Brecht eventually excised Webster’s subplot, which involves the Cardinal’s mistress, Julia. On this point, too, he seems to have wavered: the 1943 copyrighted text omits her; some relevant sections in this version append a conversation between the Cardinal and Julia to Act two, scene 4; the Barbara Brecht script and BBA 1174 make no mention of her. At one crucial point Brecht did, however, salvage an episode from the subplot: Webster’s Cardinal murders Julia by demanding that she confirm an oath by kissing a book whose cover has been poisoned (V.ii). Brecht employs this device as Ferdinand’s weapon against the Duchess (3, 4). While Webster’s Pescara (a reasonably ‘good’ nobleman who survives the debacle) and Malatesta (the foolish second husband proposed for the Duchess) both eventually disappear from the adaptation, Delio is given a larger role than in Webster’s play. Delio’s final restoration of order and especially the epilogue which subsequently joined the text make Brecht’s conclusion rather more optimistic than Webster’s.
2. NOTES ON SPECIFIC SCENES
The following notes on individual scenes have two chief purposes: to indicate significant differences between the text printed here and the reconstruction of the ‘final’ and most ‘Brechtian’ version printed in Bertolt Brecht: Collected Plays, Vol. 7 (New York: Random House, 1974; cited here as ‘Random House ed.’ followed by the appropriate page number or numbers); to offer versions of speeches and scenes never incorporated into a complete text, but which Brecht thought promising enough to develop quite fully. In this second regard, BBA 1177 is extremely suggestive. Like 1174, it opens with a coherent and carefully revised partial text, in this case based on the 1943 copyrighted text (thus postdating July 1943) and then becomes a series of loosely related working drafts of scenes and speeches. These working papers reveal more clearly than the analogous material in 1174 just which parts of the play gave Brecht trouble and which interested him most as a field of adaptation and modification.
One further textual oddity must be mentioned. File 1178 contains a note by Ruth Berlau: ‘Material not used—the remainder having been used for complete new script.’ This note may indicate that an entire text (composed in unknown proportions by Brecht and Auden) has not survived or yet been identified. On the other hand, the note may refer to the 1946 copyrighted version. The adaptation seems to have moved along a parabola from Brecht’s and Hays’s work—revision and rewriting which follow Webster fairly closely though beginning to incorporate some White Devil material as well as to adjust motivations and to introduce new scenes—to a stretch of Auden’s collaboration, represented by the 1945 copyrighted text, and on to a period of Brecht’s continued reworking of the play. Through various production decisions, with which Brecht disagrees in his letter to Paul Czinner, the final Broadway version returned to almost pure Webster, reduced and clarified with relatively little of the work Brecht had done before Auden’s participation and after he joined the project.
[Prologue]
Brecht eventually added a prologue, based on the first seventy-seven lines of John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, which emphasizes Ferdinand’s incestuous desires through a conversation with an anonymous friar (Random House ed., pp. 337-8 and see 431-3).
Act one, scene 1
This text, like the 1943 copyrighted version, diverges from Webster and from later versions (Random House ed., pp. 343-5) in having Bosola hired as spy after the two brothers have warned their sister not to remarry. Our text also sharply reduces Bosola’s part as it appears in Webster and even in later revisions. Here, none of his previous history is given; he appears a mere tool of the Duke, rather than the melancholic and alienated figure of the original.
Act one, scene 2
Our version gives a very spare example of this scene when compared with the original and some later modifications by Brecht. Two important changes later occurred: the Duchess recognizes that her brothers hope to gain ‘an infinite mass of treasure’ should she die a widow, and Antonio admits that his ‘tongue’ has ‘been too long used to servitude’ (Random House ed., p. 352). This text uses much more material from the analogous exchange in Webster’s original (Li. 341-506). Some later drafts, including the 1946 copyrighted version, insert the dirge from The White Devil as an ‘interlude’ after this scene (Random House ed., p. 433); our text later employs this dirge (‘Call for the robin redbreast and the wren’) in Act three, scene 4.
Act one, scenes 3 and 4
Antonio’s decisiveness and his complicity with Cariola in concealing the Duchess’s pregnancy later became important elements in this episode (Random House ed., pp. 357-60). Our text also lacks some curious exchanges between Bosola and an Old Woman which emphasize the scene’s ominous quality as well as Bosola’s villainy (Random House ed., pp. 353-4); the Old Woman appears here only to announce the birth of the Duchess’s first child.
