
*lascivious = feeling strong sexual desire
*guilelessness = not clever
*forbearance = patience
Plot construction or Structure of The Duchess of Malfi or
Is Act V an anticlimax?
Webster’s play The Duchess of Malfi is one of the best works in the list of Jacobean drama. Though the play has certain splendours of its own yet there have been charges that the play suffers from the unity of action. About Webster, Grierson says, “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 herself, almost fades out of the play after Act III.” So also in The Duchess of Malfi critics have found lack of compactness and unified action. For instance, Julia-Cardinal episode has been found superfluous and the whole of Act V has been seen as an anticlimax by various critics.
In the very beginning of the play we come to know about the wickedness of Ferdinand and the Cardinal through the speeches of Antonio and Delio. The Aragonian brothers are opposed to the marriage of their widowed sister. But the Duchess would not like to let go waste her youth and beauty, and thus marries Antonio, her Steward. The innocent Duchess is totally ignorant of the cunning intentions of Bosola who works as a spy for her brothers. Thus, Act I is well planned and serves as a good exposition to the tragedy.
Violating Aristotelian principle of unity of time more than one year is allowed to pass between Act I and Act II. A child is born to the Duchess. Bosola gets this information by chance and reports the matter to the two brothers who now become enemy of their sister. Two more years pass and two more children are born to her. For all these years Ferdinand and the Cardinal do not stir against the Duchess. They do not take any step to vindicate (justify) the honour of the family. The tempo of action slows down and the gaps of time disrupt the unity of action.
Act III again revives our interest in the action. Ferdinand visits the Duchess, rebukes her for her immoral act and threatens her of the dire consequences. After his departure Bosola moves craftily, digs out the news that Antonio is the father of the Duchess’ children and sends the news to the two brothers. Consequently the Duchess and Antonio are banished from Ancona and the former is imprisoned in her palace. There is nothing wrong with the plot till now; except the Julia-Cardinal episode which is in the nature of a sub-plot and disrupts the main action of the play. Here in defence of Webster it can be said that the episode is significant as it is important in development of the Cardinal’s character as a vicious character.
In Act IV the Duchess is persecuted and strangled to death. Some critics believe that the play should end here and consider Act V as superfluous. However, these critics cannot be supported because Webster’s purpose as a dramatist is moral and ethical. That is why he introduces Act V. And he glorifies virtue, morality and justice, and condemns sinful and vicious courses of life in his dramatic works in general and The Duchess of Malfi in particular. Being a child of the Reformation he conceived morality in religious terms and saw life as a struggle between right and wrong in which right had the ultimate triumph. “An act to him was wrong” says Lord David Cecil, “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 God who created man.”
It is in Act V that all the evil doers receive their ‘rewards’. The Cardinal, who had been the agent of all villainy, is stabbed by Bosola, Ferdinand dies in a scuffle and Bosola’s death comes in the nature of poetic justice and triumph of moral values in the world. At the top of all this, the evil characters are made to recognise the supremacy of the divine law before they meet their end. Before dying the Cardinal says, “I pray, let me be laid by and never thought of”, Ferdinand realises the power of merciful and Bosola cries out words of repentance and disillusionment:
O, this gloomy world!
In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,
Doth womanish and fearful mankind live.
Let worthy minds never stagger in distrust,
To suffer death or shame for what is just.
Thus Webster’s moral truth finds way in the final couplet of The White Devil:
Let guilty men remember their black deeds
Do lean on crutches, made of slender reeds.
Swinburne is right when he says, “there is no poet morally nobler than Webster.” Thus the plot of The Duchess of Malfi is a well knit plot in keeping with the classical model of five Acts of a well made play.
Melodrama or Tragedy
Or Revenge Play?
Elizabethan tragedy writers were particularly interested in the tragedy of revenge, horror and shudder. Their tragedies reveled* in melodramatic elements. They had a strange love of melancholy associated with the desire of revenge. Men of such diverse genius as Kyd, Marston, Shakespeare, Webster, Tourneur, Beaumont and Fletcher excelled in the presentation of a horror, bloodshed, murder and other melodramatic elements. In Webster’s play The Duchess of Malfi sensational scenes full of bloodshed, cruelty and horror are exhibited. At the same time revenge theme keeps on hovering over the whole play.
