Act 4, Scene 1

Question 1

Bosola- “Her silence, methinks, expresseth more than if she spake”

Answer 1

Strength in silence, not passivity.
No fear of death, rather a powerful ownership of what’s to come.

Question 2

Duchess “why dost thou wrap thy poisoned pills, In gold and sugar?”

Answer 2

Metaphor- Doesn’t need the fake reassurance.

Question 3

Bosola- “he comes i’th’night:”

Answer 3

Performative cowardice and fickleness of Ferdinand, tense and mysterious.
AO4: Stella comforted after Stanley’s abuse.

Question 4

Ferdinand- “You were too much i’th’light”

Answer 4

Blaming.
Shut herself away as a widow

Question 5

Duchess after being shown the “artificial figures”

Answer 5

metatheatrical props
enormity of love for her family, displays the heteronormative/domestic values of the era.

Question 6

Duchess- “I account this world a tedious theatre, For I do play a part in’t ‘gainst my will’

Answer 6

Metatheatrical, medieval theatre.
Depiction of her suffering

Question 7

Ferdinand- ‘mad folk’

Answer 7

‘Madness is a spectacle’ the treatment of instability by Webster.
Williams has a more sensitive approach to the presentation of mental illness.