That they are yours, but by public means.
If you can bring certificate that you were gull’d of them,
Or any formal writ out of a court,
That you did cozen your self, I will not hold them.
MAM. I’ll rather lose them.
LOVE. That you shall not, sir,
By me, in troth: upon these terms, they are yours.
What! should they have been, sir, turn’d into gold, all?
MAM. No,
I cannot tell — It may be they should. — What then?
LOVE. What a great loss in hope have you sustain’d!
MAM. Not I, the commonwealth has.
FACE. Ay, he would have built
The city new; and made a ditch about it
Of silver, should have run with cream from Hogsden;
That every Sunday, in Moorfields, the younkers,
And tits and tom-boys should have fed on, gratis.
MAM. I will go mount a turnip-cart, and preach
The end of the world, within these two months. Surly,
What! in a dream?
SUR. Must I needs cheat myself,
With that same foolish vice of honesty!
Come, let us go and hearken out the rogues:
That Face I’ll mark for mine, if e’er I meet him.
FACE. If I can hear of him, sir, I’ll bring you word,
Unto your lodging; for in troth, they were strangers
To me, I thought them honest as my self, sir.
[EXEUNT MAM. AND SUR.]
[RE-ENTER ANANIAS AND TRIBULATION.]
TRI. ’Tis well, the saints shall not lose all yet. Go,
And get some carts —
LOVE. For what, my zealous friends?
ANA. To bear away the portion of the righteous
Out of this den of thieves.
LOVE. What is that portion?
ANA. The goods sometimes the orphan’s, that the brethren
Bought with their silver pence.
LOVE. What, those in the cellar,
The knight sir Mammon claims?
ANA. I do defy
The wicked Mammon, so do all the brethren,
Thou profane man! I ask thee with what conscience
Thou canst advance that idol against us,
That have the seal? were not the shillings number’d,
That made the pounds; were not the pounds told out,
Upon the second day of the fourth week,
In the eighth month, upon the table dormant,
The year of the last patience of the saints,
Six hundred and ten?
LOVE. Mine earnest vehement botcher,
And deacon also, I cannot dispute with you:
But if you get you not away the sooner,
I shall confute you with a cudgel.
ANA. Sir!
TRI. Be patient, Ananias.
ANA. I am strong,
And will stand up, well girt, against an host
That threaten Gad in exile.
LOVE. I shall send you
To Amsterdam, to your cellar.
ANA. I will pray there,
Against thy house: may dogs defile thy walls,
And wasps and hornets breed beneath thy roof,
This seat of falsehood, and this cave of cozenage!
[EXEUNT ANA. AND TRIB.]
[ENTER DRUGGER.]
LOVE. Another too?
DRUG. Not I, sir, I am no brother.
LOVE [BEATS HIM]. Away, you Harry Nicholas! do you talk?
[EXIT DRUG.]
FACE. No, this was Abel Drugger. Good sir, go,
[TO THE PARSON.]
And satisfy him; tell him all is done:
He staid too long a washing of his face.
The doctor, he shall hear of him at West-chester;
And of the captain, tell him, at Yarmouth, or
Some good port-town else, lying for a wind.
[EXIT PARSON.]
If you can get off the angry child, now, sir —
[ENTER KASTRIL, DRAGGING IN HIS SISTER.]
KAS. Come on, you ewe, you have match’d most sweetly,
have you not?
Did not I say, I would never have you tupp’d
But by a dubb’d boy, to make you a lady-tom?
‘Slight, you are a mammet! O, I could touse you, now.
Death, mun’ you marry, with a pox!
LOVE. You lie, boy;
As sound as you; and I’m aforehand with you.
KAS. Anon!
LOVE. Come, will you quarrel? I will feize you, sirrah;
Why do you not buckle to your tools?
KAS. Od’s light,
This is a fine old boy as e’er I saw!
LOVE. What, do you change your copy now? proceed;
Here stands my dove: stoop at her, if you dare.
KAS. ‘Slight, I must love him! I cannot choose, i’faith,
An I should be hang’d for’t! Suster, I protest,
I honour thee for this match.
LOVE. O, do you so, sir?
KAS. Yes, an thou canst take tobacco and drink, old boy,
I’ll give her five hundred pound more to her marriage,
Than her own state.
LOVE. Fill a pipe full, Jeremy.
FACE. Yes; but go in and take it, sir.
LOVE. We will —
I will be ruled by thee in any thing, Jeremy.
KAS. ‘Slight, thou art not hide-bound, thou art a jovy boy!
Come, let us in, I pray thee, and take our whiffs.
LOVE. Whiff in with your sister, brother boy.
[EXEUNT KAS. AND DAME P.]
