Answer:
“We are merely the stars’
tennis-balls, struck and banded
Which may please them.”
The
Machiavellian qualities seen in the villain’s, along with the pragmatic of even
existentialist attitude to life displayed by the good as well as bad characters
may give a first impression that the world Webster presents in The Duchess
of Malfi, is a chaotic world, but for a closer and deeper look at the play
will show that the world is influenced by a moral order though this order
cannot be universally enforced. Though the moral presence exists, this world
remains mysterious, incomprehensible and the future of worldly creatures is
unpredictable.
The
growing immortality and sensuousness, which the court displayed, made the
citizens sympathise with the Puritans. People began to criticize the court and
religion more vocally. This critical temper had its effect in literature of the
time too. Times were running out and pessimism and satire arose out of the
dissatisfaction among the people. The melancholy mood found in the literature
of the late 16th and early 17th century was not affection,
but a natural expression of the gloom and frustration that people of the time
felt. The preoccupation of Webster with decay, disease sickness and death
can be explained in the light of the social history.
Webster
excels in the sudden flash, in the intuitive but often unsustained perception.
At times he startles us by what may be called the ‘Shakespearean’ use of the
common word. In the dark night of ‘The Duchess of Malfi’ at the high point of
tension when the Duchess is about to die her last words are:
“Go tell my brother, when I am laid
out
They then may feed in quiet”-
The
bareness of ‘Feed’ increases the force of the line, for it suggests animal’s
engrossment. It has too, that kind of authority peculiar to the common word
unexpectedly introduced. Its impact is that of ‘bread’ in Hamlet’s skill.
[“He
took my father grossly, full of bread,
With
all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May:”]
They too often remain isolated and detached
from the main stream of thought. In his manner of writing such sentences come
too often though they may not have a direct relation with the texture of the
play. Such lines as:
“O, this gloomy world:
In what a shadow, or deep pit of
darkness,
Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!
Let worthy minds never
stagger and distrust
To suffer death or shame for what is
just;
Mine is another voyage”,
stand out as
detached expression of Webster’s sententious wisdom. Many of Webster’s lines in
The Duchess of Malfi have become almost proverbial and can be quoted
like proverbs without consideration of the text in which they occur.
Tragedy
according to Aristotle should ‘arouse pity and fear leading to the catharsis of
such emotions’. Webster, an Elizabethan and a Jacobean, possibly could not have
written plays according to Aristotle’s cannons. However, there is plenty in the
play that arouses pity. And surely there is fear too in abundance arising out
of all pervading horror in the play. As it is generally understood, a tragedy
deals with sufferings and misfortunes of the protagonists of the play.
“That I might toss her palace ‘bout
her ears
Root up her goodly forests, blast her
meads,
And lay her general territory as waste
As the hath done her honours.”
The
Duchess of Malfi, like any good tragedy teaches us to know the world and its
ways better. There are plenty in the play that are sensational and horrifying
making it melodramatic to some extent, and they appeal to the morbid instincts
of the playgoer. However, the principal victim of this play is not merely the
sufferer, the Duchess, but the unconquerable and unsubdued human spirit of
hers. In this the Duchess comes close to Shakespearian heroes and heroines. She
keeps up her dignified spirit of defiance towards the evildoers, but is
remarkably humble before heaven. She displays her sensuality not only in her
marriage but also in devouring the apricots with evident greed. She becomes
blind in her passion for Antonio and is credulous in taking Bosola’s words at
face value. Her shirking of her responsibility, as a ruler of Malfi is a
glaring flaw. Still the resigned dignity with which she faces the spectacle
showing her dear ones as dead and her own impending strangling make us respect
her unbreakable spirit. That enduring spirit ennobles us and uplifts us. Our
faith in the essential nobility of human beings is reinforced, despite the
damaging effect on that faith caused by the evil and villainy of others.
In
the case of Bosola, it is an intellectual failure. He fails to understand his
personal identity and his responsibility for his actions. The play
suggestively tells that sin is inherent in man and that the corruption of the
body will find its way into corrupt action. The drift towards an error
is natural and it eventually arrives at the natural consequence: retribution.
This appears to be the meaning of the play.
