The Duchess of Malfi Suffering Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Act.Scene.Line)

Quote #10

Oh, this gloomy world!

In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,

Doth womanish and fearful mankind live! (5.5.99-101)

These are Bosola's final words, spoken in his characteristically cheerful fashion. Bosola's idea that (a) the world sucks and (b) it sucks in really random, unpredictable ways is validated by his own death. He succeeds in killing the bad guys, but not only is he himself not rewarded for championing good (he himself is killed), he isn't really punished for it either. Bosola's death comes about more or less by accident in the final desperate, scrabbling murder scene, and the staging of it doesn't make it look like "The good guy gets smacked down by Fate," it just looks like he dies in the murderous, messy version of a fender-bender. The "deep pit of darkness" is so obscure that can't be any directing force, either on the part of man or heaven or Fate.

Quote #11

These wretched eminent things

Leave no more fame behind 'em than should one

Fall in a frost and leave his print in snow:

As soon as the sun shines, it ever melts,

Both form, and matter. (5.5.112-16)

Key question here: are you buying this? Go check our "What's Up With the Ending?" section for some more thoughts on this, but Delio's closing statement that all of the bad stuff that's been going down will just melt away and the sun will come out is kind of dubious. By which we mean, really, really super dubious.