Webster’s two great tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi belong to the race of mighty Elizabethans. The revenge motive is at the bottom of The Duchess of Malfi. It has multiple murders, and all the blood curdling sensationalism that is generally associated with such murders. But Webster is not absolutely lost in revenge and blood. Like the other tragedy writers of the age, he rises above them, and shakes hand with Shakespeare in attaining greater heights of tragedy. There is no doubt in the fact that revenge plays a part of its own in The Duchess of Malfi but Webster’s moral element makes him degrade the revenge motive from its original supremacy. Ferdinand and the Cardinal take revenge on the Duchess for marrying against their wishes. Bosola, the instrument of revenge, takes his own revenge on the Cardinal and Ferdinand for being ungrateful to him.
No doubt Webster’s play The Duchess of Malfi has several features of the revenge tragedy but at the same time the play differs in a number of ways from the traditional revenge plays. For one thing, the revenge motive is weak in the play. It does not become clear why revenge is taken on the Duchess. She has certainly not committed any heinous crime (except her marriage) and the horrible tortures to which she is subjected are unjustified, and far in excess of her guilt. Moreover, that the revenge motive is weak is clearly brought out by the fact that for more than two years Ferdinand and the Cardinal do nothing to punish the Duchess. Ferdinand is informed of her marriage as soon as her first baby is born, and she has two other children before Ferdinand acts to have his revenge. If at all there is a revenge motive it appears late in the play when Bosola avenges himself on the Cardinal and Ferdinand for their ingratitude to him, and also because he has been touched by the murder of the Duchess and decides to avenge it.
Further, revenge in The Duchess of Malfi is not a sacred duty enjoined by the supernatural as in the Senecan tragedy, but a satisfaction of personal passions. Ferdinand’s motive might be greed for the estate of the Duchess, and in the case of Bosola it is a satisfaction of personal grudge. But it is sure that the revenge motif in this play is slight as compared to the motif in The White Devil or The Revenger’s Tragedy. Webster invests revenge with a moral tone. The whole of the last Act is devoted to the fate which falls upon the avengers. Thus Webster raises the original crude theme of revenge to a higher plane with the exception of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Coming to horror and melodrama it is true that Webster employs at times the sensational episodes and introduces theatrical terror like murders, the dagger, the pistol, with cord (noose) and coffin, together with the skull and the ghost. He introduces the gruesome* devices to terrify the Duchess- the dead man’s hand, the artificial corpses of Antonio and his children, the dance of the madmen howling their dismal music etc. The gruesome shudders, horror presented in the prosecution of the Duchess are very painful. But they lose much of their sting when we take into account the redeeming features and nullifying effects introduced side by side with poetic vision and moral earnestness by Webster.
Pathos was unknown to revenge writers. But Webster introduces pathos and makes the tragedy of the Duchess, her children, Cariola and Antonio pathetic and touching. “The death of the Duchess moves us more deeply than anything else in English drama” says Charles Lamb. Webster rises superior to the revenge dramatists by the clarity of his moral vision, imagery, poetry and superb style.
Undoubtedly Webster’s play The Duchess of Malfi rises to the heights of great tragedies but cannot be ranked with Shakespeare’s Othello, King Lear, Macbeth or Hamlet. That inner struggle, that conflict between good and evil within the soul of the hero, that spectacle of soul in travail which we got in Shakespeare is lacking in Webster. In The Duchess of Malfi we have wonderful melodramatic scenes but Webster’s imaginative vision and poetic insight relieve gloom and tedium (boredom) of the play and make it a real work of art. Albert remarks, “The most striking follower of the Senecan revenge tradition, Webster turns from the mere horror of event to the deep and subtle analysis of character. His plots are not well constructed…. but his horrors are usually controlled…… He is a great dramatic poet…. Tender and pitiful scenes add a touch of fine pathos to his greatest works.”
*Revelled = enjoy v. much
*Gruesome = unpleasant & horrorful
* travail = unpleasant experience that involves hard work
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