5 - Sleep, conscience and fame in The Duchess of Malfi

Summary

[S]lumb'ring is a common worldly wile.

In the last chapter, we saw that Cleopatra's commemoration of Antony is inseparable from the construction of a specific conception of heroic masculinity. John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi similarly concerns itself with retrospective representation. The final lines of the play, which are usually taken as having the Duchess as their subject, assert that “Integrity of life is fame's best friend, / Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end.” The word “integrity” refers to “The condition of having no part or element taken away or wanting; undivided or unbroken state” (OED 1); fame is awarded to those whose deaths reveal the undivided nature of their lives. From the perspective of the ending, then, the Duchess is understood as being both self-identical and fame-worthy. However, throughout the early portions of the play a radically different view is proffered. Both the Duchess herself and her brothers describe her in terms of immoderate sleep, which we have seen is both a threat to the attainment of fame and is conceptually linked with lethargy and forgetfulness; as John Willis puts it, “Sleep offendeth Memory.” In The Duchess of Malfi such associations are operative, and the Duchess can be understood as having forgotten herself. Indeed, the representation of the Duchess draws upon all three of the types of self-forgetting that we have encountered in previous chapters. However, forgetting is subordinated to sleep when it comes to Webster 's depiction of the Duchess as desiring subject.