THE DUCHESS OF MALFI BY JOHN WEBSTER - Contextual Questions 1
Using the extract below as your starting point, show how you think Bosola’s character develops during the course of the play. Compare and contrast specific incidents in your discussion.
BOSOLA [Enter CARDINAL.] I do haunt you still.
So. 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!
You enforce your merit too much.
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: blackbirds fatten best in hard weather: why not I, in these dog-days?
Would you could become honest-
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.