The Martyred Duchess

Focusing largely on act IV, scene ii, this article discusses the persecution, suffering and death of Webster’s Duchess alongside passages from John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Foxe’s martyrology was one of the most important books in post-Reformation England, both reflecting and encouraging a crisis of conscience in the culture over acts of religious violence. I argue that there are subtle but significant correspondences between the victimization and death of Foxe’s martyrs and of the Duchess: Ferdinand’s conception of her as an infection to be cleansed, his attempt to isolate her in death from a sense of participation in her family and the world (which she successfully resists), her composure in the face of despair, and her portrayal as one who bears great suffering with dignity, rather than either being broken by it or transcending it.