Name: Amjad Mohamed Ali Banimattar

Registration No : 11822512
Supervised By: Dr. Bilal Hamamra

Disguise in The Duchess of Malfi

Abstract: This research paper attempts to study the theme of disguise in John Webster’s The
Duchess of Malfi. The play employs disguising the facts, masking real intentions and planning
fake fronts. Bosola is the most evident indicator of this. The disparity between what he says and
how he acts is so large, accessible by means of soliloquy and other means, can hardly understand
his motivations. He is a traitor, yet he is always concealing his motivations and true feelings. In
addition, he literally disguises himself as an old man in his fourth act. He is still disgusted with
the disguise, though. He is unable to recognise the position of a spy and points out that it
disguises evil. Rather, the Duchess must cover a good and simple affection to live clearly to see
how much the world has been badly corroded by her child. Her use of disguise demonstrates her
courage and energy to fight for the right thing on this earth.

Critics of John Webster's main plays often suggest that his writing is virtually free of the
moral feeling central to the development of a big tragedy. Goswami, for instance, says that the
theme of disguise provides "the framework for the realistic portrayal of the passions, thoughts
and responses of the characters" (Goswami, 2018). Critics also sometimes argue that the “public
he never disguised his sincerity in a cloak of simulated modesty” (Hamilton, 1901). But each of
these charges can be somewhat dismissed from a point of view which does not get the publicity
that it merits from Webster's chief villains' psychology. Speaking acutely, “contradictory
structural elements in The Duchess of Malfi generate a tension between its realist features –
psychological plausibility and narrative sequence – and the formality of its design” (Belsey,
1980) by moving distinction of the ways people want to avoid consciousness: the villagers of
Webster are continually attempting to shut out the moral obligation, to blame someone else for
their misconduct. This process of distinction also has a systemic role for the Duchess of Malfi,
combining aspects of ethics and personal significance in a way which makes the entire play a
major unifying factor. Through a passionate emphasis on the alleged guilt of his victims, he
smothers his own guilt.

Through rationalization, Webster encourages a habit of mind that smothers conscience

and thereby promotes evil in The Duchess of Malfi, presented on Bosola who “processes of
investigation, Webster brings the epistemological problems that surround patrilineality to the
forefront of his tragedy” (Dowd, 2009) He “speaks as the impersonal observer, decries the evil
and corruption of the world as outside himself, and separates himself from responsibility in this
evil, he is the satirist” (Luecke, 1964). In addition to the humorous role that Bosola plays, "One
of the many masks Bosola puts on in his role of "intelligencer" is that of the physician detecting
the signs of the transformation of the Duchess's body" (Kim, 2005). The comportment of the
other main characters of this play, except Ferdinand, is not influential in rationalization since he
“has resolved to torture her with all of the agonies which can be conceived by mortal man”
(Hamilton, 1901). It could be argued that his abuse of his sister could be an effort on
incestuously impart to her the shame he feels himself to desire. By assuming the spiritual role of
a strict magistrate, a righteous defender of virtue, he rationalises violence. Guilt haunts him in
the shape of a shadow he attempts to “throttle” (5.2.31) in vain giving us a vital image of a man
seeking to spiritualize his own obscurity.

The Duchess of Malfi attains critical significance to this motif of prevention of guilt;
eventually, it became the core of Bosola's spiritual fate. Bosola's principal role in this play is like
that of a villain trying to avoid the burden of moral obligation all the time. Nothing demonstrates
simply why Bosola is a combination of discontent and tools. He may be described as a villain
who is unsatisfied with his role in disguising and rationalizing villainy.

With an airy defeatism which has a tragic implications for himself and the Duchess,
Antonio ensures that Bosola knows the "inside" (2.1.1) and urges him to give up his melancholy
"out-of-fashion melancholy" (2.1.5). Antonio just considers it to be an assignment, but that's
more because for Bosola it is now a cunning cover up. His response to Antonio, "Shall I confess
myself to you? I look no higher than I can reach" (2.1.8-9) is a highly reminiscent of Ferdinand's
advice when he said "Keep your old garb of melancholy; 'twill express, You envy those that
stand above your reach" (1.1.317).
 In the scene with Antonio malcontent is intentionally and knowingly adopted; Bosola is
“like a politic dormouse” (1.1.320) who spies on the Duchess and tells Ferdinand back. But
perhaps because of its misconception, Bosola is able to hide his evil from him; in this sense it
can be regarded as a form of unconsciousness.

It may be felt that in voicing disgust of the world, Bosola is simply acting as a
mouthpiece for Webster's Jacobean disillusionment. But if Webster fully shared Bosola's attitude
he could hardly have created such convincingness the positive, life-affirmative character of the
Duchess. The contrast allows us to place Bosola’s attitude in a true perspective, enabling us to
regard it as an attitude adopted or lapsed into in order to rationalize villainy. The absolute
allegiance to Antonio from the Duchess, and the comparison, shows that we consider Bosola
critical of the old lady in the second act, to be the effort to rationalise his own trait as the spy. His
disapproval is clearly contrasted with his words to the old lady in the second act.

