John Webster's Satire through Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi

Abstract

Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi is a typical man who tries and struggles to change his own fate. It is very significant that Webster dramatizes him as a person who wastes his genuine talent and an idealist who suppresses his finer nature to accommodate himself to the roles of a mercenary, a villain, a spy, and a murderer. This paper is to find Webster's hidden purpose, expressed by Bosola as a satirist. Bosola is a scholar who graduated from university or a person who is included in the category of intellectuals. However, he does not live a happy life. He cannot get such treatment as he hopes in the society which he belongs to and cannot get a chance to show his knowledge and talents. In other words, he is a frustrated intellectual and he cannot help being steeped in vice as a means of living. Although Bosola's mode of life is chosen by himself, it is affected more severely by the world which he lives in. So he can see the world with accurate standards of judgement for good and evil. However, he would not judge good and evil plainly, but he express the world and his situation with suitable metaphors or poignant satires. It is Bosola's ability as a satirist that is the appropriate device to express Webster's dreams and hopes for the society in which the individuals could be recognized according to their abilities. With the viewpoint of an intellectual who are completely steeped in vice for living, Webster emphasizes the absurdity of the world, disappointment in human being, and the helplessness of a man before fate. But Webster does not stop here, delivers the true responsibility and duty of a intellectual by showing the end of Bosola fallen as a means of vice, and states paradoxically the need of a society which an intellectual can give full play to his ability and get the reward without falling in vice. And these are considered as Webster's hidden purposes of writing of The Duchess of Malf.