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We are introduced to Daniel De Bosola by Delio in Act 1 Sc 1 as ‘a fellow seven years in the galleys for a notorious murder’. The audience immediately sees him as an evil character capable of murder. Even though Antonio perceives him as a potentially valiant character “He’s very valiant’, he also realises that he ‘like moths in a cloth do hurt for want of wearing’. Hence, Bosola is seen as one who has some inkling of goodness in him but it is overshadowed by his ‘close rearing’. Antonio realises that Bosola if not used well would become a bad person. The idea of a nature of goodness overpowered by the nurture by ‘black malcontents’ is the result that is Bosola. He is the ‘court gall’, a bitter character who would ‘rail at things which he wants’ and would do anything to achieve.
The bitterness of Bosola’s character is brought out in his conversation with the Cardinal. He laments on it all being a ‘miserable age’, where ‘the only reward for doing well is the doing of it’. He is seen as a character who has been taken advantage of by the corrupted court and who has learnt to deal with his consequence ‘blackbirds fatten best in hard weather’. We thus realise that the hardness of his character is brought out by the need for survival. He is a neglected character who has learnt to ‘thrive’ in his own way. He is obviously angered by the disease of corruption in the Italian court ‘for places in the court are like beds in the hospital’. It is to survive that Bosola becomes an ‘invisible devil in flesh’. Yet while Bosola agrees to play the role of Ferdinand’s avengement to the Duchess in her ‘marriage’ to Antonio, it is Bosola who deems Ferdinand as a ‘corrupter and an impudent traitor’. One sees that Bosola does have some ethical sense to see that he is about to commit an evil ‘the ill man can invent’. To a certain extent, one realises that Bosola agrees to murder not because he enjoys it, but because he needs to survive.
Yet despite these redeeming characteristics of Bosola, he will always be one associated with the dark. The language that he uses is crude with grotesque and horrific imagery. ‘a rotten dead body we delight, to hide it in rich tissue’. He is an unsavoury character and is morally repugnant to our senses. Yet his crudeness does hold a certain truth at times and one realises that it is Bosola’s own encounter with life that gives him such bitter cynicism. ‘man stands amazed to see his deformity in any other creature but himself’. Indeed, one realises that Bosola’s character is not brought about by a stark change in character, but an uncovering of the facade of coarseness and evil to reveal his true character, one who only works to be paid and who when taken advantage of seeks to find his own justice because there would be no other way to achieve it. He understands that it is the only way to survive in the court would be to become the worst of them all. ‘i look no higher than i can reach’. He cannot aspire to happiness but only to survive.
One realises that true evil is not part of his nature when in accidentally inducing labour for the Duchess, he apologises ‘I am sorry’ and leaves. Indeed, that even Antonio makes use of Bosola’s character to ‘give out that Bosola hath poisoned them’ shows that while Bosola may play the role of the murderer, he is very much a victim of it all. He hides in the darkness to protect himself. It is only at the end that he allows his true nature to overpower his nurture. Indeed, it is true that his character changes little, for in being made the scapegoat of the Duchess death, he can no longer conceal his hatred for corruption and his desire for justice. We see this in his character from the beginning when he smile at being able to ‘make her brother’s galls overflow their livers’. He enjoyed seeing the anger and frustration of Ferdinand and the Cardinal to learn of their adulterous sister more than the role of the murderer. Indeed, he speaks of ‘this base quality of intelligencer’ and one feels that he certainly means it.
Indeed, it is ironic that Bosola is the one who imprisons the Duchess in her own castle for in the exploration of this concern of entrapment and imprisonment of the play, one realises that Bosola is also victim of entrapment. He assumes the darkness to survive in the dark and corrupt court. He ‘thrives’ because he chooses to abandon his morals and love of justice that he may survive in the court. He kills the Duchess and shows her no mercy because it is his profession to carry out the Cardinal’s orders. Yet he tells Ferdinand that ‘you may discern the shape of loveliness more perfect in her tears than her smiles’. He is clearly touched by the stoicism of the Duchess and he is angered when he does not receive payment for killing her. He was angered, not at being unpaid, but because he had been made to go against his character and ethics to kill the Duchess and then is blamed for it. We see his true character and the facade in conflict when he speaks of wanting to ‘save your life’ and lamenting on ‘this world a tedious theatre’.
