The Duchess of Malfi Society and Class Quotes

Antonio's telling Bosola that, now that Bosola's provisor of the horse, he should stop acting all humble and melancholy, but Bosola insists that he doesn't want to get all "puffed up with preferment" (2.1.86). The Italian courts are written by Webster as kind of the opposite of the American Dream: social ambition's a big no-no; you're supposed to be happy with your lot in life, and reaching higher than your station is regarded as dangerous and subversive.

Plant grafting was a popular metaphor for the mixing (or, to some, pollution) of the social classes. The Duchess is onboard with grafting, both in the case of tasty fruit, and in the case of intermarriage—she thinks that, by grafting herself to Antonio in marriage, they have bettered nature (which would keep commoner and aristocrat apart). Bosola, though, says that grafting is perverse, in the same way that some people today argue that genetic engineering is wrong because it melds together things that don't occur naturally. For discussion on another really cool (and very famous) grafting moment in Renaissance lit, go check out Perdita and Polixene's conversation in Quotes 1 and 2 in The Winter's Tale Theme of Art and Culture.

Antonio, angry at Bosola, calls him as "saucy slave." While you should definitely use this the next time you get in an argument with a professor (we dare you) the main reason this is interesting is that, in calling Bosola a "slave," Antonio's using a class-based sneer. Antonio's feelings toward his weird, new-fangled role as husband-cum-employee are tough to figure out, and it's interesting to note that, although he consistently claims that he's not into the social-climbing game, he here uses the same kind of insult that an aristocrat would use against a commoner.