ENGLISH AMBASSADOR
There is that in his look
Would wither all that’s green, deform all music
Into a witch’s whisper.
FERDINAND
What’s that? What’s that?
Shall I expound whore to you? sure I shall;
I’ll give their perfect character. They are first
Sweetmeats that rot the eater, in man’s nostrils
Poison’d perfumes. They are cozening alchemy;
Shipwrecks in calmest weather. What are whores?
Cold Russian winters, that appear so barren
As if that nature had forgot the spring.
They are the true material fire of hell.
What are whores?
They are those flattering bells have all one tune
At weddings, and at funerals. They are worse,
Worse than dead bodies which are begg’d at gallows
And wrought upon by surgeons to teach man
Wherein he is imperfect. What’s a whore?
She’s like the gilt counterfeited coin
Which, whosoever first stamps it, brings in trouble
All that receive it.
DUCHESS
This character ’scapes me.
FERDINAND
But you shall not escape
What you have made yourself. There is no court
Can punish what you are. Had I a sister?
I have a limb corrupted to an ulcer.
And I will cut it off.
Exit Ferdinand.
ENGLISH AMBASSADOR
Some horrid thing
Glared through his human windows as he spoke.
I wish I had not seen it.
FRENCH AMBASSADOR
’Tis said he loved her
Dearer than life. The question of her shame
Wrecks his proud soul. There are your true pangs of death,
The pangs of life that struggle with great spirits.
ENGLISH AMBASSADOR
Hush! The Duchess is about to speak.
DUCHESS
I have no writ to rend
Such incantations save they mean
Like you, grave reasoners, to undo me,
Whose hates are plain. Brother, you had a hope
Had I continued widow to have gained
An infinite mass of treasure by my death.
CARDINAL
See, my lords,
She scandals our proceedings.
DUCHESS
I have houses,
Jewels, and a poor remnant of crusadoes.
Would these make you charitable?
CARDINAL
Hark, with what insolence she offers bribes
To hush the voice of justice. Get this down
In evidence against her plea of innocence.
DUCHESS
Humbly thus,
Thus low, to the most worthy and respected
Lieger ambassadors, my modesty
And womanhood I tender, but withal
So entangled in a curs’d accusation
That my defence must personate masculine virtue.
CARDINAL
This is the tedious prolixity of guilt.
Have done.
DUCHESS
We’ll part good friends: I scorn to hold my life
At yours or any man’s entreaty, sir.
CARDINAL
Speak no more for our opinions are concluded
Hear then, Giovanna, your public fault
Join’d to th’ condition of the present time
Takes from you all the fruits of noble pity
Such a corrupted trial have you made
Both of your life and beauty, and been styl’d
No less an ominous fate than blazing stars
To princes. Attend your sentence.
The Cardinal and the clerical judges rise, so do the rest at a hint of the Cardinal. The Duchess, Antonio and the children are placed before him.
CARDINAL
Herefore, through the authority of the Almighty God, Father of
Heaven and His Son, Our Saviour, I, Cardinal of Ancona,
denounce, proclaim and declare Giovanna Teresa, Duchess of
Malfi, and her paramour, Antonio Bologna, together with their
children, anathema by the advice and assistance of our Holy
Father, the pope, and all the bishops, abbots, priests, and other
prelates and ministers of our Holy Church, for her open lechery
and sins of the flesh.
FRENCH AMBASSADOR
He hath excommunicated her!
CARDINAL
I curse her head and the hairs of her head, her eyes, her mouth,
her nose, her tongue, her teeth, her neck, her shoulders, her
breast, her heart, her arms, her legs, her back, her stomach, her
womb, and every part of her body from the top of her head to
the soles of her feet.
DUCHESS
A rape! A rape! Yes, you have ravished justice
Forc’d her to do your pleasure.
CARDINAL
I dissever and part thee from the church of God and likewise
from contracts and oaths of law. I forbid all Christian men to
have any company with thee and all her earthly goods I seize in
the name of the Holy Church. And as their candles go from our
sight so may their souls go from the visage of God and their
good fame from the world.
Away with her!
Cardinal steps down from the bench.
To an official:
Take her right hand and raise it!
Cardinal takes something off the Duchess’ finger.
Exeunt Cardinal and the clerical judges.
ENGLISH AMBASSADOR
What was it with such violence he took
Off from her finger?
SPANISH AMBASSADOR
’Twas her wedding ring.
Act two, scene 6
As described on p. 426 above, this scene underwent several changes in the course of the adaptation; the most striking variant is the number of times Bosola enters. In Webster (III.iv) and in later versions (Random House ed., pp. 388-9), Bosola appears first with an equivocal letter inviting Antonio to return to Malfi and then later, disguised, comes to arrest the Duchess. Our text omits the first entrance and moves much of Webster’s material to Act three, scene 2.
Act two, scene 7
This scene, largely original with the adaptors, went through many versions; a later one (Random House ed., pp. 393-6) develops the Cardinal’s mercenary goals even further and provides more evidence of Ferdinand’s incestuous jealousy.
Act three, scene 1
Webster’s version of this scene takes place between Antonio and Delio; many different arrangements of the scene appear in archival texts and others. Our text adds to the 1943 version Antonio’s evocative lines on ‘the plains of Brittany’ and retains Bosola’s un-Websterian entrance (later cut, see Random House ed., pp. 396-7 and 444-6). BBA 1174/107 has another version of the scene’s conclusion with the note, ‘Brecht’s rough translation’ opposite Antonio’s last speech:
ANTONIO
O fearful echo that accuses my life
Of its long weakness; that has not made its path
By definite steps but sought its shelter
In the strong wills of others. Now
I am caught between their fighting stars, a clerk
Unpractised in the sword.
SON
Why can’t we go with mother?
