CHARACTER OF BOSOLA

The above-mentioned character , Bosola is taken from Dutchess of Malfi(1612),

written by John Webster. It’s a Jacobean revenge tragedy, It was first performed
privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, then later to a larger audience at The Globe,
in 1613–1614. Published in 1623, the play is loosely based on events that occurred
between 1508 and 1513 surrounding Giovanna d'Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi (d.
1511), whose father, Enrico d'Aragona, Marquis of Gerace, was an illegitimate son
of Ferdinand I of Naples. As in the play, she secretly married Antonio Beccadelli di
Bologna after the death of her first husband Alfonso I Piccolomini, Duke of Amalfi.

About the author- John Webster (c. 1580 – c. 1634) was an English Jacobean
dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi,
which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage.
His life and career overlapped William Shakespeare's.
There are many simple, yet complex psychological characters in this drama.
Which leads to some dark truth, corruption, patriarchies and women abuse of that
time.
Plot & synopsis - The Duchess falls in love with her steward, Antonio. Her brothers,
Ferdinand and the Cardinal tell her not to remarry (she was recently widowed). She
agrees and they leave for Rome. But they don’t trust their sister and hire a
servant, Bosola, to spy on her.
Once they’ve gone, the Duchess meets Antonio. They confess their love for each
other, she proposes and they are married in secret.
APRICOTS
Nine months later, Bosola suspects the Duchess is pregnant. He hatches a plan to
present her with apricots (believed to induce labor). She eats them and
immediately becomes ill.
The Duchess gives birth to a son. His father, Antonio, writes his newborn a
horoscope, but then loses it. Bosola finds the horoscope – proof that the Duchess
had a child. He tells her brothers, who are furious with her (they don't know she is
married).
TWO YEARS LATER
The Duchess and Antonio have two more children.
Ferdinand returns from Rome and hides in his sister’s bedroom. When Antonio
leaves he reveals himself, gives the Duchess a dagger and tells her to kill herself.
She tells him she’s married, making him even angrier. He leaves saying he will never
see her again.
ESCAPE FROM MALFI
The Duchess persuades Antonio to flee to Ancona. Bosola tricks the Duchess into
telling him who the father of her children is, and where he is. Bosola takes this
information straight to her brothers.
The Duchess and her children meet Antonio in Ancona. The Cardinal finds them,
takes their wedding rings and banishes them. The Duchess forces Antonio to flee
to Milan with their eldest son.
IMPRISONMENT AND EXECUTION
Bosola imprisons the Duchess and her two younger children. In prison, a furious
Ferdinand tricks the Duchess into believing that Antonio and her eldest son are
both dead.
Bosola pleads for her life, but the Duchess and her two children are strangled.
Ferdinand is overwhelmed with remorse and blames Bosola for the murders.
A BLOODY END
Ferdinand joins the Cardinal in his palace in Milan, but has now lost his mind and
believes he is a wolf.
The Cardinal offers Bosola a reward for murdering Antonio. Bosola accepts but
plots to kill the two brothers instead. He conceals himself in the Cardinal's room,
but accidentally attacks and kills Antonio instead.
Bosola confronts the Cardinal, and in the ensuing fight, Ferdinand is woken from his
madness and joins in. Bosola stabs the Cardinal, while Ferdinand and Bosola strike
each other – all three die. Antonio’s friend, Delio, arrives too late to save anyone
but promises to raise Antonio’s eldest son in the image of his parents.
Important characters of this drama –
Bosola
Bosola is the tool through which the Cardinal and Ferdinand perpetrate most of
their evil in The Duchess of Malfi. He is hired by Ferdinand to spy on the Duchess,
for whom he serves as manager of her horses. He is an enigmatic figure, willing to
murder for hire without hesitation, while initially reluctant to commit to the
seemingly less extreme vice of spying.
As his deeds lead to worse and worse consequences--the banishment of the
Duchess and her family, the murder of the Duchess and her children, Antonio’s
accidental death--he shows more and more remorse for his actions. It is only when
Ferdinand and the Cardinal refuse to reward him for all he has done, though, that
he stops blindly following their orders, and avenges the Duchess and Antonio by
murdering the Cardinal and Ferdinand.
The Duchess
At the opening of the play, the Duchess of Malfi, sister to the Cardinal and twin sister to
Ferdinand, has just been widowed in her youth. Though she promises her domineering brothers
that she won’t remarry, she almost immediately proposes to Antonio, a decision that
ultimately leads to the destruction of her entire family, save their oldest son. The Duchess is
strong-willed, brave, passionate, proud, and a loving wife and mother. In the opening of the
play, Antonio speaks of her incredible virtue, and though she marries him against custom and
her brothers’ wishes, her goodness and vitality stand in stark contrast to her brothers’ evil.
Ferdinand
The Duke of Calabria and the Duchess’s twin brother, Ferdinand boasts an
impressive collection of vices: he has a terrible temper, is greedy, is lustful, and
has an unhealthy obsession with his sister. He is powerful and corrupt, but as his
anger over the Duchess’s actions grows, he becomes more and more deranged.
The Cardinal
The Duchess and Ferdinand’s older brother, the Cardinal of Aragon represents cold
and calculated evil in contrast to his hot-tempered brother. He is a Machiavellian
character, using the power of his position to torture and counter the Duchess.
Antonio
Antonio Bologna is the steward of the Duchess’s household. She falls in love with
him and they secretly wed, managing to keep this hidden from her brothers and
Bosola
Delio
Delio is Antonio’s friend and the only one besides Cariola who is initially trusted
with the secret of the Duchess’s marriage to Antonio.
Julia
Julia is the Cardinal’s mistress and Castruccio’s wife. She is also wooed by Delio
and later falls in love with Bosola. Bosola uses her as an unwitting tool to force a
confession for the Duchess's death from the Cardinal, after which the Cardinal
poisons her.
Apart from those characters, there are, Count Malateste, The
Children,Marquis of Pescara, Castruccio, Silvio, Roderigo, Grisolan, Old Lady,
Doctor, Two Pilgrims, Mad Astrologer, Mad Doctor, Mad Priest, and Mad
Lawyer.

