When Hands Make Spectacles of Themselves
Spectacles featured a play, are extraordinarily elaborate displays used to prolong the intent of actions in a play and to distract the reader. With this definition it could be said that John Webster stopped at nothing to make his play, The Duchess of Malfi, a splendid sequence of spectacles. Each spectacle is more dramatic then the next and as a result the characters become lost in the drama. They often misunderstand the situations that they are in or fail to logically consider said situations. Thus, their laps in judgment often leaves them unhappy, or dead. While not the first scene of spectacle in the play, Act 4 manages to incorporate three distinctly different spectacles into the first scene.
Act 4 is presented as the climax point of the play. This act sets up all of the actions that will dictate the rest of the play. It also hosts one of the most blatant display of spectacle in play. The first scene opens with Ferdinand and Bosola. Automatically the reader can tell that something important is going to happen. When Ferdinand asks Bosola “how doth our sister duchess bear herself?”, (ln.1) Bosola gives an answer that is completely contradictory to his character. He describes the Duchess as “nobly” to which he adds generous adjectives like “ majesty,” (6) “loveliness” (7) and “perfect”. (8) The reader begins to understand that Bosola has begun to change. He has changed his purpose from furthering his own position. He is slowly awakening and developing both ethics and conscience. This awakening has allowed him to see qualities in others that he had previously lacked. He is now capable of telling the truth, whether or not it is beneficial to him. He continues to feel slight guilt in his actions when he thinks about the Duchess “restraint”. (11) There is a play on words with “restraint”, it refers to the fact that the Duchess is literally tied up and also to the handling of her emotions. Bosola seems to admire the...