The Duchess of Malfi: Style 1 key example

The style of The Duchess of Malfi oscillates depending on the speaker. Each character’s class background, mood, and level of sanity has a meaningful impact on how they communicate. However, most characters speak in unrhymed blank verse. They communicate freely but with an intrinsic rhythm that is exacerbated by the intricacy of the language. Sometimes, when characters slip into prose, the stylistic shift is meant to indicate a change of mood or meaning. One example comes in Act 2, Scene 1, when Bosola’s conversation with Castruccio is interrupted by a random old woman. When Bosola turns and begins to berate the woman, he switches to prose. He insults her appearance, and then he says: 

There was a lady in France that, having had the smallpox, flayed the skin off her face to make it more level.

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