Philip Massinger,
The Duke of Milan

I.i. Milan. An outer room in the castle. Graccho, clearly intoxicated, enters with Julio and Giovanni. He tells them it is a state holiday and a good patriot should be drunk. The cause for celebration is twofold:

1. the recent alliance between Sforza and the King of France;
2. the birthday of the Duchess.

I.ii. Another room in the castle. Confirming what we have just learned, we now meet Isabella and Mariana, the mother and sister of Sforza. They both complain that they are asked to wait upon the Duchess. Francisco reaffirms that the Duke and Duchess are very much in love, and that to disobey the Duke would be dangerous: "you know him of a nature/ not to be played with.' Both mother and daughter reluctantly agree to join in the birthday festivities.

I.iii. A state room in the castle. Three gentlemen setting up the banquet table, excitedly comment that a masque is to be performed for the Duchess. The Duke and Duchess enter with an entourage of lords (Tiberio, Stephano), relations (Isabella, Marina), and attendants. The Duke places his wife at the center of the feast and praises her beauty, and has others do the same. The lords fain accordingly. In a humorous exchange, Isabella complains that he compliments her so much one would assume his wife were his mistress; the Duke counters, 'A mistress, mother! she is more to me.' Both husband and wife swear eternal love and fidelity to each other.

Just as the eunuchs are to begin singing, a letter comes in informing the Duke that battle between the French and the Spanish is about to begin. The Duke is understandably anxious. 'By this [letter], then, I am nothing,/ Or my estate secure.' The Duchess, seeing the Duke is depressed, distracts him by reminding him that he promised the day would be hers. He promptly throws away the letter. 'All my days, and years, shall be employed/To do thee honour.' Before the masque can start, another courier arrives. This letter is clear: the Duke's French forces have been defeated. The Duke, who says that he is suddenly taken sick, orders everyone out except his Duchess. The Duchess asks him why he trembles so. Sforza tells her that it is not for his sake. He could be taken prisoner, his lands and titles stripped from him, his mother murdered, and his sister ravished, and he'd be fine. But if anything should happen to his wife, he'd be disconsolate. If faced with that circumstance, she promises to kill herself.

Perscara, the Duke's friend, is announced. The Duchess is dismissed and the Duke receives his friend. Perscara councils the Duke to surrender immediately to the Spanish Emperor, and hope for mercy. The Duke agrees. He then makes Perscara promise that should the Spanish Emperor execute him, Perscara will kill the Duchess. Perscara is horrified, but agrees.

II.i. An open space before the castle. The courtier comment upon the Duke's sudden and solitary removal from the court. The note that the Duchess has taken to wearing black and that Francisco, who is married to Mariana, the Duke's sister, is acting on the Duke's behalf. They comment on his sudden rise to power. Francisco's sister is also mentioned for the first time. The courtier believes that Francisco's rise had something to do with a possible love affair the Duke had with Francisco's sister, Eugenie.

Graccho enters with fiddlers, and the courtiers remind him that the Duchess has ordered silence. Graccho says that he serves the princess, Mariana, Francisco's wife. The courtiers accuse him of sauciness, and he replies that his stock is rising: 'we might change places too.'

Isabella, and Mariana enter, and Graccho has a private conference with the latter. She warns them not to insult her servant. The ladies have come to vex the Duchess with their mirth, a revenge for making them wait upon her at her birthday. The Duchess, dressed in black, enters briefly onto her balcony (the upper stage) to accuse them of rudeness, ill manners and bad taste. She further tells Isabella that her husband no longer needs his mother and sister to rule Milan. They, in turn, accuse her of spending too much on perfume. More insults are exchanged, in which the Duchess makes fun of the princess's height, calling her a dwarf. She exits the balcony and re enters below, ready to physically combat the Duke's sister.

Before they can fight, Francisco enters with some lords, who separate them. Although he is married to Mariana, he is forced to arrest both the Duke's mother and sister for disturbing the peace. The Duchess asks for leniency, but Isabella and Mariana would rather go to jail than give the Duchess the satisfaction of saving them from it.