Act two, scene 1
Our text revises almost completely the analogous scene in the 1943 copyrighted version by introducing the soldier’s song and Ferdinand’s conversation with his page. Brecht evidently liked this change, for it remains in subsequent versions (Random House ed., pp. 365-7). The German text of the soldier’s song (‘I wrote my love a letter’) is in Brecht’s GW Gedichte, p. 879. Our text gives only the first verse, without its refrain, and the third; the translation reads like Ander. The missing portions (our translation) read approximately:
I never got an answer
And the war went on five years
But that wasn’t so surprising.
So I drank instead, supposing:
There she lies, in the embrace
Of the man who took my place.
And we burnt the town around us
When we captured fair Milan
Till its palaces were gutted
And for seven days we looted
And we raped them old and young
For we knew they’d done us wrong.
How could she go on waiting
With the nights becoming lighter and the spring wind blowing fresh?
Now it’s time I found a lover
He can’t make me wait for ever—
Women have such itching flesh.
One of the odd links among the plays in this volume is the Schweyk song ‘When we marched off to Jaromif’, which not only appears in Brecht’s Schweyk play but evidently inspired both the present song and Simone Machard’s ‘As I went to Saint-Nazaire’. Nor is Grusha’s ‘Four generals set off for Iran’ in scene 3 of The Caucasian Chalk Circle all that remote. The two further poems which follow ‘Als wir vor Milano kamen’ in GW also relate to the Duchess, though they were not meant for use in the play. Of these the second, ‘Light as though never touching the floor’, will be found in Poems 1913-1956. Later versions shorten this scene considerably by cutting Ferdinand’s triumphal procession and Delio’s grim comments on the war’s cost (Random House ed., pp. 368-70). Brecht later decided to have Antonio admit (to Delio) his paternity (see Random House ed., pp. 434-5 for Brecht Archive material on this scene). Our text’s version of the scene ends with pure Webster (III.i.38-86).
Act two, scene 3
Comparison of this scene in our text and in the 1943 copyrighted version indicates that it is one place where White Devil lines eventually entered the adaptation. Cariola’s speech about the silkworm comes from Webster’s other tragedy and remains in later versions (Random House ed., p. 372). Our text emphasizes Antonio’s desire to meet Ferdinand’s threats with rational argument and the defence that the Duchess has made an ‘honourable marriage’. Oddly, the Duchess claims here that ‘Such love as ours defies / Nature, duty and established law’; Webster’s original hardly endorses this view, or rather, hardly puts it in the Duchess’s mouth. Later versions (Random House ed., p. 376) omit it while retaining Antonio’s reluctant acceptance of the Duchess’s decision to separate. Her belief that the Cardinal may be bribed enters the adaptation with the text here printed; this addition coheres with Brecht’s changing view of the brothers’ motivations (see note on Ac
t one, scene 2).
Act two, scene 4
The exchange between the Cardinal and his mistress, Julia, has been added by our text to the 1943 version; all subsequent versions omit this plot completely, though the Broadway production, in keeping with its generally greater fidelity to Webster’s original (see Brecht’s remarks in ‘Attempted Broadway Production of Webster’s Duchess of Malfi’ pp. 422-3), restored it. For Webster’s much more ample treatment, see II.iv. This section of the adaptation seems to have been considered most susceptible to change: another, working version (BBA 1174/124-30) replaces the excommunication scene (2, 5) with a scene based on the trial of Vittoria Corombona in The White Devil. The following speech (from 1174/131) seems intended to replace Ferdinand’s last speech of 2, 4 as preparation for the trial:
CARDINAL
Come, put yourself in tune. It seems she cannot be saved. It’s a scandal that will shake all Italy. It’s up to us, her brothers, to look after her dukedom. We must not hide anything, but proceed openly and fairly. I’ll instantly solicit a clerical court and I’ll invite all the lieger ambassadors. She is unworthy: her dukedom must be taken away from her and put in the custody of the Holy Church. Brother, let’s in to make our preparations.
Act two, scene 5
BBA 1174/124-30 gives an alternate version of this scene, based upon the trial scene in Webster’s The White Devil. This alternate version follows; use of this scene would require substituting the speech quoted above in the note to 2, 4.
Enter French and English ambassadors.
FRENCH AMBASSADOR
They have dealt discreetly to obtain the presence
Of all the grave lieger ambassadors to hear the Duchess’ trial
Trusting our approbation to the proof
Of her black lust shall make her infamous
To all her neighbouring kingdoms.
ENGLISH AMBASSADOR
But I would ask what power have the state
Of Ancona to determine a free prince.
FRENCH AMBASSADOR
This is a free state, sir, and her brother, the Cardinal
Forehearing of her looseness, took occasion
Of their pilgrimage hither to arrest them all,
Duchess and steward and the indeterminate fruit
Of their mismatching, and is in haste
To bring them straight to judgment.
ENGLISH AMBASSADOR
But by what justice?
FRENCH AMBASSADOR
Sure, I think, by none.
