The Duchess of Malfi

by Frank Kermode

  You gave.

  DUCH. I affectionately kiss it.

  FERD. Pray, do, and bury the print of it in your heart.

  I will leave this ring with you for a love-token;

  And the hand as sure as the ring; and do not doubt

  But you shall have the heart too: when you need a friend,

  Send it to him that owned it; you shall see

  Whether he can aid you.

  DUCH. You are very cold:

  I fear you are not well after your travel.—

  Ha! lights!—Oh, horrible!

  FERD. Let her have lights enough.

  Exit

  DUCH. What witchcraft doth he practise, that he hath left

  A dead man’s hand here?

  [Here is discovered, behind a traverse,86 the artificial figures of Antonio and his Children, appearing as if they were dead]

  BOS. Look you, here’s the piece from which ’twas ta’en.

  He doth present you this sad spectacle,

  That, now you know directly they are dead,

  Hereafter you may wisely cease to grieve

  For that which cannot be recovered.

  DUCH. There is not between heaven and earth one wish

  I stay for after this: it wastes me more

  Than were’t my picture, fashioned out of wax,

  Stuck with a magical needle, and then buried

  In some foul dunghill; and yond’s an excellent property

  For a tyrant, which I would account mercy.

  BOS. What’s that?

  DUCH. If they would bind me to that lifeless trunk,

  And let me freeze to death.

  BOS. Come, you must live.

  DUCH. That’s the greatest torture souls feel in hell,

  In hell, that they must live, and cannot die.

  Portia, I’ll new kindle thy coals again,

  And revive the rare and almost dead example

  Of a loving wife.87

  BOS. Oh, fie! despair? remember

  You are a Christian.

  DUCH. The Church enjoins fasting:

  I’ll starve myself to death.

  BOS. Leave this vain sorrow.

  Things being at the worst begin to mend: the bee

  When he hath shot his sting into your hand, may then

  Play with your eyelid.

  DUCH. Good comfortable fellow,

  Persuade a wretch that’s broke upon the wheel

  To have all his bones new set; entreat him live

  To be executed again. Who must dispatch me?

  I account this world a tedious theater,

  For I do play a part in’t ’gainst my will.

  BOS. Come, be of comfort; I will save your life.

  DUCH. Indeed,

  I have not leisure to tend so small a business.

  BOS. Now, by my life, I pity you.

  DUCH. Thou art a fool, then.

  To waste thy pity on a thing so wretched

  As cannot pity itself. I am full of daggers.

  Puff, let me blow these vipers from me.

  Enter Servant

  What are you?

  SERV. One that wishes you long life.

  DUCH. I would thou wert hanged for the horrible curse

  Thou hast given me: I shall shortly grow one

  Of the miracles of pity. I’ll go pray;—

  No, I’ll go curse.

  BOS. Oh, fie!

  DUCH. I could curse the stars—

  BOS. Oh, fearful!

  DUCH. And those three smiling seasons of the year

  Into a Russian winter: nay, the world

  To its first chaos.

  BOS. Look you, the stars shine still.

  DUCH. Oh, but you must

  Remember, my curse hath a great way to go.—

  Plagues, that make lanes through largest families

  Consume them!—

  BOS. Fie, lady!

  DUCH. Let them, like tyrants,

  Never be remembered but for the ill they have done;

  Let all the zealous prayers of mortified

  Churchmen forget them!—

  BOS. Oh, uncharitable!

  DUCH. Let Heaven a little while cease crowning martyrs

  To punish them!—

  Go, howl them this, and say, I long to bleed:

  It is some mercy when men kill with speed.

  Exeunt Duchess and Servant

  Re-enter Ferdinand

  FERD. Excellent, as I would wish; she’s plagued in art:

  These presentations are but framed in wax

  By the curious master in that quality,

  Vincentio Lauriola, and she takes them

  For true substantial bodies.

  BOS. Why do you do this?

  FERD. To bring her to despair.

  BOS. ’Faith, end here,

  And go no farther in your cruelty:

  Send her a penitential garment to put on

  Next to her delicate skin, and furnish her

  With beads and prayer-books.

  FERD. Damn her! that body of hers,

  While that my blood ran pure in’t, was more worth

  Than that which thou wouldst comfort, called a soul.

  I will send her masks of common courtezans,

  Have her meat served up by bawds and ruffians,

  And, ’cause she’ll needs be mad, I am resolved

  To remove forth the common hospital

  All the mad-folk, and place them near her lodging;

  There let them practise together, sing and dance,

  And act their gambols to the full o’ th’ moon:

  If she can sleep the better for it, let her.

  Your work is almost ended.

  BOS. Must I see her again?

  FERD. Yes.

  BOS. Never.

  FERD. You must.

  BOS. Never in mine own shape;

  That’s forfeited by my intelligence

  And this last cruel lie: when you send me next,

  The business shall be comfort.

  FERD. Very likely;

  Thy pity is nothing of kin to thee. Antonio

  Lurks about Milan: thou shalt shortly thither

  To feed a fire as great as my revenge,

  Which ne’er will slack till it have spent his fuel:

  Intemperate agues make physicians cruel.

