The Duchess of Malfi - John Webster (books to read now txt) 📗

want to email me, hart@pobox.com beforehand.

 

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This etext was prepared by Gary R. Young.

 

The Duchess of Malfi

 

by John Webster

 

Introductory Note

 

Of John Webster’s life almost nothing is known. The dates 1580-1625

given for his birth and death are conjectural inferences, about which

the best that can be said is that no known facts contradict them.

 

The first notice of Webster so far discovered shows that he was

collaborating in the production of plays for the theatrical manager,

Henslowe, in 1602, and of such collaboration he seems to have done

a considerable amount. Four plays exist which he wrote alone,

“The White Devil,” “The Duchess of Malfi,” “The Devil’s Law-Case,”

and “Appius and Virginia.”

 

“The Duchess of Malfi” was published in 1623, but the date of writing

may have been as early as 1611. It is based on a story in Painter’s

“Palace of Pleasure,” translated from the Italian novelist, Bandello;

and it is entirely possible that it has a foundation in fact. In any

case, it portrays with a terrible vividness one side of the court

life of the Italian Renaissance; and its picture of the fierce quest

of pleasure, the recklessness of crime, and the worldliness of the

great princes of the Church finds only too ready corroboration in

the annals of the time.

 

Webster’s tragedies come toward the close of the great series

of tragedies of blood and revenge, in which “The Spanish Tragedy”

and “Hamlet” are landmarks, but before decadence can fairly be said

to have set in. He, indeed, loads his scene with horrors almost past

the point which modern taste can bear; but the intensity of his

dramatic situations, and his superb power of flashing in a single

line a light into the recesses of the human heart at the crises

of supreme emotion, redeems him from mere sensationalism, and places

his best things in the first rank of dramatic writing.

 

The Duchess of Malfi

 

Dramatis Personae

FERDINAND [Duke of Calabria].

CARDINAL [his brother].

ANTONIO [BOLOGNA, Steward of the Household to the Duchess].

DELIO [his friend].

DANIEL DE BOSOLA [Gentleman of the Horse to the Duchess].

[CASTRUCCIO, an old Lord].

MARQUIS OF PESCARA.

[COUNT] MALATESTI.

RODERIGO, >

SILVIO, > [Lords].

GRISOLAN, >

DOCTOR.

The Several Madmen.

 

DUCHESS [OF MALFI].

CARIOLA [her woman].

[JULIA, Castruccio’s wife, and] the Cardinal’s mistress.

[Old Lady].

 

Ladies, Three Young Children, Two Pilgrims, Executioners,

Court Officers, and Attendants.

 

Act I

 

Scene I<1>

 

[Enter] ANTONIO and DELIO

 

DELIO. You are welcome to your country, dear Antonio;

You have been long in France, and you return

A very formal Frenchman in your habit:

How do you like the French court?

 

ANTONIO. I admire it:

In seeking to reduce both state and people

To a fix’d order, their judicious king

Begins at home; quits first his royal palace

Of flattering sycophants, of dissolute

And infamous persons,—which he sweetly terms

His master’s masterpiece, the work of heaven;

Considering duly that a prince’s court

Is like a common fountain, whence should flow

Pure silver drops in general, but if ‘t chance

Some curs’d example poison ‘t near the head,

Death and diseases through the whole land spread.

And what is ‘t makes this blessed government

But a most provident council, who dare freely

Inform him the corruption of the times?

Though some o’ the court hold it presumption

To instruct princes what they ought to do,

It is a noble duty to inform them

What they ought to foresee.<2>—Here comes Bosola,

The only court-gall; yet I observe his 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 so.—Here’s the cardinal.

 

[Enter CARDINAL and BOSOLA]

 

BOSOLA. I do haunt you still.

 

CARDINAL. So.

 

BOSOLA. 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!

 

CARDINAL. You enforce your merit too much.

 

BOSOLA. I fell 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. Black-birds fatten best in hard weather;

why not I in these dog-days?

 

CARDINAL. Would you could become honest!

 

BOSOLA. With all your divinity do but direct me the way to it.

I have known many travel far for it, and yet return as arrant knaves

as they went forth, because they carried themselves always along with

them. [Exit CARDINAL.] Are you gone? Some fellows, they say,

are possessed with the devil, but this great fellow were able

to possess the greatest devil, and make him worse.

 

ANTONIO. He hath denied thee some suit?

 

BOSOLA. He and his brother are like plum-trees that grow crooked

over standing-pools; they are rich and o’erladen with fruit, but none

but crows, pies, and caterpillars feed on them. Could I be one

of their flattering panders, I would hang on their ears like a

horseleech, till I were full, and then drop off. I pray, leave me.

Who would rely upon these miserable dependencies, in expectation

to be advanc’d to-morrow? What creature ever fed worse than hoping

Tantalus? Nor ever died any man more fearfully than he that hoped

for a pardon. There are rewards for hawks and dogs when they have

done us service; but for a soldier that hazards his limbs in a

battle, nothing but a kind of geometry is his last supportation.

 

DELIO. Geometry?

 

BOSOLA. Ay, to hang in a fair pair of slings, take his latter swing

in the world upon an honourable pair of crutches, from hospital

to hospital. Fare ye well, sir: and yet do not you scorn us;

for places in the court are but like beds in the hospital, where

this man’s head lies at that man’s foot, and so lower and lower.

[Exit.]