These factions among great families are like
Foxes, when their hands are divided
They carry fire in their tails and all the country
About them goes to wrack for them.
ENGLISH AMBASSADOR
Still, she has offended. Who would’ve thought
So great a lady would [have] matched herself
Unto so mean a person.
FRENCH AMBASSADOR
They that are
Great women of pleasure are oft sudden in their wills
And what they dream they do.
Enter officer.
OFFICER
Pray, silence in the court, their lordships do convene.
Enter Ferdinand, Cardinal, guards leading the Duchess, Antonio, and children into the dock.
OFFICER
To Antonio: Sirrah, stand off and take your proper station. This court is not the Duchess’ bedchamber. But the home of justice where you may not stand beside your betters.
FRENCH AMBASSADOR
Certain people should travel as Dutch women go to church, bear their stools with them.
OFFICER
The court’s in session, signior.
CARDINAL
Stand to the table, gentlewoman, now signior, fall to your plea.
LAWYER
Domine judex, converte oculos in hanc pestem, mulierum corruptissimam.
DUCHESS
What’s he?
FERDINAND
A lawyer that pleads against you.
DUCHESS
Pray, my lord, let him speak his usual tongue. I’ll make no answer else.
FERDINAND
Why, you understand Latin.
DUCHESS
I do, sir, but mongst the auditory
Which come to hear my cause, the half or more
May be ignorant in ’t.
CARDINAL
Go on, sir.
DUCHESS
By your favour
I will not have my accusation clouded
In a strange tongue: all this assembly
Shall hear what you can charge me with.
FERDINAND
Pray, change your language.
CARDINAL
Oh, for God’s sake, gentlewoman, your credit
Shall be more famous by it.
LAWYER
Well, then, have at you.
Most literate judges, please your lordships
So to connive your judgments to the view
Of this debauched and diversivolent woman;
Who such a black concatenation
Of mischief has affected, that to extirp
The memory of it, must be the consummation
Of her, and her projections—
DUCHESS
What’s all this?
LAWYER
Hold your peace!
Exorbitant sins must have exulceration.
CARDINAL
I shall be plainer with you, and paint out
Your follies in more natural red and white
Than that upon your cheek.
DUCHESS
Oh, you mistake!
You raise a blood as noble in this cheek
As ever was your mother’s.
CARDINAL
Observe this creature here, my honour’d lords …
DUCHESS
My honourable lord
It doth not suit a reverend cardinal
To play the lawyer thus. If you be my accuser,
Pray, cease to be my judge! Come from your bench!
CARDINAL
You see, my lords, what goodly fruit she seems.
Yet like those apples travellers report
To grow where Sodom and Gomorrah stood
I will but touch her, and you straight shall see
She’ll fall to soot and ashes.
DUCHESS
O poor charity!
Thou art seldom found in scarlet.
CARDINAL
I pray thee, mistress, are you to deny that you did use our most
unfortunate absence to lead a vicious and lascivious life?
DUCHESS
You are deceived: ‘twas marriage. ‘Twas a contract
In a chamber per verba presenti.
CARDINAL
I am resolv’d
Were there a second paradise to lose
This devil would betray it.
DUCHESS
Terrify babes, my lord, with painted devils.
I’m past such needless palsy. For your accusations
Of ‘Vicious’ and ‘lascivious’: they proceed from you
As if a man should spit against the wind:
The filth returns in ’s face.
CARDINAL
Does it? Pray you, mistress, satisfy me one question: While we were absent did nothing leak into the open, blemishing the noble house of Malfi?
To Antonio.
Who made you overseer?
ANTONIO
Why, my honesty; my honesty, I think.
CARDINAL
Your lust. And while you were the master of her household,
didn’t you deal falsely with her in your accounts?
Antonio remains silent. Cardinal turns to Duchess.
Stood not your brother Ferdinand engaged with you for money
ta’en up of certain Neapolitan Jews? And did he not let the
bonds be forfeit?
DUCHESS
He did not.
CA
RDINAL
And whereupon, as you didn’t testify yourself, our brother’s
bills at Naples were protested?
DUCHESS
They were not.
CARDINAL
But didst say so before your officers.
DUCHESS
To save my husband’s life.
Condemn you me for that I do love him?
CARDINAL
And look upon this creature was her husband.
DUCHESS
Had he been in the street
Under my chamber-window, even there
I should have courted him.
CARDINAL
Hear you, my lords, how she calls lechery love, a life in sin she
calls a solemn marriage. This whore, foresooth, is holy.
DUCHESS
Ha! Whore! What’s that?
Murmurs in the court. Ferdinand rises and comes down slowly to confront the Duchess. Sudden silence.
Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 7 Page 44