That master
That had received such happiness by a servant,
In such a widow, and with so much wealth,
Were very ungrateful, if he would not be
A little indulgent to that servant’s wit,
And help his fortune, though with some small strain
Of his own candour.
[ADVANCING.]
— “Therefore, gentlemen,
And kind spectators, if I have outstript
An old man’s gravity, or strict canon, think
What a young wife and a good brain may do;
Stretch age’s truth sometimes, and crack it too.
Speak for thy self, knave.”
FACE. “So I will, sir.”
[ADVANCING TO THE FRONT OF THE STAGE.]
“Gentlemen,
My part a little fell in this last scene,
Yet ’twas decorum. And though I am clean
Got off from Subtle, Surly, Mammon, Dol,
Hot Ananias, Dapper, Drugger, all
With whom I traded: yet I put my self
On you, that are my country: and this pelf
Which I have got, if you do quit me, rests
To feast you often, and invite new guests.”
[EXEUNT.]
THE DUCHESS OF MALFI by John Webster
c. 1612
Written in either 1612 or 1613, The Duchess of Malfi was first performed at Blackfriars Theatre, before being staged at The Globe circa 1614. The play received a revival around 1618/19 and apparently offended the chaplain to the Venetian ambassador, due to its depiction of Catholics. It is likely that the work was staged a series of times over the next fifteen years including a production for Charles I in 1630.
The Duchess of Malfi was inspired by true events in Italy over a century prior to the play’s inception; Webster is likely to come across the tale from the author William Painter’s 1566 book The Palace of Pleasure, which included sixty stories, one of which recounted events similar to those that occur in Webster’s play. The work is set in early 16th century Italy and opens with the recently widowed Duchess of Malfi falling in love with her steward, Antonio, and marrying him in secret, despite it being explicitly against the wishes of her two brothers, who fear for their own inheritance should the Duchess take a husband. When the relationship is discov
ered, the couple and their children flee to the Ancona province, before the Duchess’s cruel brother, the Cardinal, banishes them from the region. The Duchess is shortly imprisoned on the order of her brothers and the play relates events of cruelty, murder and revenge. Webster’s work explores in detail the issue of corruption rife in the actions of powerful men, embodied most starkly in the figure of the Cardinal, who abuses his position and exhibits the vilest cruelty towards his sister, both psychologically and physically. The playwright also, once again, reveals the rampant misogyny present in the world he depicts: the Duchess is repeatedly referred to as a whore, she’s brutalised in every regard and despite being portrayed as greatly admirable in all that she does, she is offered no protection from her brothers’ actions. A particularly interesting aspect of the play is the intersecting of gender and class in the portrayal of the Duchess/Antonio dynamic; the Duchess is the aggressor in their courting, initiating the idea of marriage between them and controlling the vital aspects of their relationship.
Though the play continued to prove popular during the Restoration period, it largely fell out of fashion in the 18th century, before receiving attention again in the middle of the nineteenth century. Pre Second World War performances received harsh critical responses, including T. S. Eliot’s criticism of the 1919 production’s failure to understand the heart and strength of Webster’s work. Since 1950 the play has been frequently performed, including the 1980 production at The Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, starring Helen Mirren, and the recent 2012 staging at the Old Vic Theatre, featuring Eve Best. The popularity of the play can be clearly demonstrated by the multitude of references to it in other works: Stephen Fry’s novel The Stars’ Tennis Balls is named after a line in the text. In John le Carre’s novel Call for the Dead, the protagonist, George Smiley. is reported to be quoting The Duchess of Malfi in a delirium, and on their 1983 Porcupine album Echo and The Bunnymen mention the play in their song ‘The White Devil’, which obviously also references another of Webster’s plays.
Title page from 1623 edition
This play was taken from our Complete Works edition:
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
ACT I, SCENE I
ACT I, SCENE II
ACT II, SCENE I
ACT II, SCENE II
ACT II, SCENE III
ACT II, SCENE V
ACT III, SCENE I
ACT III, SCENE III
ACT III, SCENE IV
ACT III, SCENE V
ACT IV, SCENE I
ACT IV, SCENE II
ACT V, SCENE I
ACT V, SCENE II
ACT V, SCENE III
ACT V, SCENE IV
ACT V, SCENE V
2012 production starring Eve Best
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.
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
The Court at Malfi, Italy
The year: 1504
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’th’ 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. 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 BOSOLA and CARDINAL
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 dependences, in expectation to
Be advanced tomorrow? 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 honorable 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 BOSOLA
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,
It then doth follow want of action
Breeds all black malcontents, and their close rearing,
Like moths in cloth, do hurt for want of wearing.
ACT I, SCENE II
Action continues from previous scene
Enter FERDINAND, CASTRUCHIO, SILVIO
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