Malfi 455 - 494 Antonio asks about the looming off-stage family…. Is the Duchess too quickly dismissive? Disingenuous? Naïve? She uses the image of discord (rather than harmony) “without” as in outside the embrace (“circumference”) of her arms as something to be pitied rather than feared. Her brothers have warned her but because they are family perhaps she imagines that they will forgive her… Is there a modern context here? In which cultures do families kill or maim daughters who are thought to disobey a certain code?

– each planet was encased in a transparent sphere which as it turned Webster now uses the medieval/classical image of the music of the spheres – each planet was encased in a transparent sphere which as it turned made harmonious music. The verb “quickening” – will also suggest a child stirring in the womb…

When the Duchess talks of the Church forcing – it is very telling… Church and State in every European country, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, were indivisible. Atheism was forbidden and if you did not attend church you could be fined or worse. They are, in other words, taking the law into their own hands….. Their own vows and words are replacing the state’s infrastructure – this would not happen generally until the 20th century and even then the state has a form of words that must be used to make a union a real marriage. The Church must “echo” this.. Will it? The Duchess then suggests she has become the goddess Fortune – blind (neutral). Antonio must take his Fortune by the hand and therefore prosper. Again, she seems disingenuous by suggesting they lay a naked sword between them in the bed. If royal princes/princesses were married by proxy (i.e. were not present) a sword was laid in the bed on the so –called wedding night. Usually this applied to very young matches who had to grow up before leaving home to travel to their spouse’s country.

Webster is foreshadowing here and using the metaphor of the “tempest”. Ironically, of course, tempests sweep all before them and destroy rather than build or create. The Duchess, to Antonio, seems determined to see the best in the situation, suggesting a strength of character. He feels that he should have done the reassuring and the wooing perhaps? Cariola enters frightening him – why has she emerged from behind the curtain? In Renaissance Italy would a marriage require more than vows? Why?

Cariola’s last comment suggests that we must pity the Duchess for her rash behaviour wherein madness lies…. The parade of lunatics later will certainly re-echo this as will Ferdinand’s eventual Behaviour.