THE DUCHESS OF MALFI BY JOHN WEBSTER - Contextual Questions 4
With reference to the language, imagery and tone of this scene, say what you learn from it about the two characters and about Webster’s principal concerns in The Duchess of Malfi.
Duchess: O, they are very welcome:
When Fortune’s wheel is overcharg’d with princes,
The weight makes it move swift. I would have my ruin
Be sudden:-I am your adventure, am I not?
Bosola: You are, you must see your husband no more-
Duchess: What devil art thou, that counterfeits heaven’s thunder?
Bosola: Is that terrible? I would have you tell me
Whether is that note worse that frights the silly birds
Out of the corn, or that which doth allure them
To the nets? You have hearken’d to the last too much.
O misery! like to a rusty o’ercharg’d cannon,
Shall I never fly in pieces? come: to what prison?
Bosola: To none:-
Duchess: Whither then?
Bosola: To your palace.
Duchess: I have heard
That Charon’s boat serves to convey all o’er
The dismal lake, but brings none back again.
Bosola: Your brothers mean you safety, and pity.
Duchess: Pity!
With such a pity men preserve alive
Pheasants and quails, when they are not fat enough
To be eaten.
Bosola: These are your children?
Duchess: Yes;-
Bosola: Can they prattle?
Duchess: No: But I intend, since they were born accurs’d,
Curses shall be their first language.
Bosola: Fie, madam, Forget this base, low fellow.
Duchess: Were I a man
I’d beat that counterfeit face into thy other.
Bosola: One of no birth-
Duchess: Say that he was born mean:
Man is most happy when’s own actions
Be arguments and examples of his virtue.
Bosola: A barren, beggarly virtue.
Duchess: I prithee, who is greatest? Can you tell?
Sad tales befit my woe: I’ll tell you one.
A salmon, as she swam into the sea,
Met with a dog-fish, who encounters her
With this rough language: ‘Why art thou so bold
To mix thyself with our high state of floods,
Being no eminent courtier, but one
That for the calmest and fresh time o’th’year
Dost live in shallow rivers, rank’st thyself
With silly smelts and shrimps? and darest thou
Pass by our dog-ship, without reverence?’
‘O’, quoth the salmon, ’sister, be at peace:
Thank Jupiter we both have pass’d the net!
Our value never can be truly known
Till in the fisher’s basket we be shown;
I’th’ market then my price may be the higher,
Even when I am nearest to the cook and fire.’
So, to great men, the moral may be stretched:
Men oft are valued high, when th’are most wretched.
But come; whither you please: I am arm’d ‘gainst misery;
Bent to all sways of the oppressor’s will.
There’s no deep valley, but near some great hill. Exeunt.
Act 3, Scene 5, lines 92-143