The Duchess of Malfi Family Quotes

Antonio's welcoming Delio back to Malfi and is getting him caught up on the Duchess's baby-making activities. This is her brothers' worst nightmare: the Duchess is, apparently, really good at getting pregnant and birthing healthy children, upon whom she confers her noble "pedigree." The rub, though, is that Antonio's the father, and the pedigree of the brothers is getting passed down to what they'd consider mutts (or "cubs," as Ferdinand later calls them). How rude.

This is that really sweet scene in the Duchess's bedroom where Antonio and the Duchess are teasing each other. This is neat for two main reasons: first, because you simply don't often get these detailed close-ups of domestic relationships in Renaissance plays. Enjoy it while you can.

Second, because it gives us insight into the particular kind of marriage the Duchess and Antonio have: they're joking about how, if a man wants sexual access to his wife (which was, conventionally, a given), he'd better come crawling on his knees and ask real nice. The Duchess seems to have beef with "custom"—she frequently insists that her decision to remarry, for instance, is totally within custom, even citing the church for authority. At other times, she makes it clear that she thinks custom is stupid, and that the world should work a different way.

Like a boss, we think she means. While this may not look like a family quote at first glance, look at the context: Ferdinand has discovered that she's been making her own new family against the wishes of her aristocratic family (him and the Cardinal). At the moment where he's threatening her as her male relative, she asserts her political position. This this is actually kind of reminiscent of the moment when she tells Bosola, right before her death, "I am Duchess of Malfi still" (4.2.132). You go girl.