“Right the fashion of the world:
From decay’d fortunes every flatterer
shrinks:
Men cease to build where the
foundation sinks:”
The
Duchess, Antonio and Bosola share the focus of tragic issues in the play. The
tragic flaw (hamartia) in the Duchess is the ‘madness’ which Cariola
identifies at the end of the first act. That of Antonio, mainly is ambition-
“Ambition,madam,is a great man’s
madness,
That is not kept in chains and
close-pent rooms,
But in fair lightsome lodgings, and is
girt
With the wild noise of prattling
visitants
Which makes it lunatic beyond all
cure.”
Along
with the realism may be mentioned the meditative energy and the capacity to realize
the irony, the mysterious nature and the pathos of life. The meditative energy
Webster displays is an essential part of his dramatic genius. Sometime he
introduces fables or parables even when by doing so inconsistencies in
character portrayal creep in. Duke Ferdinand’s parable or Reputation, Love and
Death and the Duchess’s fable of the salmon and the dog-fish belong to this
area.
“Though we are eaten up of lice and
worms,
And though continually we bear about
us
A rotten and dead body, we delight
To hide it in tissue:”
Webster
presents a moral world that is some mysterious ways that ultimately bring
punishments for the crimes one commit. The devilish Arragonian brothers and
their equally devilish instrument, Bosola, feel the pangs of conscience and
meet ignoble death. Remorse touches Ferdinand the most, and makes him
lycanthropic. His presenting a dead man’s hand to the Duchess is another
indication. The sight of the dead Duchess indeed acts as a trigger in turning
him fully mad. Finally he is killed by Bosola. Bosola is struck with remorse,
when he finds that his much expected ‘preferment’ does not come to him. He
declares that if he was to live once again he would not commit his crimes,
“For all the wealth of Europe’
Further
looking at the dead Duchess he says,
“Here is a sight
As direful to my soul as is the sword
Unto a wretch hath slain his father.”
Later
he mortally stabs the Cardinal and the Duke and himself, is killed by the
Lycanthropic Duke. Even the Cardinal, who is a cold and calculating Machiavellian,
feels the pricking of conscience. He goes to the religious books for
consolation but finding it futile, lay it aside. He expresses his mental agony clearly when he
soliloquizes:
“How tedious is a quality conscience:
When I look into the fish –ponds in my
garden,
Methinks I see a thing arm’d with a
rake,
That seems to strike at me.”
True,
the Duchess and Antonio do have their flaws but the sufferings they face appear
to be out of proportion to their sins. Really their mistakes are minor and the
punishment too great. Webster illustrates that the moral order he
visualizes does not mete out reward and punishment equitably. The
intense suffering that is heaped upon Duchess and to a lesser extent on Antonio
, is determined by the forces of evil
that exist in her devilish brothers and their villainous tool Bosola. The three
appear to be mentally diseased people, sadists who enjoy inflicting of pain on
others. Bosola, despite his occasional moral meditations and occasional show of
sympathy for the plight of the Duchess, inflicts subtle mental torture on the
Duchess.
“Who would be afraid on’t.
Knowing to meet such excellent company
In the other world?”
The
dramatist’s fondness for bloodshed, violence and horror can be seen from his
preoccupation with the morbid and the macabre. The world he presents is one of
corruption, immortality, cruelty, dishonesty, greed and Machiavellianism.
“This is flesh and blood, sir;
‘T is not the figure cut in
alabaster.”
Altogether
ten murders take place, on the stage, in The Duchess of Malfi. Tortures of the
most repulsive and shocking kind are released on the Duchess. The presentation
and the dead man’s hand, the spectacle of the waxen figures of Antonio and
children, shown as dead, the letting
loose of the lunatics on to coffin, the strangling of the Duchess, Cariola and
the children, the lycanthropia of the Duke, the killing of Antonio and the
servant and the final Carnage, all show the preoccupation of the author with
the murky and the morbid.
Further, he seems to show disappointment when he finds
the Duchess unbroken in spirit, despite her effort to break it. In Webster, like in Shakespeare, the
good people with minor flaws seem to suffer deeply.
Revenge
is not a sacred duty in ‘The Duchess of Malfi’. Thus the play defers
from the traditional ones. Revenge in its most grotesque form is presented
here. Both the brothers, who seek revenge, are beastly villainous beings. In
their rage they lose their sense of judgment and behave as depraved human beings,
which they really are. Their resentment at the Duchess’s marriage below
rank is natural, but it makes them commit inexplicably monstrous atrocities.
Their revenge is not even a wild justice but very unnatural and bestial cruelty
born out of perversion. In presenting this changed kind of revenge Webster has
moved away from the beaten path.