  Exeunt

  SCENE II

  Enter Duchess and Cariola

  DUCH. What hideous noise was that?

  CAR. ’Tis the wild consort88

  Of madmen, lady, which your tyrant brother

  Hath placed about your lodging: this tyranny,

  I think, was never practised till this hour.

  DUCH. Indeed, I thank him: nothing but noise and folly

  Can keep me in my right wits; whereas reason

  And silence make me stark mad. Sit down;

  Discourse to me some dismal tragedy.

  CAR. Oh, ’twill increase your melancholy.

  DUCH. Thou art deceived:

  To hear of greater grief would lessen mine.

  This is a prison?

  CAR. Yes, but you shall live

  To shake this durance off.

  DUCH. Thou art a fool:

  The robin-redbreast and the nightingale

  Never live long in cages.

  CAR. Pray, dry your eyes.

  What think you of, madam?

  DUCH. Of nothing; when I muse thus,

  I sleep.

  CAR. Like a madman, with your eyes open?

  DUCH. Dost thou think we shall know one another in th’ other world?

  CAR. Yes, out of question.

  DUCH. Oh, that it were possible

  We might but hold some two days’ conference

  With the dead! From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure,

  I never shall know here. I’ll tell thee a miracle;

  I am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow:

  Th’ heaven o’er my head seems made o
f molten brass,

  The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad.

  I am acquainted with sad misery

  As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar;

  Necessity makes me suffer constantly,

  And custom makes it easy. Who do I look like now?

  CAR. Like to your picture in the gallery,

  A deal of life in show, but none in practice;

  Or rather like some reverend monument

  Whose ruins are even pitied.

  DUCH. Very proper;

  And Fortune seems only to have her eyesight

  To behold my tragedy.—

  How now! what noise is that?

  Enter Servant

  SERV. I am come to tell you

  Your brother hath intended you some sport.

  A great physician, when the Pope was sick

  Of a deep melancholy, presented him

  With several sorts of madmen, which wild object

  Being full of change and sport, forced him to laugh,

  And so the imposthume broke: the self-same cure

  The duke intends on you.

  DUCH. Let them come in.

  SERV. There’s a mad lawyer; and a secular priest;

  A doctor that hath forfeited his wits

  By jealousy; an astrologian

  That in his works said such a day o’ th’ month

  Should be the day of doom, and, failing of’t,

  Ran mad; an English tailor crazed i’ th’ brain

  With the study of new fashions; a gentleman-usher

  Quite beside himself with care to keep in mind

  The number of his lady’s salutations

  Or “How do you[’s]” she employed him in each morning;

  A farmer, too, an excellent knave in grain,

  Mad ’cause he was hindered transportation:

  And let one broker that’s mad loose to these,

  You’d think the devil were among them.

  DUCH. Sit, Cariola.—Let them loose when you please,

  For I am chained to endure all your tyranny.

  Enter Madmen

  Here this Song is sung by a Madman to a dismal kind of music

  Oh, let us howl some heavy note,

  Some deadly dogged howl,

  Sounding as from the threatening throat

  Of beasts and fatal fowl!

  As ravens, screech-owls, bulls, and bears,

  We’ll bell,89 and bawl our parts,

  Till irksome noise have cloyed your ears

  And corrosived your hearts.

  At last, whenas our quire wants breath,

  Our bodies being blest,

  We’ll sing, like swans, to welcome death,

  And die in love and rest.

  1 MADMAN. Doom’s-day not come yet? I’ll draw it nearer by a perspective, or make a glass that shall set all the world on fire upon an instant. I cannot sleep; my pillow is stuffed with a litter of porcupines.

  2 MADMAN. Hell is a mere glass-house, where the devils are continually blowing up women’s souls on hollow irons, and the fire never goes out.

  3 MADMAN. I will lie with every woman in my parish the tenth night; I will tithe them over like haycocks.

  4 MADMAN. Shall my pothecary out-go me because I am a cuckold? I have found out his roguery; he makes alum of his wife’s urine, and sells it to Puritans that have sore throats with overstraining.

  1 MADMAN. I have skill in heraldry.

  2 MADMAN. Hast?

  1 MADMAN. You do give for your crest a woodcock’s head with the brains picked out on’t; you are a very ancient gentleman.

  3 MADMAN. Greek is turned Turk: we are only to be saved by the Helvetian translation.90

  1 MADMAN. Come on, sir, I will lay the law to you.

  2 MADMAN. Oh, rather lay a corrosive: the law will eat to the bone.

  3 MADMAN. He that drinks but to satisfy nature is damned.

  4 MADMAN. If I had my glass here, I would show a sight should make all the women here call me mad doctor.

  1 MADMAN. What’s he? a rope-maker?

  2 MADMAN. No, no, no, a snuffling knave that, while he shows the tombs, will have his hand in a wench’s placket.

  3 MADMAN. Woe to the caroche91 that brought home my wife from the masque at three o’clock in the morning! it had a large featherbed in it.

