The Duchess of Malfi

Ferdinand is the Duchess’s twin and the Cardinal’s brother. He is one of the two main antagonists. Of the three siblings, he is the only one known by his first name rather than his title. He is characterized by his aggressive, “choleric” nature.

In Act I, he and the Cardinal try to dissuade the Duchess from remarrying. While they say they have her honor in mind, it is really about control: If the Duchess were to marry again, her wealth and assets would belong to her new husband rather than her brothers. Ferdinand also has an increasingly sexual interest in the Duchess. In Act I, he makes sexual comments toward her. These escalate to implied threats of sexual violence in later acts. When Ferdinand receives word of her secret marriage and children, he enters a rage. He expresses his desire to “toss her palace ‘bout her ears / Root up her goodly forests, blast her meads / And lay her general territory as waste” (II.5.18-20). These lines have a forceful rhythm and are driven by strong, active verbs like “toss,” “root up,” “blast,” and “lay waste.” These verbs also hint at the sexual violence Ferdinand intends; they all envision him assaulting the Duchess in various intimate ways. He then admits to visualizing her having sex: “[M]y imagination will carry me / To see her in the shameful act of sin […] with some strong-thighed bargeman” (II.5.40-42). He vividly imagines intimate details about both the Duchess and an imagined lover.

This irrational and quick-tempered personality is characteristic of someone with a choleric humor. Ferdinand becomes entwined with The Link Between Inner and Outer Maladies as his rage intensifies and then, after he orders the Duchess’s death, he is diagnosed with lycanthropy. His doctor says that Ferdinand was caught in a graveyard “with the leg of a man / Upon his shoulder; and he howled fearfully; / Said he was a wolf” (V.2.14-15). Ferdinand is not lucid throughout the majority of Act V. He does not recognize Bosola or his brother and contributes the wounds that kill them; Bosola deals him a death blow in turn. Only in the throes of death does Ferdinand recall and repent his murder of the Duchess. He cries, “My sister! O, my sister! There’s the cause on ‘t: / Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, / Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust” (V.5.71-73). He distills his actions into three causes: ambition, blood, and lust. Further, he recognizes his fault in the tragedy that has transpired, including his own death.

The Cardinal is Ferdinand and the Duchess’s brother and the second main antagonist. He is well known for his bribery and double-dealing, including letting Bosola take the fall for a murder he ordered. Along with Ferdinand, he does not want the Duchess to remarry. In addition to his greed for her wealth, the Cardinal thinks that a remarriage will leave their “royal blood of Aragon and Castille […] attainted” (II.5.21-22). He believes that their family’s noble blood makes them inherently better than people of different class and wealth.

Though he and Ferdinand work together toward the same end, they act as each other’s foil. Where Ferdinand is hot-tempered and aggressive, the Cardinal is cool and calculated. He scolds Ferdinand for his lashes of rage, which he thinks will ruin or expose their plans. He says, “There is not in nature / A thing that makes man so deformed, so beastly / as doth intemperate anger” (II.5.56-58)—in this way, his scolding foreshadows Ferdinand’s eventual lycanthropy.

Though the Cardinal approaches his goals in a more collected manner than Ferdinand, he is equally as murderous. He has an affair with a married woman, Julia, and then murders her when she learns too much information about his illegal dealings. In this way, his religious occupation is entirely for show, and he does not practice the tenets he claims to represent. However, after ordering the Duchess’s death and killing Julia, the Cardinal becomes increasingly preoccupied with what Hell will be like. He pours over scholarly accounts of Hell, wondering if the “material fire” will “burn all men alike” (V.5.2-3). In this way, he recognizes that he has sinned greatly enough to be condemned in the logic of the religion he claims to follow.

When he is dealt his death blows by Ferdinand and Bosola, his last words are: “I pray, let me / Be laid by, and never thought of” (V.5.89-90). He finally prays in his last moments, but he does not pray for salvation. The Catholic faith, which Italians at this time would have followed, has “indulgences”: prayers or payments rendered to the Church to reduce the punishment one faces for their sins after they have passed on. For an indulgence to take effect, that person must also spiritually repent of that sin. The Cardinal does not repent and does not ask that his courtiers remember him and pay indulgences in his name after his death. Rather, he asks that they never think of him again.