ANTONIO
We are too small to live with greatness, son.
SON
Shall we not see her more?
ECHO
Not see her more.
SON
Why does the echo say so, father?
ANTONIO
It tells us, son, how bitter is the fate
Of him who is not allowed to fight. The whole day
(Which now will be ended soon) I have been thinking
Of another day, when I went ahawking with my father
Upon the plains of Brittany, and saw our falcon spying a hare
And coursing it till the poor beast
—Since flying is much easier than running—
Was wearied unto death and, despairing utterly,
Turned upon its back and with its stony feet
Hardened by a whole life of timid flight
Hammered to pieces our falcon’s chest. Lucky hare!
O ’tis impossible to fly your fate.
ECHO
O, fly your fate.
Act three, scene 2
This scene concludes the action implied by Bosola’s appearance at the close of the preceding scene; in Webster’s original, Antonio survives to participate in the final series of murders and counter-murders, and Ferdinand sends the Duchess wax-work imitations of their bodies. BBA 1174 has variants of the concluding exchange between Bosola and Ferdinand, showing the way in which Brecht reduced Bosola’s express motives and justifications for his actions. Three versions will illustrate Brecht’s working methods:
FERDINAND
Damn her! that body of hers,
While that my blood ran pure in’t, was more worth
Than that which thou wouldst comfort, called a soul.
Curse upon her!
I will no longer study in the book
Of another’s heart
BOSOLA
Must I see her again?
FERDINAND
Your work is not yet ended.
To cure such maladies the surgeon’s knife
Must cut until it pricks the patient’s life.
Exeunt.
(1174/75)
BOSOLA
Right. Give me that scholarship
You promised me and I’ll be off to Bologna
And never see her again.
FERDINAND
Your work is not yet ended.
I found her sin sits deeper than I thought.
Vile appetite has turned to lecherous grief.
Such mourning is unbearable.
To cure such maladies the surgeon’s knife
Must cut until it pricks the patient’s life.
Exeunt.
(1174/80)
BOSOLA
Right. Give me my scholarship and I’ll go
To complete my education, never see her again.
FERDINAND
Your work is not yet ended.
I found her sin sits deeper than I thought.
Vile appetite has turned to lecherous grief
With pallidness hardly hidden, impudend [sic] tears.
Such mourning is imbearable [sic], Nacked [sic] she stands
The widow of a sweaty stableboy.
To cure such maladies the surgeon’s knife
Must cut until it pricks the patient’s life.
(1174/79)
Between this scene and the next one, the 1946 text copyrighted by Auden and Brecht inserts an ‘interlude’ by Bosola. The text comes from Webster’s play (IV.ii.178—95) and is spoken by Bosola in an attempt to bring the Duchess ‘By degrees to mortification.’ It is cited here from 1174/85:
INTERLUDE
BOSOLA
Hark, now everything is still
The screech-owl and the whistler shrill
Call upon our dame aloud,
And bid her quickly don her shroud!
Much you had of land and rent;
Your length in clay’s now competent:
A long war disturbed your mind;
Here your perfect peace is signed:
Of what is’t fools make such vain keeping?
Sin their conception, their birth weeping,
Their life a general mist of error,
Their death a hideous storm of terror.
Strew your hair with powders sweet,
Don clean linen, bathe your feet,
And (the foul fiend more to check)
A crucifix let bless your neck.
’Tis now full tide ‘tween night and day;
End your groan, and come away.
This text also appears on 1174/109 and 123.
Act three, scene 3
Our text is the first to introduce this scene and Ferdinand’s ‘lycanthropy’; the 1943 text has nothing like it, though Webster (V.ii) provides most of the lines.
Act three, scene 4
As Hays’s comment on the collaboration suggests, the conclusion of the play provided difficulties, partly because of the original’s complexity, partly because of certain production requirements made by Elisabeth Bergner and Paul Czinner. In Webster’s play and in later versions of the adaptation, Bosola executes Cariola and the Duchess’ surviving children (Random House ed., pp. 41112), while no mention of such an action occurs here. The manner of Ferdinand’s death also undergoes some change. Here, he dies poisoned by the book which killed the Duchess, presumably a comment on his love for her; in a later version (Random House ed., pp. 413-14), Bosola stabs his employer after demanding some recompense ‘due … [his] service.’
Act three, scene 5
Malatesta, a character from Webster’s original, disappears as a speaking part in subsequent versions of the adaptation, and the concluding conversation takes place between Delio and an anonymous Captain (Random House ed., pp. 414-16).
[Epilogue]
Later texts add an epilogue, partly based on lines from Webster’s The Devil’s Law-Case (Random House ed., pp. 416-17).
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This edition first published in Great Britain in 1994 by Methuen Drama
by arrangement with Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
Reissued with a new cover 1998
This collection first published in Great Britain in hardback
1976, in paperback 1977, by Eyre Methuen Ltd
Translation copyright for all the plays and texts by Brecht © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben 1976
Introduction and editorial notes © 1976 by Eyre Methuen Ltd
Copyright in the original plays as follows:
The Visions of Simone Machard: Original work entitled Die Geschichte der Simone Machard by
Bertolt Brecht and Lion Feuchtwanger © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag 1957
Schweyk in the Second World War © 1959 by Marta Feuchtwanger and Helene Brecht under the
title Simone Schweyk in the Second World War: Original work entitled Schweyk im Zweiten Weltkrieg
© Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag 1957
The Caucasian Chalk Circle: Original work entitled Der kaukaissche Kreidekreis
© Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag 1955
The Duchess of Malfi: Adaptation in English of the original play by John Webster by Bertolt
Brecht and Hoffman Reynolds Hays
© 1943 by Bertolt Brecht and Hoffman Reynolds Hays
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eISBN-13: 978-1-4081-6210-1