  4 MADMAN. I have pared the devil’s nails forty times, roasted them in raven’s eggs, and cured agues with them.

  3 MADMAN. Get me three hundred milchbats, to make possets to procure sleep.

  4 MADMAN. All the college may throw their caps at me: I have made a soap-boiler costive; it was my masterpiece.

  Here the dance, consisting of Eight Madmen, with music answerable thereunto; after which Bosola, like an Old Man, enters

  DUCH. Is he mad too?

  SERV. Pray, question him. I’ll leave you.

  Exeunt Servant and Madmen

  BOS. I am come to make thy tomb.

  DUCH. Ha! my tomb?

  Thou speak’st as if I lay upon my death-bed,

  Gasping for breath: dost thou perceive me sick?

  BOS. Yes, and the more dangerously, since thy sickness

  Is insensible.

  DUCH. Thou art not mad, sure: dost know me?

  BOS. Yes.

  DUCH. Who am I?

  BOS. Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory92 of green mummy. What’s this flesh? a little crudded93 milk, fantastical puffpaste. Our bodies are weaker than those paper-prisons boys use to keep flies in; more contemptible, since ours is to preserve earthworms. Didst thou ever see a lark in a cage? Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o’er our heads, like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison.

  DUCH. Am not I thy duchess?

  BOS. Thou art some great woman, sure, for riot begins to sit on thy forehead (clad in grey hairs) twenty years sooner than on a merry milk-maid’s. Thou sleep’st worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up her lodging in a cat’s ear: a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out, as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow.

  DUCH. I am Duchess of Malfi still.

  BOS. That makes thy sleeps so broken:

  Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright,

  But looked to near, have neither heat nor light.

  DUCH. Thou art very plain.

  BOS. My trade is to flatter the dead, not the living; I am a tomb-maker.

  DUCH. And thou com’st to make my tomb?

  BOS. Yes.

  DUCH. Let me be a little merry:—of what stuff wilt thou make it?

  BOS. Nay, resolve me first, of what fashion?

  DUCH. Why, do we grow fantastical in our death-bed? do we affect fashion in the grave?

  BOS. Most ambitiously. Princes’ images on their tombs do not lie, as they were wont, seeming to pray up to heaven; but with their hands under their cheeks, as if they died of the toothache: they are not carved with their eyes fixed upon the stars; but as their minds were wholly bent upon the world, the self-same way they seem to turn their faces.

  DUCH. Let me know fully therefore the effect

  Of this thy dismal preparation,

  This talk fit for a charnel.

  BOS. Now I shall:—

  Enter Executioners, with a coffin, cords, and a bell

  Here is a present from your princely brothers;

  And may it arrive welcome, for it brings

  Last benefit, last sorrow.

  DUCH. Let me see it:

  I have so much obedience in my blood,

  I wish it in their veins to do them good.

  BOS. This is your last presence-chamber.

  CAR. O my sweet lady!

  DUCH. Peace; it affrights not me.

  BOS. I am the common bellman,

  That usually is sent to condemned persons

  The night before they suffer.

  DUCH. Eve
n now

  Thou said’st thou wast a tomb-maker.

  BOS. ’Twas to bring you

  By degrees to mortification. Listen.

  Hark, now every thing is still

  The screech-owl and the whistler shrill

  Call upon our dame aloud,

  And bid her quickly don her shroud!

  Much you had of land and rent:

  Your length in clay’s now competent:94

  A long war disturbed your mind;

  Here your perfect peace is signed.

  Of what is’t fools make such vain keeping?

  Sin their conception, their birth weeping,

  Their life a general mist of error,

  Their death a hideous storm of terror.

  Strew your hair with powders sweet,

  Don clean linen, bathe your feet,

  And (the foul fiend more to check)

  A crucifix let bless your neck:

  ’Tis now full tide ’tween night and day;

  End your groan, and come away.

  CAR. Hence, villains, tyrants, murderers! alas!

  What will you do with my lady?—Call for help.

  DUCH. To whom? to our next neighbors? they are madfolks.

  BOS. Remove that noise.

  DUCH. Farewell, Cariola.

  In my last will I have not much to give:

  A many hungry guests have fed upon me;

  Thine will be a poor reversion.

  CAR. I will die with her.

  DUCH. 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.

  Cariola is forced out by the Executioners

  Now what you please:

  What death?

  BOS. Strangling;

  Here are your executioners.

  DUCH. I forgive them:

  The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o’ th’ lungs,

  Would do as much as they do.

  BOS. Doth not death fright you?

  DUCH. Who would be afraid on’t,

  Knowing to meet such excellent company

  In th’ other world?

  BOS. Yet, methinks,

  The manner of your death should much afflict you:

  This cord should terrify you.

  DUCH. Not a whit:

  What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut

  With diamonds? or to be smothered

  With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls?

  I know death hath ten thousand several doors

  For men to take their exits; and ’tis found

  They go on such strange geometrical hinges,

  You may open them both ways.—Any way, for heaven sake,

  So I were out of your whispering. Tell my brothers

  That I perceive death, now I am well awake,