Thursday, August 16, 2007

The Duchess of Malfi IV.ii

What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds? or to be smothered
With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls?
I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits; and ’tis found
They go on such strange geometrical hinges,
You may open them both ways: any way, for heaven-sake,
So I were out of your whispering.


—John Webster

2 Comments:

Blogger NJH said...

I have this play but oddly enough never read it.

I really like the use of imagery - does it have a rhetoric term for these examples 'throats cut with diamonds'?

N

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10:15 pm  
Blogger Caratacus said...

Nigel, I can't find the exact rhetorical term for this (if indeed there is one). It has elements of irony, paradox and the pre-Pope definition of bathos: more specific I cannot be; nor can the boffins at Erato. Help, anyone? Richard?

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9:58 am  

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