Francisco's wife and mother-in-law are led off, leaving the Duchess and Francisco. After some small talk, Francisco reveals that he's in love with the Duchess, and isn't afraid of risking death for her to know it. He knows that she's virtuous and in love with the Duke, but now that the Duke has fallen from favor, he wants to know if he may live in hope. She scorns him. He then shows her a letter in which he is ordered to kill her. She faints, but once revived, still hates him and promises to punish him. Francisco, left alone on stage, sees that he will have to act quickly if he is to save himself.

III.i. The Imperial Camp, before Pavia. The Spanish officers complain that much of their victory is useless; either the spoils of war go to puffy-shirted aristocrats who never do any of the fighting, or the land and its spoils are returned in treaties. They then go on to discuss Sforza. They all agree the Duke of Milan cannot expect mercy from the Emperor.

The Emperor and Perscara enter with attendants. The emperor is surprised by Sforza' surrender, and decides to hear his case. The soldiers complain that doubtless the Duke will sway the Emperor, when what he should do is allow his soldiers to ransack Milan for profit.

Perscara leads the Duke in, strongly guarded. Rather than flatter, the Duke proclaims himself the Emperor's enemy and demands immediate death. The soldiers are surprised, and begin to take his side. The Duke then says that he was loyal to France and will be loyal to the new head of France. But if Spain, who is that new head, likes it not, then Spain can take his head for his loyalty. The Emperor is so touched by the Duke's virtue and bravery, he immediately reinstates him as Duke of Milan and drops all charges of treason against him. The Duke swears that he will fight for Charles. He then tells Perscara that he will now return to his loving and constant wife.

III.ii. Milan. A room in the castle. An officer, having just finished whipping Graccho, tells him it was nothing personal. He then goes on to relate some of his more recent cases: the whippings of a secretary, a waiting woman, a cuckolder, and cheerfully tells him that 'If you thrive not/ After that soft correction, come again.'

Julio and Giovanni come in and comment on Graccho, who now looks castigated. They decide to be merry with him.

Francisco enters, and tries to bribe his way in to seeing the Duchess. She agrees. Graccho, seeing this, decides to report his whipping and Francisco's behavior to his wife, the princess Mariana.

III.iii. Another room in the castle. The Duchess and Francisco are in mid conversation, the latter begging and pleading that he is repentant. He says that if she doesn't forgive him, he will kill himself, but before he'll do so, he wants to make a clear confession to her. He tells her again that the Duke was planning on her death, and quotes from his conversation in which he [Francisco] was ordered to wait for news of the Duke's death and then was to proceed in killing the Duchess. The Duchess forgives him. She agrees to keep both his protestations of love and his confession to murder secret. She further hints that she will be revenged upon her husband for his thinking so little of her fidelity. Francisco exits, confident that he can now manipulate the situation to his best interests.

Tiberio and Stephano enter with news of the Duke's return. The Duke himself then enters with his sister, mother, Perscara, Graccho and attendants.

Mariana is in private conference with Graccho, and promises to look into his accusations. The Duke is surprised his wife doesn't rush to greet him. She replies that her blood is more temperate than he suspects. Graccho sees this as proof that the Duchess is indeed having an affair with Francisco; the Duke, enraged by her cold affection ('she does salute me/ As if I were her grandfather!') storms out in a passion, swearing never to think of her again.

IV.i. Another room in the castle. Graccho and Francisco are in conference. Francisco is having trouble understanding why Graccho, whom Francisco has just had whipped, is so interested in helping him. Graccho tells him he can see which way Fortune is smiling and is willing to forego personal revenge for personal emolument. Francisco is outraged, and threatens to have him whipped everyday if he ever reveals his secret love of the Duchess. Graccho regrets that he isn't more skilled in manipulation.

IV.ii. Another room in the castle. The Duchess, Tiberio, Stephano and a gentlewoman enter. The Duchess is enraged that the Duke has barred her from his sight. Tiberio and Stephano try to placate her by saying that the Duke is sorry, and is frazzled by recent events. The Duchess decides that now that the Duke wants to see him, she doesn't want to see him. Stephano says that if he were the Duke, he'd be wearing yellow breeches. Before they leave they spy Francisco coming into the room, and promise to report his behavior to the Duke.

Francisco then tells the Duchess that the Duke suspects they are having an affair. The Duchess is outraged that her husband would suspect him, and again indicates she will teach him a lesson. Francisco again leaves confident that the Duke and Duchess will destroy each other.

