The Duchess of Malfi

INTRODUCTION
The Author
John Webster was born in 1578 or 1579. He was the eldest son of a maker
of coaches and wagons. The family home and business was in Cow Lane,
Smithfield, a noisy, smelly, crowded district of London which included the
cattle market and Newgate prison. During this period the coachbuilding
trade boomed: the family business continued to make utilitarian carts but
expanded to satisfy the new demand for fashionable coaches; it also hired
out transport, and may have provided transport for funerals and city
pageants. With prosperity came respectability. Webster's father styled
himself 'gentleman' and became a member of the Company of Merchant
Taylors, and Webster very probably, therefore, went to the Merchant
Taylors' School (though there is no documentary evidence). His younger
brother Edward earned the honour of becoming a member of the Merchant
Taylors by working in the family business, whereas the playwright himself
did not join at the normal age but in his late thirties, in 1615, using his
father's connections to buy his membership. This was about the time that
his father died.
Edward took on the expanding business. It is possible that John may

have continued to be involved in the family firm, at any rate his
background in trade was not something that he was allowed to forget - in
1617 he was mocked as 'Crabbed Websterio, / The playwright, cart-wright'.
Whatever his motives for becoming a member of the company of Merchant
Taylors, it did lead to a literary commission, to write the Lord Mayor's
pageant in 1624. As late as 1632 a satirist connects Webster to his family
roots, holding that Webster's brother refused to lend a coach for a funeral
because he 'swore thay all weare hired to conuey / the Malfi Dutches sadly
on her way.
After leaving school Webster probably entered the New Inn and then
Middle Temple (one of the Inns of Court) in 1598. At that time, attending
the Inns of Court did not necessarily mean that one had a legal career in
mind - a young gentleman might acquire a more general education and
finish' there (Marston, Overbury and Ford, writers whom Webster knew,
had been students at the Middle Temple), Throughout Webster's career an
interest in the law continued to be important, and this is circumstantial
evidence for his having been a student there; but his future was to be in
another booming London business the theatre.
In the record for 1602-3 of Henslowe, the theatre manager/

entrepreneur, Webster's name appears as one of the hack playwrights
writing in collaboration. The records are incomplete and two of the plays
referred to are lost, but they were probably written fast to satisfy a strong
demand for new material. They are Caesar's Fall lost) by Munday, Drayton,
Webster, Middleton, Dekker: Christmas Comes but Once a Year (lost) by
Heywood, Webster Chettle, Dekker; and Lady Jane (probably the basis for
a play which does survive and was published in 1607 as Sir Thomas Wyatt)
by Chettle, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Smith. These plays were for
companies of adult actors at amphitheatre playhouses. In 1604 Webster
wrote significant additions to John Marston's play The Malcontent
(originally written for the boys' company of Blackfriars) when it was
acquired by Shakespeare's company, the King's Men, to be acted at the
Globe. In the same year Webster collaborated with Dekker on a play,
Westward Ho, for the fashionable and more expensive boys' company at
Paul's, an indoor theatre. This was successful enough to provoke Jonson,
Chapman and Marston to write in response Eastward Ho (160S) for
Blackfriars and for Dekker and Webster to write a follow up, Northward
Ho, for Paul's. Their two plays were published in 1607. Webster married in
1606, and his first child was born two months after the wedding - a fact
which might be interesting in relation to the Duchess' difficulties in keeping
her pregnancy secret. But there is a gap, and no new writing is known of
between 1605 and 1612, when the most important period of his work as a
playwright begins with the performance of The White Devil by Queen
Anne's Men at the Red Bull in 1612. Its first reception was disappointing;
nevertheless he was working on a new play, The Duchess of Malfi, in
1612, when Prince Henry died, and Webster broke off to write the non-
dramatic elegy A Monumental Column, dedicated to the King's favourite,
Robert Carr.
The Duchess of Malfi must have been first performed before the end
of 1614 because the actor William Ostler, who played Antonio, died on 16
December 1614, The play was an immediate success, and has continued to
be so to the present day. In 1615 Webster wrote additions to the sixth
edition of Overbury's prose Characters. There is speculation that there may
be a lost play, Guise, in the years before the last of Webster's major works,
the play.
The Devil's The Duchess of Malfi and The Devil's Law Case were
published 1623. Thereafter Webster continued to write plays, but only in
collaboration, and then a series of plays with old colleagues. Webster's
name appears alone on the title page. Webster had a success with the
strikingly lavish and extravagant pageant he undertook for the Merchant
Taylors in 1624, Monuments of Honour, celebrating the election of their
member John Gore, as Lord Mayor. Exactly where and when Webster
diedis not known, but it was probably in the 1630s.
The Play
From Page to Stage
The Duchess and Antonio were in fact real historical figures. She
was born Giovanna d'Aragona about 1478, married aged twelve to Alfonso
Piccolomini, Duke of Malfi from 1493 until his death in 1498. Widowed,
she was left with a daughter and a son, and ruled Malfi as regent with some
success. She had a sister and two brothers; the eldest, Lodovico, had a
promising career as a soldier before entering the Church and becoming a
cardinal in 1494. This did not prevent him fighting in two campaigns. He
continued to be a cardinal and died peacefully at Rome.
Antonio Bologna was brought up at Naples in the royal court, served

