SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

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play, the Duchess will have been executed for just such a private marriage. Her
assumption of authority over herself does de-authorize maleness; she defies the
traditional role and is punished for it.
While modern audiences might cheer at the Duchess’ assertion of her right to
happiness and self-agency, earlier audiences would have accepted the need to get her
(and her estate) under the control of a man. But not just any man will do; by marrying a
steward, the Duchess absolutely plays to the fears of the dominant social class of
degradation from below. Antonio, a member of a “new class of instrumental men,
functional descendants of fifteenth-century retainers who fought the Wars of the Roses
for their masters” (Whigham 175), was neither noble nor common, but s haring
aristocratic power can serve only to weaken the hegemony of the nobility. It is this that
must be halted at any cost, because the (aristocratic) family must be preserved. The
Duchess therefore breached “civil, spiritual and natural laws; in this way, Jacobean
audiences would have disapproved of her hasty marriage to Antonio” (Wilkinson 234).
In kingly (male) fashion, still certain in her own agency, the Duchess
dismisses Antonio’s concerns about Ferdinand and the Cardinal:
ANTONIO. But for your brothers?
DUCHESS.
Do not think of them:
All discord without this circumference
Is only to be pitied, and not fear'd:
Yet, should they know it, time will easily
Scatter the tempest.
ANTONIO. These words should be mine,
And all the parts you have spoke, if some part of it
Would not have savour'd flattery. (I.II)