IV.iii. Anther room in the castle. The Duke, Perscara and three Gentlemen enter. Perscara, now playing a role we associate with the Duchess, cajoles the Duke into forgetting his troubles. The Duke tells them to be happy if they must, he will be sad as long as his beautiful wife is estranged from him. Stephano and Tiberio enter and tell him that the woman he thinks is a saint might well be a devil. The Duke is in disbelief. Graccho, Isabella, and Mariana then enter, stating the same charge. Again the Duke is outraged. Turning to his guards, he orders the arrest of his own mother: 'Sforza. Take her head off./ She hath blasphemed, and by our law must die./ Isab. Blasphemed! for calling of a whore, a whore?' He refuses to believe them. Francisco then enters, and the Duke is overly polite with him. He asks everyone to leave except Francisco. Francisco then tells the Duke he wants to be executed. He can't stand being the cause of so much pain. The Duke beseeches him to explain. Your wife, Francisco tells him, is in love with me. This seems to confirm what his mother, sister, and lords have charged.

He orders Stephano and Tiberio to arrest the Duchess immediately. Francisco then tells the Duke that if he wants proof, 'say only/ That I am dead, and the observe how far/She'll be transported.' The Duchess is led in. On hearing that Francisco is dead, the Duchess retorts, 'thou hast killed then/ A man I do profess I loved; a man/For whom a thousand queens might well be rivals.' The Duke stabs her. Proclaiming that he was innocent, the Duke then calls for Francisco. Sensing that she has been manipulated, the Duchess says that it was he, not she, who was the sexual aggressor, but the Duke is having none of it. Before the Duchess can be arrested, however, she on a sudden, dies. The King is broken hearted.

V.i. Francisco's house. Francisco and his sister discuss recent developments. Francisco wants to know if she is still vengeful against the Duke. Yes, although she never hated the Duchess, she never forgave the Duke for leaving her. Now that the Duchess is dead, she hopes that she can insinuate her way back into his heart so that she can destroy him.

Graccho enters with bad news. The Duke now knows that his Duchess was innocent and that it was Francisco who orchestrated her death. He is a wanted man. Francisco expected the secret to get out, and then reveals that rather than give up or kill himself, he has, just this minute, been plotting the Duke's death. Graccho proposes he return to court in disguise. Francisco agrees, and then orders Graccho be arrested, 'I would not have ten thousand ducets tempt you,/ to play the traitor.' He and his sister then set out for the court.

V.ii. Milan, a room in the castle. Perscara, Tiberio and Stephano discuss the Duke's recent behavior. He has blamed his sister and his mother for his rash behavior, and promises the doctor that if he can restore her, he will give up his power and live a private man. The Duke, his mother and sister enter with servants and doctors. He orders them to be careful with the Duchess. One doctor humours him by saying that she's only sleeping; the second doctor openly questions Sforza's sanity.

Francisco and Eugenie enter disguised as two Jewish doctors. They say they can revive the Duchess, provided everyone leaves the room. The Duke has the room cleared. Alone with the corpse, Francisco begins to apply makeup to the Duchess' checks, lips and hands to give color and a sense of vitality to her lifeless form. The Duke re enters, wanting to know if she's awake yet. Graccho, having escaped from Francisco's prison, enters and identifies the two doctors as charlatans. Caught, Francisco reveals that he has done what he has done for his sister's honour. Not to be outdone, the sister, still in her disguise as a Jewish doctor, reveals that she has poisoned the Duke's cup. The two are taken away to be tortured, and the Duke dies slowly from the poison. Perscara ends the play sermonizing that "There's no trust/In a foundation that is built on lust.'

Francisco, Sforza's favorite, in love with the Duchess, and married to the Duke's sister

Tibero, Lord

Stephano, Lord

Graccho, a fool and servant to Mariana, he will also serve Francisco

Julio and Giovanni, Courtiers

Charles the Emperor of Spain

Perscara, a friend of Sforza

Hernando, Medina, Alphonso, Captains of the Emperor

Marcella, Duchess and wife to Sforza

Isabella, mother of Sforza, hates the Duchess

Marina, wife of Francisco, and sister of Sforza, hates the Duchess

Eugenie, sister of Francisco

Three Gents, Fiddlers, An Officer, Two Doctors, Two Courtiers, A Gentlewoman, Guards, Servants, Attendants

The plot is derived partly from Guiccardini (Books 15 and 19), partly from the story of Miriamne, in Josephus, History of the Jews, Book 15, Chapter 4. The play itself simply takes place during an unspecified war between Italy and France.

