No; he might count me a wanton.
Not lay a scruple of offence on you;
For if I see and steal a diamond,
The fault is not i’ the stone, but in me the thief
That purloins it. I am sudden with you:
We what are great women of pleasure use to cut off
These uncertain wishes and unquiet longings
And in an instant join the sweet delight
And the pretty excuse together.
(V, ii, 187-93)
Exp. In Act V, Scene II of the play, Bosola says to Julia that if the Cardinal found him making love to her secretly like this, he would take him to be a villain. But Julia tells him that he would not be blamed at all. On the other hand, she would be blamed. Just as there is nothing wrong with a diamond or a pearl when it is stolen but the fault is of the person who steals it, similarly, it is Julia, who is stealing the heart or love of Bosola, or rather it is she who is tempting him, and therefore she is to be blamed and not Bosola. She adds that she belongs to that class of professional women, who seek pleasure and as such, she does not hesitate, like other women, to satisfy her bodily desires at once, without any hesitation or false modesty. Women like her do not stand on false modesty or make any excuses for their hasty actions. At once, without any delay, they proceed towards the enjoyment of those pleasures of the body which are their chief goal in life.
Physicians that apply horseleeches to any
rank swelling use to cut off their tails, that the blood
may run through them the faster: let me have no train
when I go to shed blood, lest it make me have a greater
when I ride go to gallows.
(V, ii, 316-20)
Exp. In Act V, Scene II of the play, the Cardinal asks Bosola to murder Antonio and take as many attendants as he likes to help him in the task. But Bosola says that the will not take the help of even a single person. Doctors when they apply horse leeches to some ulcer or boil cut off the tails of those leeches so that the blood which they suck may flow put at the other end, and so they may suck all the faster. He, too, will not like to have a tail of attendants or helpers so that he may not shed more blood than is absolutely necessary. He would not like to go to the gallows to be hanged with a number of murders on his head, and a long train of spectators waiting to see him hanged.
I must look to my footing:
I such slippery ice-pavements men had need
To be frost-naif’d well, they may break their necks else;
The precedent’s here afore me. How this man
Bears up in bloodd! seems fearless! Why, ‘t is well;
Security some men call the suburbs of hell,
Only a dead wall between.
(V, ii, 333-39)
Exp. In Act V. Scene II of the play, the Cardinal kills Julia by poison, and then Bosola soliloquises on the great risk the runs in the palace of the Cardinal. Every inch of his path is now full of risks. The palace is like an ice-pavement. Unless they walks upon it with nailed shoes or with a nailed stick, i.e. unless the takes sufficient precaution, he is very likely to stumble and break his neck or even to get killed. Sense of security makes one blind to dangers and thus makes one risk his life. That is why, security is regarded by some people as the very borderland of hell. It is like a wall which prevents a man from seeing the dangers that lie ahead. Security is a kind of false belief in one’s safety; it makes one unguarded because one cannot see the danger ahead.
Smother thy pity, thou art dead else.-Antonio!
The man I would have sav’d ‘bove mine won life!
We are merely the stars’ tennis-balls, struck and banded
Which way please them.-O good Antonio,
I’ll whisper one thing in thy dying ear
Shall make thy heart break quickly!
(V, iv, 56-62)
Exp. In Act V, Scene IV of the play, Bosola kills Antonio by mistake. Antonio’s servant expresses his pity for him, and Bosola threatening tells him not to express his pity, otherwise he would also be killed. But the very next moment he recognizes Antonio and is full of grief at his mistake. He was the man whom he wanted to save at all costs, even at the cost of his own life. But unfortunately he killed him. In such matters man has no freewill. Human beings are like the tennis balls with which the stars, Fate or destiny, chose to play. Men and women are merely the tennis balls of the stars that preside over the destiny of mortals in the world. Bosola then, out of pity, tells Antonio of the murder of the Duchess and their children so that his heart may break and he may die at once, and thus may be saved from pain.
In all our quest of greatness,
Like wanton boys whose pastime is their care,
We follow after bubbles blown in the air.
Pleasure of life, what is ‘t? only the good hours
Of an ague; merely a preparative to rest,
To endure vexation.
