3The fourth Act is a treasure trove for scholars writing about the final moments before death and practices of remembrance. But by the fourth Act, the Duchess’ die have already been cast. She has remarried, bore three children with Antonio, transgressed against her brothers’ commands, and, as a consequence, has been publicly shamed and privately imprisoned, separated from her husband. In this essay, I want to turn the clock back to the moment in the play when none of this has yet happened, when the Duchess weighs up the situation and asserts her right to make her own choices, to follow her own path.

4In the play’s opening scene, the Duchess’s brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, make a clear and direct injunction against their sister’s re-marriage. The Cardinal’s final words before he leaves her to direct her own discretion are these: ‘Wisdom begins at the end: remember it.’ (1.1.328) This line, the first that I wish to focus upon, offers a fine example of Webster’s economic use of language, succinct yet capacious in meaning. In his Revels Plays edition, John Russell Brown glosses the line as not only a counsel of prudence but also a memento mori: remember our rules and remember your mortality, the Cardinal advises the Duchess, for they are inextricably tied together. Brown identifies two proverbs from which the line borrows: ‘Think on the end before you begin’ (Tilley E125) and ‘Remember the end’ (Tilley E128). Certainly, the idea that the individual should properly prepare for their inevitable death by keeping their final moments fresh in mind was commonplace in early modern England, and often reworked in Christian literature and how-to manuals. In Dives [et] Pauper (149), the author (Henry Parker?) advises the faithful to:

• 4 The author’s authority for this advice is Ecclesiastes; here, from the King James Version, see: ‘A (...)

Thynke Inwardly of thy laste thynges & of thyne ende & thou shalt neuer do synne. Eccl .vij. In the begynnynge of euery dede thynke on the ende what ende it may haue & what may falle therof. ([Parker] sig. Y2r)4

5This idea retained currency across the period, as is evidenced by three further examples spread across the sixteenth century. In The Example of Virtue (1504), Stephen Hawes writes:

The fyrst commaundement that I gyue the 
Thynke on the ende or thou begynne 
For thou by ryght may knowe the certente 
That deth is fyne of euery synne (Hawes sig. B4v)

Similarly, Thomas Churchyard offers this fearful advice in A Mirror for Man (1552):

Beware of thre thynges, print them well in mynde 
The deuyl, the fleshe, the worlde that is blynde 
Feare God and thy Prince, be looth to offende 
Take nothing in hande, but thincke on the ende 
Let wysdom the rule, and knowledge wyth al 
Than thou shalt stand fast, wher other men fall (Churchyard sig. A1r)

And a very young Anthony Munday concludes The Mirror of Mutability (1579) with the historical exemplum of Zedekai, sometime King of Judea:

Fewe woords shall serue, in haste I goe my way, 
And wish you well my perill to foresee: 
Be rulde by trueth, let Uertue beare the sway, 
Think on the end the daunger for to flée. 
For I haue proou'd that which I rew with payn: 
And wish to late I had not liu'd so vayne. (Munday sig. M2^r)

7The proper preparation for death, which the memento mori topos demands, was a subject of morbid fascination for early moderns. Table One offers a representative list of some fifty art of dying treatises published by the end of the seventeenth century. Self-explanatory titles such as Thomas Lupset’s A Compendious and A Very Fruitful Treatise, Teaching the Way of Dying Well (1534), George Shaw’s The Doctrine of Dying Well (1628), Jeremy Taylor, The Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying (1663), and John Kettlewell’s Death Made Comfortable, or, The Way to Die Well (1695), offer a flavour of their respective contents. Part theological manual, part practical self-help guide, the art of dying treatises aided the faithful in habitual Christian practice, with an eye towards ensuring their readiness for death, and guiding their actions in the final moments before death. Readers were encouraged to memorise and retain such information: as the author (the translator, R[ichard] V[erstagan]) of the epistle dedicatory to the translation of da Lucca’s Dialogue of Dying Well (1603) notes: ‘only truants neglect to learn it, but attentive scholars do deeply imprint it in memory’ (da Lucca sig. A3^r). The advice included was primarily for each individual, but some works also helped to instruct those involved with preparations for the deaths of others.