III.ii. The verbal torture of Graccho may be an attempt to mirror the verbal castigation the Duchess endured in II.i.

This play spans both the political and domestic. As such, it falls within both typical Elizabethan and Jacobean Revenge plays (i.e. Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet) and domestic tragedies such as Heywood's Woman Killed With Kindness.

The need for jealous husbands to kill their wives is a common motif in Shakespeare: Othello, Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, as well as his contemporaries: Ford's Tis Pity She's a Whore, and Massinger's own Roman Actor are further examples.

I.i. The opening scene is reminiscent of the carnival atmosphere of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

I.iii. The Duke's reference to his mother 'tossed on the pikes' and his sister 'ravished; and myself bound fast/In chains' recalls both Henry's warning to the French at Calais, and Tamburlaine's treatment of his eastern potentates. See Shakespeare's Henry V, and Marlowe's Tamberlaine.

I.iii. The Duchess's affirmation of love and fidelity is reminiscent of the Player Queen's in Hamlet, the lines which Gertrude undermines with her commentary, 'the lady doth protest too much.' If the line is a purposeful allusion, clearly we are supposed to question the actual worth of the Duchess' oaths.

II.i. The courtiers seem unaware of the recent war, and the Duke's decision to surrender to the Spanish. The result is that, shorn from issues of war, the scene reads very much like Shakespeare's Measure for Measure: both have absent Dukes, servants suddenly raised to offices of power, and two women more interested in the afterlife than the pleasures of passion. Francisco's wife, the princess Mariana, is also the name of Angelo's espoused. The echo may be an allusion to Massinger's dramatic model for this scene, but the idea that Francisco pimped his own sister is more in keeping with the sexual activities of Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy.

II.i. The later part of this scene, in which there is a revel in front of a person in mourning, recalls, of course, Hamlet, whose black apparel is also in stark contrast to the revels staged in his father's court. However, the scene more particularly echoes Webster's Duchess of Malfi , in which madmen sing and perform before the tormented Duchess. The references to the Princess' height recalls the "little and low" cat-fight between Hermia and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Continuing with its borrowing from Measure for Measure, Francisco's sudden and unforeseen declaration mirrors that of Angelo's before Isabella. There is an echo, too, of Richard's declaration before Lady Anne (Richard III), but unlike that scene, the Duchess does not give any hope to the declarent. Francisco's offer of his body to the Duchess as a means of taking revenge upon the Duke, recalls Jachimo's offer to Imogen in Shakespeare's Cymbeline. The Duchess' revulsion of Francisco, and her descriptions of his ugliness, recalls Beatrice's initial revulsion of De Flores in Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling.

III.i. The soldier's complaints echo Hotspur's in Henry IV, part 1, wherein he relates how he refused to yield his prisoners to a perfumed courtier.

IV.ii. The Duchess' behavior echoes that of Shakespeare's Cleopatra, who purposefully acts contrarian as a way of exciting Antony. Stephano's reference to yellow breeches, the livery of jealousy, recalls Malvolio in Twelfth Night, who wears yellow cross garters. Perhaps more interestingly, the Duchess seems to feel she is in some sort of Merry Wives of Windsor play, wherein the chaste wife will only appear to be loose as a means of teaching her husband to be more trusting.

V.i. Disguise is a common motif for out-of-favor courtiers and lords: Vindice in The Revenger's Tragedy; Kent in King Lear are but two examples.

V.ii. The Duke's plea for a doctor to restore his wife recalls Macbeth's similar entreaty; though the latter's case, at least when Macbeth consulted the physician, was more hopeful than the Duchess'. Sforza's belief that he sees some signs of life in his dead wife recalls Lear's belief that Cordelia may yet revive. The use of Jewish doctors is both interesting and disturbing, but clearly the reference must in some way feed into the stereotypical Jew already well-known to Jacobean theatergoers through such plays as Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. The promise of further tortures for the guilty is a common motif: Iago is taken off to be tortured at the close of Othello; even the dead are promised further torture at the conclusion of Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. The ending of the play, with its multiple deaths by poison, recalls the end of Hamlet, in which the hero, who along with Claudius and Laertes, succumbs to a poisoned cup.