“Would I could be one,
That I might toss her palace ‘bout her
ears,
Root up her goodly forests, blast her
meads
And lay her general territory as waste
As she hath done her honours.”
Webster
does not believe that human suffering is caused by a supernatural agency- God
or Fate. The events in the play show that human suffering is caused
partly by the flaw in the sufferers and partly by the devilish qualities that
exist in other villainous people.
The Duchess, who suffers most in the play, is not a blemishes person.
She has her flaw, her hamartia which is her sensuousness that makes her marry
beneath her. She does not care for the damage of reputation her marriage could
bring to her illustrations brothers, a Cardinal and a Duke.
“He and his brothers 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 ponders, I would hang on their ears like a
horseleech, till I were full, and
then drop off.”
The
Duchess of Malfi is one of the John Webstar’s finer plays. Several images are
in the play which brings in tempests, thunder and earthquakes. Perhaps the best
that belongs to this group is found in the Duke’s answer to the Cardinal’s
question why the former behaves like a tempest. Very pungently he
satirises the courtiers and courtly life of the time. The corruption of
the court and the rewards the princes extended for devilish services is one of
the major themes of the play. In the very first scene of the play we find
Bosola making fun of the courtiers, and the evil patrons. Webster’s skill in
stagecraft is displayed in several episodes of the play. The whole of Act IV is
a theatrical tour de force. The Duchess wooing of Antonio leading to the secret
marriage in Act I also shows equally great dramatic skill. The sudden
appearance of Cariola from behind the arras gives a shock to Antonio. The
meeting of Antonio and Bosola in the courtyard of Malfi palace, with its ‘sense
of the theatre’ resembles the courtyard scene in Macbeth (Act II, Sc.I). Also
dramatic is the Duke’s stormy appearance at the residence of the Cardinal with
a letter in hand, fuming with rage. The Duke’s secret entry into the Duchess’s
bed chamber gives a dramatically arresting episode. The Duchess s surprised at the continued
silence of her husband, hears footsteps behind and turns expecting him coming
back, but sees her brother the Duke advancing to her with his hand on his
poniard. Another, theatrically very effective scene is where the Duke suffering
from lycanthropic appears on the stage muttering ‘strangling is a very quiet
death.’ The Duke, stealing across the stage in the dark, whispering to himself,
with the devastating appearance of mad man is a figure one may not forget.
Despite the existence of definite flaws in the nature of
the Duchess and Antonio the sufferings and misfortunes they faced would not
have arisen but for the evil present in the Cardinal, the Duke and Bosola. Webster appears to believe in the
predominant existence of evil in this world. The various references to the devil
and Machiavellianism stand testimony to it. Such references help to emphasize
the evil nature of the Cardinal, the Duke and their tool-villain, Bosola. They
are responsible for most of the sufferings and the ten deaths shown in the
play. The tyrannous brothers become indignant at the news of their sister
giving birth to a child, which they think to be illegitimate. The Duke is
affected more and loses all self-control: He shouts in anger that he would
become a storm:
“That I might toss her palace ‘bout
her ears
Root up her goodly forests, blast her
meads,
And lay her general territory as waste
As the hath done her honours.”
In
Elizabethan drama scenes of madness used to be shown on the stage, but they
were episodic and did not contribute to the play at a psychological level.
Webster too presents the chorus of madmen according to the revenge tradition.
It creates, mostly a grotesque atmosphere with the antics and lunatic dance of
the mad men. However there is some psychological interest too present in it. The
Duke devises the scheme to torture the Duchess with the intention of turning
her mad, but ironically he, not the Duchess, becomes mad. The lycanthropic
madness of the Duke has still greater psychological significance. his madness
is shown not only as an instrument to create horror, but to show that his crime
has knocked him out of his sanity.
Human
beings inflict untold sufferings on his fellow beings prompted by ambition,
envy, hatred, greed and lust for power. In Webster’s world it is the
natural lot of man that he endures decay, disease and death. The
Duchess and Antonio, the good characters of the play meet their death; one
after a long suffering, the other by simple accident. Even the blameless
Cariola, and the innocent children meet death by strangulation. Virtue,
innocence and other good qualities appear to offer no assured safety against suffering
and premature death.
“If all my royal kindred
Lay in my way unto this marriage,
I’d make them my low footsteps.”