Federico the last Aragonian King of Naples and followed him into exile.
Returning on Federico's death, Antonio accepted the post of major-domo in
the household of the Duchess. In 1510 he left her service and went to
Ancona. That November the Duchess supposedly on a pilgrimage to
Loretto, joined him, they being secretly married and with two children. A
third was born in Ancona here they lived openly as man and wife. Her
brother Lodovico caused trouble for them with the authorities and they
moved to Siena, but they had to move again, and en route to Venice were
intercepted; Antonio and his eldest son escaped and reached Milan but the
Duchess, the other children and her waiting woman were arrested, taken to
a castle under armed guard, and never seen again. In October 1513 Antonio
was stabbed to death in the street. Alfonso, the Duchess' son by her first
marriage, ruled as Duke of Malfi until he died in 1559.
The story of the Duchess of Malfi and Antonio is in the twentysixth

novella in Part One of the Italian Bandello's Novelle (4 volumes, 1554-73).
An adaptation of Bandello in French was written by François de Belleforest
as Histoires Tragiques (1565). An English version, faithful to Belleforest,
was made by William Painter, The second tome of the palace of pleasure
(1567). This is Webster’s principal source for The Duchess of Malfi.
Bandello probably knew the real-life Antonio personally – and the

outline of events up to the arrest of the Duchess in Bandello as in Webster.
Then, Bandello relates, the Duchess was escorted one of the castles in her
Duchy where she and her children and waiting woman were later strangled
(no word of torture); meanwhile Antonio in Milan was unsuccessfully
trying to find a protector, failing to prevent his property in Naples from
being confiscated, and still hoping for a reconciliation with the brothers of
the Duchess. The brothers hired an assassin, but this man, a Neapolitan,
warned Antonio; the brothers then hired a second hit-man, Daniele da
Bozolo, a Lombard captain, who with three accomplices killed Antonio and
got clean away.
Belleforest's version is four times longer, adds dialogues and

soliloquies, considerably - but with little art - develops the characters and
with heavy moralism alters the point of view: he strongly disapproves of
the secret marriage between a person of royal blood and a commoner, and
censures its folly and wantonness. Antonio is more prudential, ambitious
and sentimental in motive than he is in Bandello. At the same time
Belleforest's Duchess, like his Antonio arouses pathos: she is permitted to
explain her own actions passionately and cogently at the point of death, and
she and Antonio are recognised as also possessing charm and merit.
Belleforest calls the story a tragedy and firmly divides the narrative into
three Acts, the first ending with the marriage, the second with Antonio's
flight to Ancona, the last with Antonio's death. These features are important
to Webster.
Painter in his English version makes no significant alterations to

Belleforest, so that Webster's principal source presents a moralising and
censorious account of the widow:

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INTRODUCTION

Edward took on the expanding business. It is possible that John may

In the record for 1602-3 of Henslowe, the theatre manager/

From Page to Stage

Antonio Bologna was brought up at Naples in the royal court, served

The story of the Duchess of Malfi and Antonio is in the twentysixth

Bandello probably knew the real-life Antonio personally – and the

Belleforest's version is four times longer, adds dialogues and

Painter in his English version makes no significant alterations to

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