Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory of green mummy. What's this flesh? A little crudded milk, fantastical puff paste. Our bodies are weaker than those paper prisons boys use to keep flies in, more contemptible, since ours is to preserve earthworms. Didst thou ever see a lark in a cage? Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o'er our heads, like her looking glass, only gives us miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison.
In this passage, it is important to recognize that Bosola isn't just degrading the Duchess. By the fourth sentence of the passage he begins to use the word "our." He encompasses himself and all other people into this dismal perspective on life. He relinquishes responsibility for his life, and the critical eye for the culture around him and the self-awareness that he possesses does not engender Bosola to act as an agent of change in the Duchess's fate, as it might someone else who was less of a cynic.
I'm currently reading Soul of a Citizen by Paul Rogat Loeb, and the character of Bosola reminds me of this passage;
It may always feel more than a little absurd to think that we might be able to change history. Recognizing that fact, and appreciating the irony in our situation, can be useful, especially when our efforts don't go as planned. But that same sense of irony becomes dangerous when it's used to justify passivity. As the poet and essayist Lewis Hyde points out, it becomes "the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage." Accordingly, we might think of a modern cynic as someone who's given up all hope of finding a door, much less a key. And we might remember that there are better ways to live.
I do think Bosola had come to enjoy his figurative cage of cynicism until two very distinct parts in the text. The first is when Bosola questions Ferdinand on why the children needed to die. This is the first glimpse we see of Bosola judging some evil as too evil - and that even he is sickened. He criticizes Ferdinand (hypocritically given his own large role in the murders), saying,
Do you not weep?
Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out:
The element of water moistens the earth,
But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens.
The element of water moistens the earth,
But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens.
The second, much less valiant, moment occurs when Ferdinand refuses to pay the sum Bosola was promised in return for his service. At this injustice Bosola puts up a stronger fight, and even has a moment of self-reproach -
I am angry with myself, now that I wake.
But to what has Bosola awakened, exactly? Immediately after this line, I began to hope that Bosola was about to have a major shift in perspective, that he would regret the active role he played in the Duchess's death and that he would be a vastly different character as the play closed. However, I don't think that's the case. Upon reading further through Bosola's closing speech in Act 4, Bosola says,
All our good deeds and bad, a perspective
That shows us hell! That we cannot be suffered
To do good when we have a mind to it!
This is manly sorrow
Despite the many experiences that might have prompted internal change within Bosola, he remains a static character. He insists that man, intrinsically, cannot do good (Another ironic statement, given that one is hard-pressed to find any point in the play which Bosola even attempts to do good). He remains, in Loeb's words, " as someone who's given up all hope of finding a door, much less a key."
I am angry with myself, now that I wake.
But to what has Bosola awakened, exactly? Immediately after this line, I began to hope that Bosola was about to have a major shift in perspective, that he would regret the active role he played in the Duchess's death and that he would be a vastly different character as the play closed. However, I don't think that's the case. Upon reading further through Bosola's closing speech in Act 4, Bosola says,
All our good deeds and bad, a perspective
That shows us hell! That we cannot be suffered
To do good when we have a mind to it!
This is manly sorrow
Despite the many experiences that might have prompted internal change within Bosola, he remains a static character. He insists that man, intrinsically, cannot do good (Another ironic statement, given that one is hard-pressed to find any point in the play which Bosola even attempts to do good). He remains, in Loeb's words, " as someone who's given up all hope of finding a door, much less a key."
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