Webster’s
world is one where suffering embraces all, the good and the wicked. Suffering
and death are inevitable. They result sometimes from deliberate contrivance as
in the case of the Duchess, Cariola etc; sometimes from compulsive action as in
the case of Antonio; and they can take place quite arbitrarily as in the case
of the servant whom Bosola kills. Though he is a villainous person perpetrating
some of the most heinous crimes, but he is also portrayed as a meditating
malcontent who occasionally appears to act as a mouth-piece of the author’s
view of life. Seeking happiness in the world, Webster seems to say is a
futile effort for pleasure and is only momentary, but suffering is inevitable
and profound. The dying Antonio makes it clear,
“Pleasure of life, what is ‘t?only the
good hours
Of an ague: merely a preparative to
rest,
To endure vexation.”
Webster
could have been influenced by a few contemporary incidents to make the play
what it is. One of them is the story of the fate of Torquato Tasso at the hands
of Alfonso d’Este, an Italian Duke, because of his love for the Duke’s sister.
Another was the imprisonment of Lady Arabella Stuart, as a punishment for het
marrying Lord William Seymour against the wishes of King James I, her cousin.
Lady Arabella became mentally deranged while in person.
Though
Webster followed Painter’s line, he made many noticeable additions. This can be
found not only in the plot construction but also in characterization. In the
play we find the Cardinal and the Duke warning the Duchess against a
remarriage. There is nothing of the sort present in Painter. So also are the
part played by Bosola, the secret entry of the Duke into the bed chamber of the
Duchess and the sub plot of Julia’s adulterous relationship with the Cardinal. Further
most of the incidents of Act IV especially the tormenting of the Duchess, by
presenting the spectacle of the waxen images, the Duke’s presenting a dead
man’s hand to the Duchess, the antics of the lunatics, Bosola’s entry as a tomb
maker and a bellman etc., are all Webster’s inventions. Antonio’s visit to the
Cardinal, the Echo-scène, the lycanthropia of the Duke, Bosola’s decision to
turn against his master and the final death of all the three, too are Webster’s
additions.
“I have ever thought
Nature doth nothing so great for great
men
As when she’s pleas’d to make them
lords of truth:
Integrity of life is fame’s best
friend,
Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown
the end.”
The
Duchess of Malfi has
an admirable exposition in the first act. All the major characters are
introduced sufficiently well. Antonio, knowledgeable in the fashion and manners of French Court, the Duke and the
Cardinal who are like plum trees that
grow crooked and right noble Duchess’ whose ‘discourse it is so full of
rapture’ are painted with a few thick strokes . Later the Duchess shows her
independence, vivacity and passionate nature by declaring her defiant attitude
to the advice of the brothers and wooing Antonio abruptly and marrying him
secretly. This may apply not only to the virtuous Duchess, but also to the
wicked Bosola, who with determination kills the two characters. Bosola’s
statement,
“Let worth minds ne’er stagger in
distrust
To differ death or shame- for what is just:”
makes
this point amply clear. Whether virtuous or wicked, all should boldly decide
not to compromise or surrender, but persist in being what they have it in
themselves.
Bosola
by declaring:
“I’ll be mine own example-“
And
the Duchess by asserting,
“I am Duchess of Malfi still”
He
realizes that he has to ‘die like a leveret’. He does so and we feel as if he
has faced the ultimate punishment for his crimes. Nemesis reaches all the three
villains giving the impression that there is some moral -order that in some
unknown way mete out punishments to the evil doers.
The Duchess ridicules Cariola for her respect
for religion and calls her ‘a superstitious fool’. However she displays her
belief in God by kneeling before her death.
We have to conclude that, Webster does not openly negate the existence of
God in the play. However, the turn of events in the play makes one think
that Webster’s moral world is an extentialist one.
“Whether the spirit of greatness or of
woman
Reign most in her, I know not; but it
shows
A fearful madness: I owe her much of
pity.”
Bosola’s
telling that “I will be mine own example” is a typical extentialist statement.
The Duchess taking firm personal decision about her marriage, Duchess’s
disregarding the opinion of her brothers and her accepting the consequences of that
action with a resigned courage too is an existentialist attitude; so also is
the detachment with Antonio faces his fate. One of the basic requirements of
that philosophy, negation of God, however is not emphasized in the play. Antonio is an extentialist as far as
his attitude to religion, but nothing is said to show that he does not believe
in God.
The
fables, the Duchess and the Duke relate, too are significant for their moral
worth. Bosola, though a dark and villainous tool in the hands of the equally
dark brothers, during his meditative bouts brings out worthy moral; truths.