Analysis of Bosola’s character -

Bosola plays a triple role in the play ‘The Duchess of Malfi’. He is a malcontent
mediator, a tool villain, and an avenger. He is also satirist. There is ample evidence
of his intelligence in the play. He met Cardinal and murdered on his instance.
Bosola is a complicated and fascinating character. He acts the role of both villain
and avenger, working first against and then for the duchess.
First, Bosola agrees to work as a spy and also murder the Duchess for Ferdinand
and the Cardinal, even though he knows they are evil and their court corrupt. He
realizes he has entered into a wicked bargain. Ferdinand offers him a respectable
job, something he covets very highly, as an ex-convict who spent seven years as a
galley slave because of the murder he committed earlier. As Bosola puts it: For the
good deed you have done me, I must do all the ill man can invent! Later, however,
the cynical Bosola grows to admire the Duchess for her genuine goodness. He sees
the kind works of her "white hand." He wishes he worked for her, but he has made
his bargain. He kills her, as is expected. However, when Ferdinand reneges on
paying Bosola, Bosola gets angry. He says,
I served your tyranny, and rather strove
To satisfy yourself than all the world;
And, though I loathed the evil, yet I loved
You that did counsel it, and rather sought
To appear a true servant than an honest man . . .
Killing the Duchess, Bosola says, was "much 'gainst mine own good nature." He
decides to avenge the Duchess by killing her brothers, though he is killed in return.
In a purely literal sense, Bosola's role is that of the hired assassin. More
fundamentally, he represents the repentant sinner by the end of the play; he
moves from performing cold-blooded acts of murder, simply for money, to
commentating on violence and evil. He does not turn good altogether and dies in
misery and confusion, but his move towards repentance throws into sharp relief
the greater villainy of the Cardinal and Ferdinand - particularly the former.
From the above discussion, we can say that Bosola is a complex character. He is
changed because he is deprived of material prosperity. Thus he is a Machiavellian
character with a difference.
So, in essence, if readers are to define a protagonist as the character who
experiences the most character development throughout the story, then Bosola
would surely be the main protagonist. Bosola grows as a character and develops a
unique identity, a process that makes the audience root for him. As a character,
this growth is obvious in that he goes from a sad individual who is convinced to
work as Ferdinand’s spy, to a man seeking vengeance and who ultimately dies with
deep reflections on mankind. This process of development’s turning point occurs
after the murder of the Duchess and the rise of his guilty conscience.
Furthermore, Bosola’s search of identity is explained by Frank Whigham who says,
in regards to Antonio as well as Bosola, “they share the a priori situation of men
whose identity is achieved, not ascribed, in a society where such identity has not
yet been accepted as fully substantial” . This is interesting to consider. The
Duchess, Ferdinand and the Cardinal’s status is fixed. In terms of achievement and
social climbing, there is nothing for the audience to root for. Bosola, in contrast,
does have the capability for social climbing. Although, as Whigham notes, society
at this time recognized ascribed identity overachieved or earned identity, Bosola
works very hard to make a name for himself. Whigham later notes that Bosola went
to the galleys for previously working for the Cardinal as a hitman, despite Delio’s
description of Bosola’s intelligence and scholarly capabilities in Act III, Scene III
of the play (179). Bosola’s melancholy comes from his disappointment, he thought
he found a successful identity for himself, working for the Cardinal, but was struck
down. This is his second opportunity, working for Ferdinand as a spy, and perhaps
Webster intended for the reader to root for him in this venture. Though working
for a corrupt individual, Bosola is only trying to make a name for himself, which
positions him as a kind of underdog, perhaps evoking pity and support from the
audience.
Changing the way that one view Bosola in Webster’s play absolutely alters the
reading as a whole. By taking into consideration the many ways that Bosola is
emphasized in the text, readers can unlock a new meaning to the tragedy, seeing
developments of morality and identity as well as Christian and social commentary.
With some simple rearranging, Webster could have very easily created “The Guy
Who Did In the Duchess of Malfi and Then Felt Bad About It”, as the New York
Times described the play. By introducing complex characters and multidimensional
structures and plots, Webster has created pieces that are talked and debated
about centuries after their debut in the British theatre.
Final thoughts- Bosola has, throughout the play, tested every form of
advancement he can imagine—economic, social, and religious—and having been
systematically disappointed in each, he finally concludes, in a famous scene, that
men are "merely the stars' tennis balls" , tossed about without purpose or meaning.
Webster is famous for being unrelentingly bleak in his worldview (ever feel like
you're getting too happy? Go read The White Devil. Even though Bosola's murder
of the Duchess's brothers is a moment of triumph over a degenerate society,
Webster closes the play with Bosola dying of a mortal wound, saying "Oh, this
gloomy world! / In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, / Doth womanish and
fearful mankind live!" Ultimately, Bosola can't win because the problem isn't that
these two corrupt men are ruining their sister's life; the problem is that the world
is a "deep pit of darkness." And how.
The society in which all the characters are trapped is inherently problematic, and
Bosola's murder of the brothers is, at best, an escape from personal moral
annihilation, not a true victory over the vices of the court. Ultimately, the question
isn't "is Bosola a good guy," but "what can well accomplish in Webster's world?"
Not much, it would seem..

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