John Webster's Characterization of Bosola as a Machiavellian Prototype Anonymous 12th Grade

The Duchess of Malfi is a Jacobean revenge tragedy play written by the English dramatist John Webster in 1612–1613. The play begins as a love story, when the Duchess marries beneath her class, and ends as a nightmarish tragedy as her two brothers undertake their revenge, destroying themselves in the process. Jacobean drama continued the trend of stage violence and horror set by Elizabethan tragedy. The complexity of some of the play's characters, particularly Bosola and the Duchess, and Webster's poetic language, have led many critics to consider The Duchess of Malfi among the greatest tragedies of English renaissance drama.

The Duchess of Malfi is known for its critical discourse mainly for Bosola who embodies the typical Jacobean aspect of human behaviour, a motivation strongly influenced by evil. However, the character of Bosola cannot be considered merely on a surface level and has to be understood in the intricacies under which the character functions. The ambiguity is made clear in the very beginning of the play itself where Bosola starkly critiques the corruption of the royal court and the depraved power structure that exists in the court- however, on the other hand he accepts the empty title as the “provisor of the...