In Act I, Bosola is newly returned to court after being imprisoned for a murder the Cardinal ordered. He is disillusioned and characterized by his melancholy humor. Though he ends up working with Ferdinand, he dislikes the Cardinal for escaping punishment while Bosola took the fall. Ferdinand plants him in the Duchess’s house as her chief hostler so he can spy on her and report on her movements.

Bosola is increasingly torn in his alliance with Ferdinand. He never works with Ferdinand because he morally agrees with him, but for the money. As he spends more time with the Duchess, Bosola second-guesses his employment, though he does not ultimately divest from Ferdinand. After the Duchess is killed on Ferdinand’s order while he stood by, Bosola ponders what he would do differently if he had to do everything over again. He decides that “I would not change my peace of conscience / For all the wealth of Europe” (IV.2.339-40). The moral anguish of working for men like Ferdinand and the Cardinal is not worth the wealth it promises.

Ultimately, Bosola gets a chance to redeem himself before his death. After being employed by the Cardinal to kill Antonio, he decides instead to seek him out, “To put thee into safety from the reach / Of these cruel biters,” and even to “join with thee in a most just revenge” (V.3.339-41). In a cruel twist of fate characteristic of revenge tragedy, Bosola accidentally deals a mortal stab wound to Antonio, the man he wanted to save. He then deals mortal blows to both the Cardinal and Ferdinand. Bosola is ultimately not disappointed that he will die, but satisfied that he has avenged the Duchess, Antonio, Julia, and himself, who were all murdered because of the brothers’ plans.

Antonio is a key side character and protagonist. He begins the play as the Duchess’s steward. Though later in the play, his weakness in political maneuvering leads to his death, in Act I he is very perceptive about the character of the court and the people within it. He knows the weaknesses of Bosola, Ferdinand, and the Cardinal, and compares their conduct to the lack of corruption in the French court.

In Act I the Duchess proposes marriage to him, which he accepts after initial reservations based on his perceived unworthiness and her brothers’ anger. He is capable, honest, and humble. When he admits that he does not think he is worthy of the Duchess’s hand, she tells him, “If you will know where breathes a complete man […] turn your eyes / and progress through yourself” (I.1.435-37). Though he is lower class than she, he is not marrying the Duchess to climb the social ladder, but because he genuinely loves her. Early in Act I, after he has described the Duchess to Delio, Delio teases Antonio for speaking so admiringly of her: “Fie, Antonio! / You play the wire drawer of her commendations” (I.1.205-06), implying that he is waxing too poetic about her virtues.

Antonio has an uncomplicatedly good personality and is a supportive and loving husband to the Duchess, gladly carrying on a life with her in secret. He is usually submissive to her plans, and after her death, he does not have great success in avenging her—indeed, his attempts lead to his own death. He decides to “venture all [his] fortune” (V.1.62) in a midnight appeal to the Cardinal in the hopes that it will “draw the poison out of him” (V.2.71). Antonio is aware of the Cardinal’s corrupt nature and has no reason to believe his character would change. He persists in this plan even when an echo from the Duchess’s grave warns him against it. Antonio tells Delio that he must go to the Cardinal’s chambers because it is “impossible / To fly your fate” (V.4.34-35). The echo manipulates his words slightly and orders him, “O, fly your fate!” (V.4.35). Either naivety or desperation makes Antonio ignore the warning.

In his final moments after being accidentally stabbed by Bosola, Antonio learns of the deaths of the Duchess and his two youngest children. Like the Duchess, he is glad to die “in sadness,” believing he will be reunited with his family after death. Whether his final wishes are carried out is ambiguous. He orders Bosola to “let my son fly the court of princes” (V.5.72). In the end, though Delio declares that the court must move forward in truth and honesty, he still decides to set up Antonio and the Duchess’s son in “mothers right”—he will get the Duchess’s land, wealth, and title. As such, though the “court of princes” his son will experience is fundamentally different than the one Antonio experienced, he will still exist in that world.