‘Paradise Lost’&

‘The Duchess of Malfi’

Learning Purposes

• Exploring the theme of ‘ambition and its dangers’

• Contextual issues – some notes on the literary contexts of the texts

• Explore the characters of Sin and Death; Ferdinand, Cardinal and Antonio in relation to the theme.

Previous Learning:Exploring the presentation of the characters Eve, the Duchess, Satan and Bosola in relation to the theme of ‘Ambition and its Dangers’

Future Learning:Internal assessments in accordance with the examination syllabus.

Some notes on

Literary Contexts

The Duchess of Malfi

Paradise Lost

• Revenge- various quests for vengeance leading to violent deaths. Different attitudes to revenge are explored. Disguise and counter plots are common.

• Brutal and wicked behaviour – murder, treachery, cruelty, sexual lust, desire for power. Appetites which lead to destruction. Atmosphere of moral decay.

• Madness

• The corrupt society of Renaissance Italy and Spain - usually set in a decadent and vice-ridden foreign court, full of self seekers and Machiavellian political intrigue. Popular prejudice of such foreign places.

• Religious and moral hypocrisy –Priests and religious leaders insincere and deceitful. Usually anti-Catholic (Jacobean England was Protestant).

• The malcontent – a troubled individual who comments critically on society and other characters. Often a revengeful plotter, agent of retribution. Based on John Marston’s play ‘The Malcontent’ and the character Malvole = ‘ill wisher’.

• Women – confident and sensual, seeking to control their own lives in a male-dominated world.

• Language – sardonic, sombre tone, intense, vibrant language. Vivid imagery of corruption, sexual passion, disease, decay and death.

• Soliloquies

The features of Jacobean Tragedy

Revenge Tragedy

Revenge tragedy, made popular in Elizabethan and Jacobean Britain, typically tells the story of a protagonist seeking revenge against the murderous actions of an antagonist. Shakespeare's Hamlet is probably seen as the most typical revenge tragedy of those times and the play that popularised many of the genre's conventions, including soliloquies, madness, action-packed scenes, bloody murders, important noble figures, suicide, and the use of disguise.

The Duchess of Malfi is also seen as a revenge tragedy, just not a typical one.

It is a revenge tragedy because, firstly, it features a character, Bosola, who seeks revenge for the murders of the play's most noble characters. Secondly, it features some of the genre's most typical characteristics: soliloquies, sensational murders, madness, and Machiavellian characters.

Soliloquies

Bosola is the only character in the play who gives the audience insight into his true state of mind by speaking his thoughts aloud. For example, at the end of act 4, he shows guilt for arranging to kill the Duchess of Malfi by telling the audience,

‘All our good deeds and bad, a perspective / That shows us hell! That we cannot be suffer’d / To do good when we have a mind to it! / [He weeps] This is manly sorrow. (364 – 367)

Sensational murders

Perhaps the most sensational murder of many is when Bosola orders the executioner to kill the Duchess and her children at the end of act 4. Just before the executioner strangles her, the Duchess says:

‘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. . . . (222 – 226)

‘Dispose my breath how please you.’ (232)

With the Duchess dead, Bosola tells his men:

‘Some other strangle the children.’ (245)

Madness

Like Hamlet loses his mind after the death of his father, the Duchess's brother Ferdinand loses his mind in Act 5, scene 2 after the death of his sister. At one point he attempts to throttle his own shadow.

‘Eagles commonly fly alone: they are crows, daws and starlings that flock together. Look, what's that follows me?’ (31 – 33) ‘I will throttle it.’ (40)

Machiavellian characters

The Cardinal is probably the play's Machiavellian character and, though professing to be a man of God, kills his lover by tricking her into kissing the cover of a poisoned bible:

‘Now you shall never utter it; thy curiosity / Hath undone thee; thou 'rt poison'd with that book / Because I knew thou couldst not keep my counsel / I have bound thee to 't by death (279 – 282)

Context: Italian setting

For English theatre-goers of Webster's time, the Italian palace represented corruption and deception. This stereotype sprang from a number of sources: the political philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), as expressed in his best-known work The Prince (1513); the prevailing loyalty in Italy to the Roman Catholic religion and the Pope; and the complex politics of the leading Italian city-states and noble families, including the Borgias and the Medicis.

These powerful, corrupt families controlled much of Italy, even holding positions in the Papacy at times. For example, Rodrigo Borgia was the corrupt Pope Alexander VI who had mistresses and illegitimate children. The Catholic Church was seen as being more about power and wealth than religion. This was also influenced by Henry VIII (1491–1547), King of England from 1509 to 1547. Henry broke with the Catholic Church in order to annul his first marriage, and he embraced Protestantism by creating the Church of England. Henry ordered monasteries and nunneries sacked, and those who embraced Roman Catholicism were sometimes put to death.

In The Duchess of Malfi, Webster interlaces the setting with several of his principal themes, including corruption, deception, and cruelty. At the very beginning of the play, for example, Antonio Bologna, who has freshly returned from a visit to France, compares the French court to that of Malfi, to Italy's distinct disadvantage. Although Malfi is home to a number of honourable characters, such as the Duchess of Malfi and the loyal courtier Delio, they are greatly outnumbered by scoundrels and criminals. Three of the play's most important characters—hired criminal Daniel de Bosola and the Duchess's two brothers, the Cardinal and Ferdinand—are deeply involved in corruption.

The Duchess

In The Duchess of Malfi Webster created a singular protagonist, a tragic heroine with few parallels in the drama of this period. The Duchess's power, wealth, and sensuality combine to form a highly unusual combination of qualities—a cluster that many male theatre-goers and readers might well have found unnerving, or even threatening, regardless that in Renaissance theatre all roles, even those of females, would have been played by men.

