THE DUCHESS OF MALFI BY JOHN WEBSTER - Contextual Questions 2
The ending of the play is given below. How far do you consider that justice is served by this final outcome of events?
BOSOLA. Now my revenge is perfect: sink, thou main cause
Of my undoing: [he wounds FERDINAND] the last part of my life
Hath done me best service. Give me some wet hay,
I am broken winded. I do account this world but a dog-kennel:
I will vault credit, and affect high pleasures
Beyond death.
He seems to come to himself,
Now he’s so near the bottom.
My sister, oh! my sister, there’s the cause on’t.
Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,
Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust. [Dies.]
Thou hast thy payment too.
Yes, I hold my weary soul in my teeth;
‘Tis ready to part from me. I do glory
That thou, which stood’st like a huge pyramid
Begun upon a large and ample base,
Shalt end in a little point, a kind of nothing.
[Enter PESCARA, MALATESTE, RODERIGO and GRISOLAN.]
How now, my lord?
O sad disaster!
How comes this?
Revenge, for the Duchess of Malfi, murdered
By th’ Aragonian brethren; for Antonio,
Slain by this hand; for lustful Julia,
Poison’d by this man; and lastly, for myself,
That was an actor in the main of all,
Much ‘gainst mine own good nature, yet i’th’ end
Neglected.
How now, my lord?
Look to my brother:
He gave us these large wounds, as we were struggling
Here i’th’rushes. And now, I pray, let me
Be laid by, and never thought of.
How fatally, it seems, he did withstand
His own rescue!
Thou wretched thing of blood,
How came Antonio by his death?
In a mist: I know not how:
Such a mistake as I have often seen in a play.
Oh, I am gone: We are only like dead walls, or vaulted graves
That, ruin’d, yield no echo. Fare you well;
It may be pain: but no harm to me to die
In so good a quarrel.
Oh this gloomy world,
In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness
Doth, womanish, and fearful, mankind live?
[Dies.]
Let worthy minds ne’er stagger in distrust
To suffer death or shame for what is just:
Mine is another voyage.
The noble Delio, as I came to th’palace,
Told me of Antonio’s being here, and show’d me
A pretty gentleman his son and heir.
[Enter DELIO with ANTONIO’S son.]
O sir, you come too late.
I heard so, and
Was arm’d for’t ere I came. Let us make noble use
Of this great ruin; and join all our force
To establish this young hopeful gentleman
His mother’s right. These wretched eminent things
Leave no more fame behind ‘em, than should one
Fall in a frost, and leave his print in snow,
As soon as the sun shines, it ever melts
Both form and matter. 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. [Exit.]
FINIS.