ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the lost tragedy The Duchess of Fernandina, written by the Caroline dramatist Henry Glapthorne. Whatever was in this Caroline tragedy, its title appealed to John Webster's and invited an audience to measure it against that play. Even worse, soon after Francesco's accession Leonor was indirectly implicated in the Pucci conspiracy, an attempt to overthrow him, so that Francesco was, in the words of one ambassador's report, ready to wash his hands of his sister-in-law. In the Caroline era the subject-matter of Medici is inevitably given extra spice by presence on the English throne of Henrietta Maria, the daughter of Maria de Medici and the granddaughter of Duke Francesco. To sum up the argument offered here: Glapthorne's lost tragedy was, given its title, unavoidably in dialogue with Webster's tragedy The Duchess of Malfi. The obvious candidate to be the eponymous duchess is Leonor, daughter of the first Duke of Fernandina, strangled to death by her husband Pietro de Medici.