 

DELIO. I knew this fellow seven years in the galleys

For a notorious murder; and ‘twas thought

The cardinal suborn’d it: he was releas’d

By the French general, Gaston de Foix,

When he recover’d Naples.

 

ANTONIO. ‘Tis great pity

He should be thus neglected: I have heard

He ‘s very valiant. This foul melancholy

Will poison all his goodness; for, I ‘ll tell you,

If too immoderate sleep be truly said

To be an inward rust unto the soul,

If then doth follow want of action

Breeds all black malcontents; and their close rearing,

Like moths in cloth, do hurt for want of wearing.

 

Scene II<3>

 

ANTONIO, DELIO, [Enter SILVIO, CASTRUCCIO, JULIA, RODERIGO

and GRISOLAN]

 

DELIO. The presence ‘gins to fill: you promis’d me

To make me the partaker of the natures

Of some of your great courtiers.

 

ANTONIO. The lord cardinal’s

And other strangers’ that are now in court?

I shall.—Here comes the great Calabrian duke.

 

[Enter FERDINAND and Attendants]

 

FERDINAND. Who took the ring oftenest?<4>

 

SILVIO. Antonio Bologna, my lord.

 

FERDINAND. Our sister duchess’ great-master of her household?

Give him the jewel.—When shall we leave this sportive action,

and fall to action indeed?

 

CASTRUCCIO. Methinks, my lord, you should not desire to go to war

in person.

 

FERDINAND. Now for some gravity.—Why, my lord?

 

CASTRUCCIO. It is fitting a soldier arise to be a prince, but not

necessary a prince descend to be a captain.

 

FERDINAND. No?

 

CASTRUCCIO. No, my lord; he were far better do it by a deputy.

 

FERDINAND. Why should he not as well sleep or eat by a deputy?

This might take idle, offensive, and base office from him, whereas

the other deprives him of honour.

 

CASTRUCCIO. Believe my experience, that realm is never long in quiet

where the ruler is a soldier.

 

FERDINAND. Thou toldest me thy wife could not endure fighting.

 

CASTRUCCIO. True, my lord.

 

FERDINAND. And of a jest she broke of<5> a captain she met full of

wounds: I have forgot it.

 

CASTRUCCIO. She told him, my lord, he was a pitiful fellow, to lie,

like the children of Ismael, all in tents.<6>

 

FERDINAND. Why, there’s a wit were able to undo all the

chirurgeons<7> o’ the city; for although gallants should quarrel,

and had drawn their weapons, and were ready to go to it, yet her

persuasions would make them put up.

 

CASTRUCCIO. That she would, my lord.—How do you like my Spanish

gennet?<8>

 

RODERIGO. He is all fire.

 

FERDINAND. I am of Pliny’s opinion, I think he was begot

by the wind; he runs as if he were ballass’d<9> with quicksilver.

 

SILVIO. True, my lord, he reels from the tilt often.

 

RODERIGO, GRISOLAN. Ha, ha, ha!

 

FERDINAND. Why do you laugh? Methinks you that are courtiers

should be my touch-wood, take fire when I give fire; that is,

laugh when I laugh, were the subject never so witty.

 

CASTRUCCIO. True, my lord: I myself have heard a very good jest,

and have scorn’d to seem to have so silly a wit as to understand it.

 

FERDINAND. But I can laugh at your fool, my lord.

 

CASTRUCCIO. He cannot speak, you know, but he makes faces; my lady

cannot abide him.

 

FERDINAND. No?

 

CASTRUCCIO. Nor endure to be in merry company; for she says too much

laughing, and too much company, fills her too full of the wrinkle.

 

FERDINAND. I would, then, have a mathematical instrument made

for her face, that she might not laugh out of compass.—I shall

shortly visit you at Milan, Lord Silvio.

 

SILVIO. Your grace shall arrive most welcome.

 

FERDINAND. You are a good horseman, Antonio; you have excellent

riders in France: what do you think of good horsemanship?

 

ANTONIO. Nobly, my lord: as out of the Grecian horse issued many

famous princes, so out of brave horsemanship arise the first sparks

of growing resolution, that raise the mind to noble action.

 

FERDINAND. You have bespoke it worthily.

 

SILVIO. Your brother, the lord cardinal, and sister duchess.

 

[Enter CARDINAL, with DUCHESS, and CARIOLA]

 

CARDINAL. Are the galleys come about?

 

GRISOLAN. They are, my lord.

 

FERDINAND. Here ‘s the Lord Silvio is come to take his leave.

 

DELIO. Now, sir, your promise: what ‘s that cardinal?

I mean his temper? They say he ‘s a brave fellow,

Will play his five thousand crowns at tennis, dance,

Court ladies, and one that hath fought single combats.

 

ANTONIO. Some such flashes superficially hang on him for form;

but observe his inward character: 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 impos’d on Hercules, for he strews in his way flatterers,

panders, intelligencers, atheists, and a thousand such political

monsters. He should have been Pope; but instead of coming to it

by the primitive decency of the church, he did bestow bribes

so largely and so impudently as if he would have carried it away

without heaven’s knowledge. Some good he hath done–-

 

DELIO. You have given too much of him. What ‘s his brother?

 

ANTONIO. The duke there? A most perverse and turbulent nature.

What appears in him mirth is merely outside;

If he laught heartily, it is to laugh

All honesty out of fashion.

 

DELIO. Twins?

 

ANTONIO. In quality.

He speaks with others’ tongues, and hears men’s suits

With others’ ears; will seem to sleep o’ the bench

Only to