ABSTRACT

A difficulty in appreciating the actions and motives of Webster's characters may arise from that imperfect historical knowledge which we are told is the characteristic of Lamb's criticism. Webster wrote his play not for the purpose of dealing 'in horror for horror's sake', nor 'just to make the flesh creep', but with a desire to give vital embodiment to the manners and morals of the Italian Renaissance, as they appeared to the imagination of Englishmen. As Vernon Lee ably points out, it was the very strangeness and horror of Italian life, as compared with the dull decorum of English households, that constituted the attraction of Italian tragedy for Elizabethan playgoers. They were familiar with the saying that 'nothing in Italy was cheaper than human life'. Their own Ascham had written that he found in Italy, during a nine days' stay in one small city, more liberty to sin 'than ever he heard tell of in our noble citie of London in nine yeare'. No wonder, then, if the metaphysical judgement of the Puritan urged Elizabethan dramatists to show, by the action of their dramas, that there existed a higher power than the mere strength of those fiercer passions which occurred in Italy, the land of passion in the sixteenth century. Looked at from this point of view, much in the play that is unintelligible can be explained. Burckhardt, in his 'Renaissance of Italy', tells us that a warm imagination kept ever alive

the memory of injuries, real or supposed; more especially in a country that allowed each man to take the law into his own hands. Not only a husband, but even a brother, in order to satisfy the family honour, would take upon himself the act of vengeance; nor would a father scruple to kill his own daughter, if the dignity of his house had been compromised by an unworthy marriage. Besides, an Italian's revenge was never a half-and-half affair. The Duchess's children are 'massacred' because the whole name and race of Antonio must be rooted out. Cariola, too, must die, because she helped to bring about the hated marriage. It is this desire for truth to Italian life that causes Webster to introduce Julia, and the pre-eminently Italian dialogue between Julia and Delio. Without Julia we do not get our typical Cardinal of the Italian Renaissance, a man experienced in simony, poisoning, and lust. There is even a higher motive for her appearance in the play. She is designed as a set-off to the Duchess; as an instance of unholy love in contrast to the chaste love of the Duchess. Bosola is a masterly study of the Italian 'familiar', who is at the same time a humanist. He is refined, subtle, indifferent, cynical. A criminal in action but not in constitution. A man forced by his position to know all the inward resources of his own nature, passing or permanent, and conscious of the possibility of a very brief period of power and influence. It is necessary, moreover, in judging of this play to take into consideration the restrictions put upon the dramatist by the novelist. Webster's audience was too familiar with the various incidents of the story to allow of the dramatist ignoring them. In one instance only does Webster depart from a statement of Bandello, and that is in making the Cardinal the younger and not the elder brother — an unaccountable oversight on the part of Bandello — for Italian Cardinals were invariably the younger sons of noble houses.