Читать книгу Writers on... Death (A Book of Quotes, Poems and Literary Reflections) - Amelia Carruthers - Страница 15
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BOSOLA: Yet, methinks,The manner of your death should much afflict you:This cord should terrify you.
DUCHESS: Not a whit:What would it pleasure me to have my throat cutWith diamonds? or to be smotheredWith cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls?I know death hath ten thousand several doorsFor men to take their exits; and 'tis foundThey go on such strange geometrical hinges,You may open them both ways: any way, for heaven-sake,So I were out of your whispering. Tell my brothersThat I perceive death, now I am well awake!
– John Webster (1580 - 1634), The Tragedy of the Duchess of Malfi (1623); a macabre and tragic play, loosely based on true events which occurred between 1508 and 1513. The real duchess in question was Giovanna d'Aragona (d. 1510) - and the play starts with her marriage to a man beneath her class. It ends as a nightmarish tragedy when her two brothers exact their revenge, destroying themselves in the process.