About gold coins he says,
“These cur’d gifts would make
You a corrupter, me an impudent
traitor:”
He
has other philosophic comments too.
“Since place and riches oft are bribes
opf shame:
Sometimes the devil doth preach.”
Musing
over the ruins of the Abbey near the Cardinal’s palace he says:
“But all things have their end:
Churches and cities, which have
diseases like to men,
Must have like death that we have”
To show the transcience of happiness
he says,
“Pleasure of life, what is ‘t? only
the good hours
Of an ague:”
The
moral message of the play comes out frequently through pithy statements. It is
interesting that almost all characters utter some universal truth, some statement
significant to human life, displaying the moral undertone of the play. Antonio
moralizes from the beginning till his last moments. Even minor characters
are often found to express moral ideas. Cariola comments on the
Duchess’ marriage thus:
“Whether the spirit of greatness or of
woman
Reign most in her, I know not; but it
shows
A fearful madness:”
The
first pilgrim has this to say about the fall of the great.
“Fortune makes this conclusion
general.
All things do help the unhappy man to
fall.”
Julia,
the trumpet too utters a pithy statement
“ ‘T is weakness,
Too much to think what should have
been done.”
Delio
has something moral to state very often
“Though in our miseries Fortune have a
part,
Yet in our noble sufferings she hasth
none:”
He
winds up the play with a statement pregnant with philosophic truth:
“Integrity of life is fame’s best
friend,
Which nobly, beyond death shall crown
he end.”
All
these moral statements may appear out of place in a tragedy to a modern reader,
but an Elizabethan play goer would have taken it as a sign of the Author’s
moral consciousness.
“I
am Duchess of Malfi still”, brings out Webster’s view of life. There is an amount of self-centered thinking
in her. Further she is a credulous person and susceptible to flattery. We see
her gloating over the praise Bosola showers on Antonio and reveals her secret
of identity of her husband to Bosola. Then, pleased with his flattering comments
on her marriage she takes him as a confidant decides to accept his advice and
to go to Loretto on a feigned pilgrimage. Both the actions lead to disastrous
consequences. Antonio too, faces his fate partly because of his flaws. Though
he despises ambition as ‘a great man’s madness’, it is his ambition that makes
him succumb to the desires of the Duchess and marry her. His passivity too led
to his downfall. He does not show any inclination it out with the Arragonian
brothers though he knows that justice is on his part.
Many of the opinions expressed by the various characters
of the play betray Webster’s extentialist leanings though, the word ‘extentialism’
as a philosophy evolved only in the nineteenth century after Kierkgoard. Extentialism rejects metaphysics and
concentrates on the individual’s existence in the world. It is a pragmatic and psychologically realistic philosophy
that negates the existence of a God. There is some inherent absurdity
in man’s existence. For ‘all human activities are equivalent, all are destined
by principles to defeat”, but a man is responsible for his effect on others,
though only his existence is real to him, and he is ultimately his own judge.
Among all these apparently chaotic happenings in this world one wonders what a
man should aim at. Are there some values he should cherish? Webster
answers, surely, through his unmistakable esteem for the virtuous characters in
the play. He apparently advocates two qualities to be cultivated among
humans: they should persist in being what they are and they should face
calamities with fortitude. The closing speech of Delio may be Webster’s message
to humans.
“The weakest arm is strong enough that
strikes
With the sword of justice”
Webster
presents in his plays, a view of the world where the destructive forces unleash
their power on the individual. The inner reality one sees in Shakespearean
characters is absent in Webster. He portrays only their outer nature, and even
that is often absorbed into the general forces. This results in their losing
even the exterior marks of individuality. After sketching their traits through narration,
Webster shows them behaving in conformity with that narration. They become types,
their characteristics being shared by many others in this world. The
soliloquy of Webster does not give any deep insight into the character, which
Shakespeare very well provides. Webster’s soliloquies only throw light
into a plot and action. Further Webster removes the inner dimension of man from
his tragic picture he presents. As a result development of character, as is
seen in Shakespeare, is not possible in Webster.
“I am puzzled in a question about
hell;
He says, in hell there’s one material
fire.”…
************************************************************************************
EXCEPT
IDEAS AND SETTINGS AND REFERENCES, WORDS AND SENTENCES FROM DR.S.SEN.
No comments:
Post a Comment