When I was reading this play, I find myself wondering, is this play promoting the purging of corruption, with the mentioning of the French King ridding his palace of corruption, or emphasizing that the corruption is what makes a government.

This play kind of reminds me of Machiavell’s “The Prince,” rules in how to govern because it has so much to comment about the relationship between a “prince” the one that holds power/money and the lower class. Bosola repeatedly comment on the state of things run by the brothers, like “plum trees rich and overladen with fruit but crows, magpies, and caterpillars feed on them.”(1.1.49-52) The duke and Cardinal are like crows and magpies, they are eating away at the vitality of the things they are to govern. While the people below them in “The court are but like beds in hospital where this man’s head lies at that man’s foot, and so lower and lower.” (1.1.66-68) It almost seems like, he is literally being subjected to lower himself to servitude at the duke’s foot. These corruptions act to further the wealth of the prince, but not to the point where the citizens will revolt.

Another thing that I noticed is that some concepts are meant to mean the opposite. Justice is really injustice, in Bosola’s description of society an unjust place where people with power dictates what is justice. This might be because the corrupt sense of justice seems to be what gets things done quicker than by the books. Another concept that’s inverted is that when a person becomes eminent, they are cursed instead of praised. This is really bizarre in the beginning but it makes sense later, in the case of Antonio. When the Duchess asked people their opinion of Antonio, there were no praises. So these opposite meanings seem to have a foreshadowing effect within the play.