Hence, it is NOT a change of character from evil to good that we see in Bosola, but a battle of his conscience with his evil deeds. He was never an evil character, only one who was bitter about his situation and who in seeing the integrity and stoicism displayed by the Duchess, realised the own quality within himself.
The Cardinal is introduced to the audience initially as the one who has ‘slighted’ Daniel De Bosola who had ‘fallen into the galleys at your service’. There is much bitterness and animosity between the two, and one sees that Bosola who comments on the Cardinal ‘some fellows they say, are possessed with the devil, but this great fellow were able to possess the greatest devil and make him worse’. Indeed, such an indictment on the Cardinal draws an immediate irony that a man of the cloth be so closely associated with the devil. To a certain extent, one sees in him an utterly villainous character.
Our introduction to Ferdinand (Duke of Calabria) is almost simultaneous and no less appealing. His language is crude and with many sexual innuendos ‘he reels from the tilt often’. Antonio speaks of him as having ‘a most perverse and turbulent nature’. The Cardinal, his brother and ‘twin’ as Antonio describes them are that ‘in quality’ of their morals, or lack of it. The Cardinal is a ‘melancholy churchman’ whose ‘spring in his face is nothing but the engendering of toads’ and who ‘did bestow bribes so largely and so impudently’ that he would have been able to do it ‘without heaven’s knowledge’. That Antonio, in all his goodness of heart and ability to recognise the imperceptible goodness of Bosola at this early point of the play certainly makes an impact on the audience with his negative opinion of the Aragonian brothers, who ‘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’ of Ferdinand and of the Cardinal who ‘oracles hang at his lips, and verily i believe them, for the devil speaks in them’. Indeed, the ‘right noble Duchess’ that he speaks of immediately after indeed throws a juxtaposition to the evil and perverse Aragonian brothers.
Bosola although under the instruction of Ferdinand as his intelligencer is not about to be deemed evil along with Ferdinand. Indeed, he speaks against the immorality of his association with Ferdinand ‘you a corrupter, me an impudent traitor’. He speaks of Ferdinand’s plan as ‘all an ill man can invent’. Indeed, the true evil of the brothers is brought out when they warn the Duchess against disobeying their orders. ‘your darkest actions, nay, your privatest thoughts will come to light’. One realises that it is not a prophecy but a threat to her. The Cardinal tells her that ‘the marriage night is the entrance to some prison’ and indeed, they do mercilessly imprison her in her own castle when they attain Bosola’s information of her marriage to Antonio. The Cardinal’s relationship with Julia is certainly evidence of his immorality. He is a holy man and yet, indulges in his relationship with Julia. Indeed, that he is the one who is so opposed to the Duchess’s marriage to Antonio creates a blatant irony with his relationship with Julia his mistress.
Ferdinand on learning of his sister’s infidelity is seized with a rage, a pure madness that even the Cardinal remarks on ‘why do you make yourself so wild a tempest?’. Yet, his anger lies not in the fact that she has brought down the family name, as in the Cardinal’s case ‘to purge infected blood’, but because he cannot stand the idea of her being had by another man. His passion for her seems almost sexual ‘my imagination will carry me to see her in the shameful act of sin’ and his intent in finding out the Duchess’s secret husband is to ‘know who leaps my sister’ to ‘fix her in a general eclipse’. Even Pescara sees in Ferdinand not a brother angered at his sister’s disobedience, but ‘a very salamander lives in’s eye, to mock the eager violence of fire’. His anger is obsessive and he becomes lycantrophic later on when he is too controlled by his madness.
The Cardinal on the other hand, leaves him holy vestments to don the outfit of a soldier to banish the Duchess and her family. The comment by the pilgrims ‘so great a lady would have matched herself unto so mean a person? Yet the Cardinal bears himself too cruel’. Indeed, that even the common man was able to see the villain in the Cardinal shows that he is indeed an evil being.