Bosola suffers a dilemma in the fourth act that he has a duty which the innocence of the
Duchess makes morally strange. He must seek to prevent spiritual and emotional interference in
the plight of the duchess in order to try the job. From the beginning, he has shown himself
reluctant to be involved, but still unable to tolerate involvement. His respect for the strength of
the Duchess does not preclude him from working together on Ferdinand's need to reduce her to
despair; but after the synthetic models have been seen to give way to desperation, its presence is
growing significantly and its puzzled reflex is magnificent by its dialogue 'Come, you must live'
yet tries to cheer her “O fie! Despair? Remember you are a Christian... O fie ... O fearful! ... Fie
lady! ... O, uncharitable!” (4.1.68). Although it may sound like a mockery to the Duchess by
treating her as a child, Bosola is adopting a humorous motive in such a situation for both his and
the Duchess’s sake and to prove that he is involved in it. Yet, “Bosola does change; many of his
reflections on life late in Act IV and through Act V take on a tragic cast” (Luecke, 1964). He
would have to defy Ferdinand, who “dares not see her” (4.1.35) as Hamilton points out that
Ferdinand “cannot look the Duchess again in the face, and consents to continue his part in the
dire tragedy only under cover of a disguise” (Hamilton, 1901), to protect the Duchess and spoil
his personal chances of progress. Furthermore, Hamamra talked about subversion of gender roles
and the binary opposites of speech and silence, he points out that “Ferdinand’s madness
involving lycanthropy is a sign of incestuous frustration and a strategy for concealing his
incestuous attraction to the Duchess”. (Hamamra, 2020) So, I think this is why Ferdinand don’t
want any more to see his sister in person but in disguise.

Bosola grieves the Duchess, but he does not dare, and so he humorously chooses her,
hoping that she can alleviate her sorrow while he cannot let herself be exposed. The disguise of
“tomb maker” and “common bellman”, which he adopts, further expresses this intention to not
reveal himself. Although Bosola disguises in several roles, "he seems to have revealed the
conflicting urges of his personality, a self in turmoil, revealing the unknowability of the void"
(Gosmawi, 2018).

The Duchess’s death becomes less important as her murder becomes lessened for she
believes that life becomes worthless. However, while the Duchess eventually accepts the death,
which is "the greatest trial of these competing classical and Christian values, serving in place of a
Senecan psychomachia to test the strength and character of her spirit" (Pandey, 2015) as she
believes that her brothers will give her the "best gift" (4.2.261). Her acceptance of death and
"meet it with grace also gains meaning in relation to the classical tradition" (Pandey, 2015). It is
important to keep in mind that she does so in a manner of Christian martyrdom, and not in a
desperate refusal to live in favour of the dirge of Bosola. Moreover, this line shows a "truly
tragic sense of life" (Luecke, 1964) and expresses the old age injustice. Her last thoughts are
with the world and her children: “Look thou giv'st my little boy, I some syrup for this cold”
(4.2.235). And Bosola's mood changes as he observes her brace for death. He now asks "doth not
death fright you?" (4.2.244) instead of making assumptions, his defensive rationalisation hangs
in the strong moral brilliance of the Duchess's case.

However, Bosola has not been converted right away, so he already has one more logical
defense against consciousness. It lies in the essence of Ferdinand's friendship. Bosola has
managed to rationalise villainy from the beginning of the play by dissolving it in the concept of
full surrender to Ferdinand. He is struggling to attribute his wrongdoing to Ferdinand at the first
meeting of the first act. In the context of a classical allusion, when the Duke offered him the
gold, he responded "What follows? Never rain'd such showers as these without thunderbolts in
the tail of them" (1.1.247).

His conscience may be seduced and he persuaded himself that it was a violation, he easily
believes he can't resist the gold nor the 'provisorship 'o'the'horse', allocating seduction for his
guilt and convincing himself that it "would have you curse yourself now, that your bounty,
Which makes men truly noble, e'er should make Me a villain" (1.1.308-309).

Work Cited

Belsey, C. (1980). Emblem and Antithesis in “The Duchess of Malfi.” Renaissance Drama, 11,
115–134. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41917181

Dowd, M. M. (2009). Delinquent Pedigrees: Revision, Lineage, and Spatial Rhetoric in The

Duchess of Malfi. English Literary Renaissance, 39(3), 499–526. doi:10.1111/j.1475-
6757.2009.01055.x

Goswami, D. P. (2018). A Society in Change: A Reading of The Duchess of Malfi. The Criterion:
An International Journal in English, 9(IV), 70–78.

Hamamra, B. (2020). “I pray sir, hear me: I am married”: Language and Sexual Politics in
Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. Anglia, 138(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2019-0056

Hamilton, C. M. (1901). The “Duchess of Malfi” Considered as a Tragedy-of-Blood. The Sewanee

Review, 9(4), 410–434. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27530439

Kim, H.-S. (2005). The Ocular Impulse and the Politics of Violence in The Duchess of Malfi,
123–144. http://anthony.sogang.ac.kr/mesak/mes131/HwaSeonKim.pd

Luecke, J. M. (1964). The Duchess of Malfi: Comic and Satiric Confusion in a Tragedy. Studies
in English Literature, 1500-1900, 4(2), 275–290. https://doi.org/10.2307/449627

Pandey, N.B. (2015). Medea’s Fractured Self on the Jacobean Stage: Webster’s Duchess of
Malfi as a Case Study in Renaissance Readership. International Journal of the Classical
Tradition, 22(3), 267–303. doi: 10.1007/s12138-015-0372-4