The Duchess of Malfi
by John Webster
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists
A Jacobean tragedy based on a true story from sixteenth-century Italy. The widowed Duchess of Malfi secretly marries her steward Antonio against the wishes of her brothers, the Cardinal and the unstable Duke Ferdinand, who set the malcontent Bosola to spy on her. When the marriage is discovered, Ferdinand torments her with madmen and wax corpses and has Bosola strangle her and her children. Ferdinand goes mad, believing himself a wolf; Bosola turns on the brothers, and the last act kills nearly everyone. The Duchess's line, I am Duchess of Malfi still, is the play's centre.
We recommendThe Duchess of MalfiBloomsbury, New Mermaids, 2014Brian Gibbons's fifth edition, the standard annotated student text.
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- Written
- c. 1613-1614; published 1623
- Form
- Tragedy
- Language
- English
- Length
- Short · 130 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Demanding3 of 5 for a first-year reader
Bloomsbury, New Mermaids edition
Find this edition: The Duchess of Malfi, opens in a new tabBookshop.org: The Duchess of Malfi, opens in a new tab
Why it's on the list
Making a widow who chooses her own husband, a servant, the tragic hero of a play in which her brothers destroy her for it, put a woman's right to her own body and affections at the centre of a Jacobean tragedy and let her die with more dignity than anyone who kills her. Killing the heroine in the fourth act and giving the fifth to the murderers' collapse, Ferdinand howling as a wolf and Bosola turning on his masters, broke the shape of tragedy to show that the evil outlasts its victim and consumes itself. Giving Bosola, the hired spy who strangles the Duchess and then avenges her, the play's most searching speeches made the malcontent a study in what service to the powerful does to a man who knows better. Writing in a verse of sudden images, the diamond cut with its own dust and the stars still shining over a ruined world, gave the play the lines that Eliot and every later reader of the Jacobeans have quoted as the sound of that age's darkness.
Key themes
- Women and men
- Making a widow who chooses her own husband, a servant, the tragic hero put a woman's right to her own body and affections at the centre of a Jacobean tragedy.
- Family and inheritance
- The brothers destroy their sister for marrying beneath them, and Ferdinand's rage at her body suggests a possessiveness the play never names.
- Power and authority
- Bosola, the hired spy who strangles the Duchess and then avenges her, is a study in what service to the powerful does to a man who knows better.
- Evil and suffering
- Ferdinand torments the Duchess with madmen and wax corpses before her death, and the play asks how much cruelty a mind can bear and stay itself.
- Death and mortality
- The Duchess dies in the fourth act with the line, I am Duchess of Malfi still, and the fifth act shows that the evil outlasts its victim and consumes itself.
- Love and desire
- The wooing of Antonio, in which the Duchess must propose because he cannot, is the play's one scene of tenderness, and everything after is its cost.
Which edition to read
Our pick
The Duchess of Malfi
Bloomsbury, New Mermaids, 2014
Brian Gibbons's fifth edition, the standard annotated student text.
Amazon: the Bloomsbury, New Mermaids edition, opens in a new tabBookshop.org: the Bloomsbury, New Mermaids edition, opens in a new tab
Overview
About one hundred and thirty pages, a Jacobean tragedy written around 1613 to 1614 and published in 1623, based on a true story from sixteenth-century Italy. The widowed Duchess of Malfi secretly marries her steward Antonio against the wishes of her brothers, the Cardinal and the unstable Duke Ferdinand, who set the malcontent Bosola to spy on her.
When the marriage is discovered, Ferdinand torments her with madmen and wax corpses and has Bosola strangle her and her children. Ferdinand goes mad, believing himself a wolf; Bosola turns on the brothers, and the last act kills nearly everyone.
What happens
Act One. At the court of Malfi, Antonio describes the corrupt Cardinal and his brother Ferdinand, who hire Bosola, a former galley slave, to spy on their widowed sister. The brothers warn the Duchess against remarrying; she summons Antonio and, since he cannot woo a duchess, woos him, and they marry in private.
Act Two. Bosola tests the Duchess with apricots and discovers she is pregnant. The birth of a son is betrayed to the brothers, and Ferdinand’s rage at the news is out of all proportion to a brother’s.
Act Three. Years later, with three children, the Duchess is confronted by Ferdinand in her bedchamber. She sends Antonio away and pretends to dismiss him for theft, confides in Bosola, who betrays her, and is taken with her children while Antonio escapes to Milan.
Act Four. Imprisoned, the Duchess is shown a dead man’s hand in the dark and wax figures of her husband and children, and is surrounded by madmen. Bosola, disguised as a tomb-maker and bellman, brings the executioners; she is strangled, then her children and her maid Cariola. Ferdinand, seeing the body, says her eyes dazzle, and turns on Bosola.
Act Five. Ferdinand, mad, believes he is a wolf and digs up graves. The Cardinal, having murdered his mistress, plots to kill Bosola. In the dark Bosola kills Antonio by mistake, then the Cardinal; Ferdinand stabs them both and dies; and Antonio’s friend brings the surviving son forward as the play ends.
How to read it
Read the wooing scene as the play’s one moment of tenderness, the Duchess proposing because Antonio cannot, and everything that follows as its price.
Pay close attention to the fourth act, the heroine killed before the play is over, and to why Webster gives the fifth to the murderers’ collapse rather than to a revenge.
Notice Bosola, the spy who strangles the Duchess and then avenges her, and ask what service to the powerful has done to a man who knows better.
Consider Ferdinand’s rage at his sister’s body, which the play never explains, and decide how much the tragedy turns on what it will not name.
Read this play alongside Othello to compare two tragedies in which a woman dies for a marriage she chose, and to see what Webster took from Shakespeare’s Iago in making Bosola.
Questions it raises
- Why does the Duchess die in the fourth act, and what does a tragedy mean by outliving its hero?
- What is Ferdinand’s rage, and does the play’s refusal to name it strengthen the horror or leave a gap at its centre?
- Is Bosola a villain, a victim, or the play’s conscience, and can he be all three?
- What does the Duchess’s line, I am Duchess of Malfi still, claim, and is it dignity, defiance, or a title clung to when nothing else is left?
- How much of the play’s darkness is Jacobean fashion and how much Webster’s vision, and does the distinction matter to a reader now?
- What does the surviving son, brought forward at the end, promise, and is the play’s close a restoration or an irony?
Highlights
The widowed Duchess secretly marries her steward Antonio, wooing him herself since he cannot woo her, against the wishes of her brothers, who have set the malcontent Bosola to spy on her.
Paraphrase of the play's situation, a woman's choice and the surveillance it brings.
Ferdinand torments the imprisoned Duchess with a dead man's hand, wax figures of her husband and children, and a chorus of madmen, and then has Bosola strangle her, her children and her maid; she dies saying, I am Duchess of Malfi still.
Paraphrase of the play's centre, the death of the heroine before the play is over.
Ferdinand goes mad and believes himself a wolf, the Cardinal is killed by Bosola, who is killed in turn, and the play ends among the dead with the Duchess's surviving son brought forward.
Paraphrase of the fifth act's collapse, in which the evil consumes itself.
