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short note of Daniele De Bosola from The Duchess of malfi

 

Daniel De Bosola





Malcontent, super-spy, social critic, avenger (no, sadly, not that kind). While Bosola's not high on our list of eligible bachelors (we're looking at you, Julia), he's definitely topping the one for interesting characters.

We may not have known what to make of this guy because it looks like he's all over the place—at one moment Bosola ruthlessly critiques the corruption of the royal court; in the next he pledges his services to the evil Ferdinand and spies on our heroine, the Duchess.

As if this isn't weird enough, at the very end of the play Bosola appears to totally change once again, claiming that he has been made to act "much 'gainst mine own good nature" (5.5.85), and avenges the Duchess and her family by murdering her older brothers.

It can look like Bosola's character just doesn't make sense, and that he's simply satisfying the plot-driven needs of Webster. But we think there's actually a lot more to Bosola, and his shifting morals and motivations are complex enough that critics have frequently suggested that this play could more fittingly be titled "The Tragedy of Bosola." Hmm. Now there's a thought.

Something very important to keep in mind when thinking about the Duchess of Malfi in general and Bosola in particular is the Renaissance social hierarchy. Remember, this play focuses on people who aren't settled into their proper social roles. The Duchess is a lone noblewoman who's trying to assert her will over that of her older brothers, and Antonio is a working man who's marrying into nobility—both big no-no's in Renaissance times.

Bosola, though, is in an even weirder situation: he's an ex-con loitering around the court, musing aloud from time to time about the perversity of the Cardinal and Ferdinand's depraved power structure. In short, he has no real place—Bosola's described as a "malcontent" and "the only court gall," but ultimately this is a guy who doesn't properly exist within the social system he's complaining about.

 

As much as he wants to be a part of the courtly social structure, Bosola also clearly resents his particular job as spy-cum-assassin. This tension ties back into our original problem with this character: how can a guy who constantly talks about how much he hates the lying, cheating older brothers then go lie and cheat for them?

Again, though, you have to keep in mind Bosola's position here. He is, now, an employee, and more specifically he's an "intelligencer," which means that his spying, deception, and even acts of murder aren't the products of his personality (i.e., a guy who does bad things because he hates kittens and unicorns) so much as they're the products of his employ. To Bosola, evil isn't what he is, it's what he does. He's got orders. He gets paid—well, sort of. That's the bottom line.

As time wears on, Bosola finds it harder and harder to distinguish between himself and his job as "a very quant invisible devil in flesh: / an intelligencer" (1.1.253-54).

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