Flamineo and Bosola

Abstract

The malcontent is a curious phenomenon in Jacobean drama: a man of impoverished background but good education, hoping to advance himself into favour at court and therefore in part a sycophant, yet taking upon himself many of the qualities of the all-licensed fool to castigate the follies and iniquities of the society he moves in. As his hopes of preferment dwindle, his cynicism deepens. For a dramatist like Webster who wishes continually to shift an audience’s perspective on to the action, the malcontent was an excellent device to challenge and shock; yet Flamineo and Bosola serve more than this function. They capture Webster’s imagination because they seem to typify at its most extreme his view of human character as vacillating, arbitrary, at the mercy of circumstance and the individual will, and all despite a terrific energy of mind and penetrating insight. The roles require virtuoso performances both for the sheer range of tones their dialogue encompasses and even more for the complex psychology being defined; they are men who are at once inconsistent yet intensely self-aware, critical of others yet powerless to shape their own destinies to a desired end.