THE DUCHESS OF MALFI
Basically, the Brecht/Auden adaptation is a streamlined version, ironing out the plot, unknotting the gnarly Jacobean dialogue, and adding a prologue (lifted from John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore) that explicitly reveals Duke Ferdinand’s lust for his sister, the Duchess of Malfi. The central plot is more or less unchanged. The duke gets jealous and kills the duchess’s second husband, Antonio. Then the duke kills his brother, the cardinal, for branding their sister a whore. His blood lust yet unslaked (pardon the pun), the duke has the duchess executed, and is, in turn, murdered by the executioner. If you’re familiar with Webster’s original, you can see that the plot is jacked around somewhat, but, in the end, the body count is pretty much the same. The major innovation here is the simplification of Webster’s complicated and confusing plot, so the play is now more accessible. The drawback, however, is that the formerly complex characters have become rather shallow.
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Jamie Eldredge gives far and away the best performance as Bosola, the intelligencer, which is a Jacobean term for spy. Eldredge plays Bosola as a flat-out low-life slimeball, a villain for all seasons. Eldredge is sharp, generally consistent, and delectably low, yet his performance suffers from one major flaw. It’s a mystery why Bosola continues to serve the duke when he has a golden opportunity to take the duchess’s jewels and run. Later, Bosola confesses “though I loath’d the evil, yet I lov’d him that did counsel it.” And that’s the problem–you never see Bosola’s love or admiration for the duke.
