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Updated: May 27, 2025
It was to be hoped no harm had happened to him! Such was the burden of the conversation till when at about an hour before midnight the party broke up Alessandro Malfi said, that to allay the anxiety of his wife, who was getting extremely alarmed about her brother, he would walk as far as Forni which was the name of Gaspar's farm to inquire what had become of him.
'It is I, Alessandro Malfi. I want to know where your master is, and why he has not been to my house this evening as he promised? 'I thought he was there, said Antonio. 'He set off from here to go soon after seven o'clock. 'That is most extraordinary! returned Malfi. 'What in the world can have become of him? 'It is very strange, certainly, answered the servant.
The pope, on his part, engaged to invest the king in feoff with the kingdom of Sicily, the duchy of Apulia, the principality of Capua, Naples, Salerno, and Malfi, with the March and with all that he claimed on this side the Marsa. The king, in return, engaged to swear fealty to the pope; to defend him against his enemies; and to pay him a fixed yearly tribute for Apulia, Calabria, and the March.
It is impossible not to regard this unhappy woman as the victim, in great measure, of the customs which so often compel princes and princesses to leave reciprocal love out of the conditions of marriage. "The birds which live in the air," says Webster's immortal "Duchess of Malfi," On the wild benefit of nature, live Happier than we, for they can choose their mates.
The king, in return for the distinguished treatment which was accorded him, is said to have given to the Republic, Breno, Vergato, Ombla, Gravosa, the valley of Malfi, and part of Gionchetto, on the condition of churches dedicated to S. Stephen being built in all the towns. After his death his queen resolved to retire to Ragusa and become a nun.
In that interval a sister of Gaspar's had married a man called Alessandro Malfi, who, being a friend of Giuseppe's, endeavoured to bring about a reconciliation betwixt the rivals, or, rather, to produce a more cordial feeling, for there had never been a quarrel; and as far as Ripa was concerned, as he had no cause for jealousy, there was no reason why he should bear ill-will to the unsuccessful candidate.
Ferrando, in acknowledgment of the benefit, created Antonio, one of the pope's nephews, prince of Malfi, gave him an illegitimate daughter of his own in marriage, and restored Benevento and Terracina to the church.
There is no trace nor is there, again, in the 'Duchess of Malfi' of that development of human souls for good or evil which is Shakspeare's especial power the power which, far more than any accidental 'beauties, makes his plays, to this day, the delight alike of the simple and the wise, while his contemporaries are all but forgotten.
Look, then, at Webster's two masterpieces, 'Vittoria Corrombona' and the 'Duchess of Malfi. A few words spent on them will surely not be wasted; for they are pretty generally agreed to be the two best tragedies written since Shakspeare's time. The whole story of 'Vittoria Corrombona' is one of sin and horror.
Fear, in Shakspere as in the great murder scene in Macbeth is a pure passion; but in Webster it is mingled with something physically repulsive. Thus his Duchess of Malfi is presented in the dark with a dead man's hand, and is told that it is the hand of her murdered husband. She is shown a dance of mad-men and, "behind a traverse, the artificial figures of her children, appearing as if dead."
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