Paradise Lost as Epic

An epic is a long narrative (storytelling) poem that describes the exploits of the chief hero or gods of a national culture. Milton wanted to create an English, Christian epic, as inspired by Homer and Virgil. He saw the old testament as the first part of human history, and was specifically interested in how evil came into the world.

He wrote in English, but had to ‘latinise’ the language to imitate the elevated, unrhymed but rhythmic style of classical (ancient Greek or Roman) epic.

Homer’s poems were part of an oral tradition, intended to be sung. Milton deliberately copied some of the narrative devices common to this style. Being blind by the time of its writing, Milton dictated the poem to assistants (his daughters) who transcribed it

Milton’s Latinate English and Blank Verse

Echoing the Epic style, Milton has a preference for long sentences, with many sub-clauses (mini-sentences).

He frequently upsets word order for deliberate effect. Moving, for instance, the verb to the end of a phrase or sentence.

Like much of the drama of the time, this is written in blank verse –unrhymed iambic pentameter. Like Shakespeare and Webster, he varies this for dramatic effect, emphasising certain syllables at will.

Epic features:

• Invocations to a muse or divine inspiration.

• A hero whose leadership changes the course of history. In Milton’s case, two: Satan and Adam.

• Descriptions of battles, with the armour and weapons of generals.

• Descriptions of voyages. In Book 9, we have Satan’s journey around the earth seven times.

• Extended comparisons – ‘epic similes’. Often beginning as… and ending so… e.g. in Book 9 lines 513 – 516 – Satan described as a sailing boat tacking up a river, suggesting his skill and his indirect route.

Other features of his style• Heavy use of alliteration and assonance. For example, used to convey Adam

and Eve’s drunkenness after eating the fruit: ‘They swim in mirth and fancy that they feel / Divinity within them breeding wings..’ (1009 – 1010)

• Frequent use of traditional ‘emblems’ – pictures accompanied by moral messages. Clasped hands signifying faithful love, for example. Different plants to signify different types of love etc.

• Rhetoric and debate:• Milton was likely trained in the art of public speaking and argument at Cambridge, and

honed it in his polemical (writing for political argument) literature.

• When Satan is about to make his great temptation speech to Eve, he draws himself up like ‘some orator renowned’ – (line 670). We should observe in him the skill of a classical lawyer, and (thus) the possibility he does not believe what he says.

Sin and Death; The Cardinal, Ferdinand and Antonio

How are the ambitions of Sin and Death shown in Book 10 (lines 229 – 409; and 585 – 640) ?

In what ways do the following characters in ‘The Duchess of Malfi’ fit with the theme of ‘ambition and its dangers’?

• The Cardinal

• Ferdinand

• Antonio

Make detailed notes, accompanied by quotations.

Can you see parallels or significant differences between the texts?

Sin and Death• Sin: ‘Methinks I feel new strength within me rise, / Wings growing,

and dominion given me large / Beyond this deep’ (243 – 245) –emboldened by Satan’s success we see the ambitions of Sin. Hell is seen as limiting. Wings are a symbol for aspiration.

• Death: “..such a scent I draw of carnage, prey innumerable, and taste the savour of death from all things there that live” (267 – 269). Ambition is based on destruction. Parallel with Satan

• Satan: “My substitutes I send ye, and create/ Plenipotent on Earth” (403-404) – Even though Sin and Death are lesser than Satan, they have been giving the task of controlling Earth, showing that their desire for the same power as an Angel or God has been achieved. (‘plenipoint’ = all-powerful)

The Cardinal‘He is a melancholy churchman. The spring in his face is nothing but the engendering of toads. Where he is jealous of any man he lays worse plots for them’ (167 – 169) This presents the Cardinal’s corrupt nature and his Machiavellian methods, driven by his ambition and greed.

“He should have been Pope”. This shows us what the Cardinal could have achieved if he had been honest and faithful but the Cardinal pursues his ambitions in a corrupt way, with little regard of God: ‘..he did bestow bribes so largely, and so impudently, as if he would have carried it away without heaven’s knowledge.’ (176 - 179)

The cardinal expresses guilt but also reveals the insincerity of his religiosity ‘O, my conscience! I would pray now; but the devil takes away my heart / For having any confidence in prayer’. (Act 5 scene 4 lines 25 – 27)

Ferdinand

“..take fire when I give fire, that is, laugh when I laugh” (Act 1 scene 1: lines 131 - 132) – Ferdinand surrounds himself with sycophants. The court is there to gratify his selfish ambitions. This is similar to Satan who demands praise and admiration from his followers when he returns to Hell.

‘I would have their bodies / Burnt in a coal-pit, with the ventage stopped, / That their cursed smoke might not ascend to heaven.’(Act 2 scene 5: lines 68 – 70) The extent to which Ferdinand’s sexual jealousy drives his ambitions is evident. He would not only wish death upon his sister, but ensure she does not have an eternal life in heaven.

This also shows how Ferdinand understands that it was his ambition that led to his downfall ‘Whether we fall by ambition, blood or lust, Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust’. (Act 5 scene 5 lines 72 – 73)

Antonio

• “Ambition, Madam, is a great man’s madness” – Act 1 Scene 1: line 431). Antonio shows his awareness of the dangers of ambition. He is presented as a more humble character with no sinister ambitions of his own. Antonio is an honest man, a good horseman, and a loving husband and father, but he is also passive and largely ineffectual in a crisis, ultimately unable to protect his family from harm (perhaps indicated by his lack of ambition.)

Exemplar essay

The following essay was awarded maximum marks (30/30)

Essay 1 hour 15 mins

Consider the ways in which Milton and Webster explore ambition and its dangers in ‘Paradise Lost Books IX and X’ and ‘The Duchess of Malfi’.