The Duchess of Malfi

mad too? Servant

Pray, question him. I’ll leave you.

Exeunt Servant and Madmen. Bosola

I am come to make thy tomb.

Duchess

Ha! my tomb!
Thou speak’st as if I lay upon my deathbed,
Gasping for breath. Dost thou perceive me sick?

Bosala

Yes, and the more dangerously, since thy sickness is insensible.

Duchess

Thou art not mad, sure: dost know me?

Bosola

Yes.

Duchess

Who am I?

Bosola Thou art a box of wormseed, at best but a salvatory102 of green mummy.103 What’s this flesh? a little crudded104 milk, fantastical puff-paste. Our bodies are weaker than those paper-prisons boys use to keep flies in; more contemptible, since ours is to preserve earthworms. Didst thou ever see a lark in a cage? Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o’er our heads like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison. Duchess

Am not I thy duchess?

Bosola Thou art some great woman, sure, for riot begins to sit on thy forehead (clad in gray hairs) twenty years sooner than on a merry milkmaid’s. Thou sleepest worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up her lodging in a cat’s ear: a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out, as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow. Duchess

I am Duchess of Malfi still.

Bosola

That makes thy sleep so broken:
Glories, like glowworms, afar off shine bright,
But, look’d to near, have neither heat nor light.

Duchess Thou art very plain. Bosola My trade is to flatter the dead, not the living; I am a tomb-maker. Duchess And thou comest to make my tomb? Bosola Yes. Duchess Let me be a little merry:⁠—of what stuff wilt thou make it? Bosola Nay, resolve me first, of what fashion? Duchess Why, do we grow fantastical on our deathbed? Do we affect fashion in the grave? Bosola Most ambitiously. Princes’ images on their tombs do not lie, as they were wont, seeming to pray up to heaven; but with their hands under their cheeks, as if they died of the toothache. They are not carved with their eyes fix’d upon the stars, but as their minds were wholly bent upon the world, the selfsame way they seem to turn their faces. Duchess

Let me know fully therefore the effect
Of this thy dismal preparation,
This talk fit for a charnel.

Bosola

Now I shall:⁠—

Enter Executioners, with a coffin, cords, and a bell.

Here is a present from your princely brothers;
And may it arrive welcome, for it brings
Last benefit, last sorrow.

Duchess

Let me see it:
I have so much obedience in my blood,
I wish it in their veins to do them good.

Bosola

This is your last presence-chamber.

Cariola

O my sweet lady!

Duchess

Peace; it affrights not me.

Bosola

I am the common bellman
That usually is sent to condemn’d persons
The night before they suffer.

Duchess

Even now thou said’st
Thou wast a tomb-maker.

Bosola

’Twas to bring you
By degrees to mortification. Listen.

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 disturb’d your mind;
Here your perfect peace is sign’d.
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.

Cariola

Hence, villains, tyrants, murderers! Alas!
What will you do with my lady?⁠—Call for help!

Duchess

To whom? To our next neighbours? They are mad-folks.

Bosola

Remove that noise.

Duchess

Farewell, Cariola.
In my last will I have not much to give:
A many hungry guests have fed upon me;
Thine will be a poor reversion.

Cariola

I will die with her.

Duchess

I pray thee, look thou giv’st my little boy
Some syrup for his cold, and let the girl
Say her prayers ere she sleep.

Cariola is forced out by the Executioners.

Now what you please:
What death?

Bosola

Strangling; here are your executioners.

Duchess

I forgive them:
The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o’ th’ lungs,
Would do as much as they do.

Bosola

Doth not death fright you?

Duchess

Who would be afraid on’t,
Knowing to meet such excellent company
In th’ other world?

Bosola

Yet, methinks,
The manner of your death should much afflict you:
This cord should terrify you.

Duchess

Not a whit:
What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds? or to be smothered
With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls?
I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits; and ’tis found
They go on such strange geometrical hinges,
You may open them both ways: any way, for heaven-sake,
So I were out of your whispering. Tell my brothers
That I perceive death, now I am well awake,
Best gift is they can give or I can take.
I would fain put off my last woman’s-fault,
I’d not be tedious to you.

First Executioner

We are ready.

Duchess

Dispose my breath how please you; but my body
Bestow upon my women, will you?

First Executioner

Yes.

Duchess

Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength
Must pull down heaven upon me:⁠—
Yet stay; heaven-gates are not so highly arch’d
As princes’ palaces; they that enter there
Must go upon their knees. Kneels.⁠—Come, violent death,
Serve for mandragora to make me sleep!⁠—
Go tell my brothers, when I am laid out,
They then may feed in quiet.

They strangle her. Bosola

Where’s the waiting-woman?
Fetch her: some other strangle the children.

Enter Cariola.

Look you, there sleeps your mistress.

Cariola

O, you are damn’d
Perpetually for this! My turn is next;
Is’t not so ordered?

Bosola

Yes, and I am glad
You are so well prepar’d for’t.