DELIO. Now, sir, your promise: what's...

DELIO. Now, sir, your promise: what's that cardinal?

I mean his temper? They say he's a brave fellow,

Will play his five thousand crowns at tennis, dance,

Court ladies, and one that hath fought single combats.

ANTONIO. Some such flashes superficially hang on him for form; but observe his inward character: he is a melancholy churchman. The spring in his face is nothing but the engend'ring of toads; where he is jealous of any man, he lays worse plots for them than ever was impos'd on Hercules, for he strews in his way flatterers, panders, intelligencers, atheists, and a thousand such political monsters. He should have been Pope; but instead of coming to it by the primitive decency of the church, he did bestow bribes so largely and so impudently as if he would have carried it away without heaven's knowledge. Some good he hath done——

DELIO. You have given too much of him. What's his brother?

ANTONIO. The duke there? A most perverse and turbulent nature.

What appears in him mirth is merely outside;

If he laugh heartily, it is to laugh

All honesty out of fashion.

DELIO. Twins?

ANTONIO. In quality.

He speaks with others' tongues, and hears men's suits

With others' ears; will seem to sleep o' the bench

Only to entrap offenders in their answers;

Dooms men to death by information;

Rewards by hearsay.

DELIO. Then the law to him

Is like a foul, black cobweb to a spider,—

He makes it his dwelling and a prison

To entangle those shall feed him.

ANTONIO. Most true:

He never pays debts unless they be shrewd turns,

And those he will confess that he doth owe.

Last, for this brother there, the cardinal,

They that do flatter him most say oracles

Hang at his lips; and verily I believe them,

For the devil speaks in them.

But for their sister, the right noble duchess,

You never fix'd your eye on three fair medals

Cast in one figure, of so different temper.

For her discourse, it is so full of rapture,

You only will begin then to be sorry

When she doth end her speech, and wish, in wonder,

She held it less vain-glory to talk much,

Than your penance to hear her. Whilst she speaks,

She throws upon a man so sweet a look

That it were able to raise one to a galliard

That lay in a dead palsy, and to dote

On that sweet countenance; but in that look

There speaketh so divine a continence

As cuts off all lascivious and vain hope.

Her days are practis'd in such noble virtue,

That sure her nights, nay, more, her very sleeps,

Are more in heaven than other ladies' shrifts.

Let all sweet ladies break their flatt'ring glasses,

And dress themselves in her.

DELIO. Fie, Antonio,

You play the wire-drawer with her commendations.

ANTONIO. I 'll case the picture up: only thus much;

All her particular worth grows to this sum,—

She stains the time past, lights the time to come.

John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, Act 1, Sc. 2 ll.80-141.

The Duchess of Malfi on Amazon