(V, iv, 69-75)
Exp. These lines have been taken from Act V, Scene IV of the play. Bosola has fatally stabbed Antonio who is now on the point of death. He tells Bosola that he does not like his wounds to be healed or bandaged for he has no love for life. He now realizes the futility of worldly power and pelf. The worldly things are like soap bubbles that break in a minute. Pleasures of life are meaningless. The entire life of man is like a long disease. Hours of pleasure are merely the short time of rest during a long sickness. Life is a shivering fit of fever alternated by short intervals of rest. Pleasures of life are intervals, a sort of break for the preparation of more suffering.
These lines reflect the pessimism of the age of Webster.
Slain by my hand unwittingly.
Pray, and be sudden: when thou kill’d’st thy sister,
Thou took ‘st from Justice her most equal balance,
And left her naught but her sword.
(V, v, 45-47)
Exp. In Act V, Scene V of the play, Bosola shows the Cardinal the body of Antonio, and says that he was killed by him unknowingly. He then asks the cardinal to say his prayers and be quick about it, for his end is near. When he got the Duchess and her children murdered, he did not leave anything for himself in the scales or weighing balance of justice. Now only the sword of justice. which is a weapon of punishment, has been left for him. Now that sword of justice will fall upon his head and justice would be done to the departed and wronged souls of the Duchess and her children. Justice is represented in mythology as holding a pair of scales in one hand and a sword in the other. It holds the scales to do justice, and the sword to punish the guilty.
Now you’re brave fellows. Caesar’s fortune was harder
than Pompey’s; Caesar died in the arms of prosperity,
Pompey at the feet of disgrace. You both died in the
field. The pain’s nothing; pain many times is taken
away with the apprehension of greater, as the tooth-
ache with the sight of a barber that comes to pull it
out: there’s philosophy for you.
(V, v, 83-70)
Exp. In Act V, Scene V, of the play, Duke Ferdinand wounds the Cardinal. and also gives Bosola his death wound. He then compares the Cardinal and Bosola to Caesar and Pompey respectively. Caesar’s luck was more hard because he was assassinated when he was the emperor of Rome while Pompey ran away from Rome to Egypt where he was killed. Caesar died when he was most prosperous but Pompey died when he was most disgraced. That was the difference in the fortunes of Caesar and Pompey and there is a similar difference in the fortunes of the Cardinal and Bosola.
He further adds that the pain, which is due to the fear of death, is much more than the pain of actual death, just as the pain of tooth-ache is lesser than the pain which the person suffering from tooth-aches feels on seeing the barber approaching him, because he fancies the pain of the extraction of the tooth to be much greater than it really is. It is a fact that pain which is imagined is much greater than actual pain. Often the pain we suffer from is merely psychological. They need not be afraid of death, for death is not so painful as it is supposed to be.
Also Read :
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- Prologue to Canterbury Tales – (Short Ques & Ans)
I do account this world but a dog-kennel:
I will vault credit and affect high pleasures
Beyond death.
(V, v, 75-77)
Exp. In Act V, Scene V of the play Ferdinand has been fatally wounded by Bosola. At the moment of death, he says that in his eyes, the world is nothing but a dwelling place for dogs, unfit for the abode of human beings. because there is so much of treachery, meanness, duplicity, hypocrisy, selfishness as would be a disgrace even for the animals. Ferdinand further says that even after his death he will enjoy pleasures of the other would such as are beyond human conception. He would, disregard probability, overleap rational expectation and aspire to high pleasures in the other world. The probability is that he will suffer in the next world for his black deeds, but he will falsify this probability, and hope for high joys in the next world despite his many sins.
We are only like dead walls or valuated graves,
That, ruin’d, yield no echo. Fare you well.
It may be pain, but no harm, to me to die
In so good a quarrel. O, this gloomy world!
In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,
Doth womanish and fearful mankind lie!
Let worthy minds ne’er stagger in distrust
To suffer death or shame for what is just:
Mine is another voyage.
(V, v, 105-137)
Exp. The passage. taken from the end of Act V, Scene V of the play, constituents the last or dying speech of Bosola. He points out that human beings are like old shattered walls or valuated graves that cannot give any echo in their ruined state. The world is a gloomy place full of gloom and despair. Here under the dark shadow of gloom and death, human beings pass their miserable lives, timidly and fearfully like women. Death is the ultimate end of life. Let noble persons accept death in a just cause. Let death be accepted ungrudgingly as the reward of human life for just actions. Death opens gates to the next world, to which Bosola is going; He is not afraid of death, for by killing the cardinal he has avenged the death of the Duchess. He is dying in a good cause, and so he welcomes death. He hopes to get his reward in the other world.
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