Ferdinand’s torturing the Duchess in her imprisonment is much like that of the predator toying with his prey before making the kill. He gives her a dead man’s hand and uses the artificial figures of her family to make her think that they were killed too, and imprisons her in the presence of madmen to make her go insane with their mindless chatter. He is innately evil and deems her ‘plagued in art’. To a certain extent, one feels that he enjoys the way that he is able to inflict such suffering on her ‘to bring her to despair’. He is sadistic and enjoys to see her in emotional pain that he may ‘feed a fire as great as my revenge which will never slack’.
One feels that Ferdinand’s lycanthropia and the murder of both the Cardinal and Ferdinand is justified as he puts the Duchess through such intense suffering only to blame Bosola in the end when he realises the extent of his actions.
They are truly evil characters who deserve their violent end.
The Duchess comes across to the audience as the epitome of stoicism and strength of soul and character. At the beginning of the play, she is portrayed as a a woman of great integrity and honour, such that Antonio speaks of ‘her days are practised in such noble virtue that sure her nights, nay more her very sleeps are more in heaven than other lady’s shrifts’. Indeed, we see her as a noble woman of much childlike innocence and naivety. Even her secret marriage to Antonio is not seen as something of lust and sexual desire, but of a woman’s need for companionship and love ’tis not a figure cut in alabaster to kneel at my husband’s tomb’ , something she obviously cannot derive from her villainous brothers. Even at this point, she comes across as a strong character of intense emotion and longing for affection and love that she must resort to a secret marriage. In contrast, her marriage to Antonio seems cleaner than the Cardinal’s adulterous relationship with Julia, his mistress. That the Duchess solemnises their vows shows that she does have moral standards to uphold. Even her ‘feigned pilgrimage’ to Ancona was something that she and her family did as a real pilgrimage to pay their respect to our Lady of Loretto.
The childlike innocence of the Duchess is seen from the way that she tells Antonio that ‘time will easily scatter the tempest’ when Antonio brings up the threat of her ARAGONIAN BROTHERS. Yet, it is because of them that she is made to endure ‘the worst torture, pain and fear’. One certainly pities her and feels that she should not be made to suffer so much for following her heart. Indeed, Ferdinand’s obsession to ‘purge infected blood’ seems less a move to right a wrong than out of jealousy ‘my imagination carrys me to see her in the shameful act of sin’. The Duchess in nobly enduring all his cruel torments becomes a ‘reverend monument whose ruins are even pitied’. Yet to a certain extent, while we pity the Duchess, one cannot deny that one feels a great admiration for her strength of character. She accepts suffering as her ‘fate’ and is ‘acquainted with sad misery as the tanned slave is with his oar’.
Even Bosola is able to realise the dignity in which she bears herself up to the suffering that her brothers make her endure ‘as majesty gives to adversity; you may discern the shape of loveliness more perfectly in her tears than in her smiles’. One admires her for being so ready to accept her fate, the suffering she endures a mere consequence of her loving Antonio and marrying him. It is also through her suffering that she derives a new found wisdom ‘your kiss is colder than i have seen a holy anchorite give to a dead man’s skull’. Indeed, she realises the extent of her brother’s tyranny and knows that she an Antonio must part. Their last moments together are certainly touching, and one truly pities her for being denied of true love. To lose the love of her life drains her very soul, and she is left empty and without meaning in life ‘my laurel is all withered’.
The Duchess accepts her death with humility, ‘heaven’s gates are not so highly arched as prince’s palaces; they that enter there must go on their knees’. Yet to the end, she is dignified ‘I am the Duchess of Malfi still’. Indeed, her ‘violent death’ seems more of a journey to liberation rather than an end in itself. Throughout the play, the Duchess is portrayed as the victim of entrapment, Ferdinand the predator that toys with his prey, the Duchess before killing her.
The Duchess is hence a character to be admired and respected. That she is a historical figure shows that Webster was indeed perceptive in the plight of the Duchess at such a time when her behaviour to marry Antonio outside the social status of her family would have been dealt with death, no question to the reasoning behind it. Webster’s play hence is a statement against this convention, and the Duchess comes across as a real person of human emotion that each and every individual can relate to.