Table 1: Representative list of art of dying treatises

#	Date	Author	Title
1	1491	William Caxton,	Ars Moriendi
2	1503	Anon.	The Art of Good Living [and] Good Dying
3	1506	Anon.	Ars Moriendi
4	1534	Thomas Lupset	A Compendious and A Very Fruitful Treatise, Teaching the Way of Dying Well
5	1548-9	John Frith	A Proper Instruction Teaching a Man to die gladly and not to fear Death
6	1550	John Frith	The Preparation to the Cross, and How it Must be Patiently Borne
7	1560	John Bradford	A Fruitful Treatise and Full of Heavenly Consolation Against the Fear of Death
8	1576	George Gascoigne	The Drum of Doomsday
9	1580	Thomas Becon	The Sick Man’s Salve
10	1592	John More	A Lively Anatomy of Death
11	1595	William Perkins	A Salve for A Sick Man
12	1599	I. B.	A Looking Glass of Mortality
13	1599	William Perneby	A Direction to Death
14	1600	William Perkins	A Golden Chain (‘section on Dying Well’)
15	1602	Christopher Sutton	Disce Mori. Learn to Die
16	1603	Pietro da Lucca (translation by Richard Verstegan)	A Dialogue of Dying Well
17	1607	Robert Hill	Christ’s Power Expounded … A Christian Direction to Death
18	1611	Jean de L’Espine (translation by S. Veghelman)	Three Godly Treatises… [treatise 2] Against the Fear of Death
19	1612	Edward Vaughan	A Divine Discovery of Death
20	1614	Stephen Jerome	Seven Helps to Heaven (chapters on death)
21	1614	Stephen Jerome	Moses His Sight of Canaan … Directing how to live and die happily
22	1618	George Strode	The Anatomy of Mortality
23	1621	Roberto Bellarmino (translation by Edward Coffin)	The Art of Dying Well
24	1621	Jean Guillemard	A Combat Betwixt Man and Death
25	1622	Samuel Ward	The Life of Faith in Death
26	1626	I. E.	A Winding Sheet
27	1627	Samuel Gardiner	The Devotions of the Dying Man
28	1628	George Shaw	The Doctrine of Dying Well
29	1628	Nicholas Bownd	The Unbelief of St. Thomas the Apostle … treatise … in the hour of death
30	1629	Zachary Boyd	The Last Battle of the Soul in Death
31	1631	Henry Montagu, Earl of Manchester	Contemplatio Mortis et immortalitatis
32	1631	William Moray	A Short Treatise of Death in Six Chapters
33	1632	Jean-Puget de la Serre (translation by Henry Hawkins)	The Sweet Thoughts of Death and Eternity
34	1639	John Paget	Meditations of Death wherein a Christian is taught how to remember and prepare for his latter end
35	1640	H. W. (and Daniel Featley)	Threnoikos, The House of Mourning
36	1642	Jeremias Drexel	The Forerunner of Eternity, or, Messenger of Death sent to healthy, sick, and dying men
37	1663	Jeremy Taylor	The Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying
38	1672	John Horn	A Comfortable Corroborative Cordial … a Direction how to Live and Die
39	1673	Edward Pearse	The Great Concern, or, A Serious Warning to a Timely and Thorough Preparation for Death
40	1676	Anon.	The Age of Man, or, Man’s Beginning and Last End
41	1679	R. Mayhew	Eschatos Echthros, or, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ
42	1681	Edward Bury	A Sovereign Antidote against the Fear of Death
43	1682	John Dunton	The House of Weeping, or, Man’s Last Progress to his Long Home
44	1690	Anon.	A Seasonable Preparation for Death and Eternity
45	1692	Nathanael Ranew	Practical Preparation for Death
46	1692	William Sherlock	A Practical Discourse Concerning Death
47	1692	John Dunton	The Mourning-Ring, in Memory of your Departed Friend
48	1695	John Kettlewell	Death Made Comfortable, or, The Way to Die Well
49	1697	Anon.	The Dying Man’s Assistant, or, Short Instructions [for] the preparing of sick persons for death
50	1700	Joseph Stevens	A Golden Chain of Four Links … Necessary Directions to Die Well

8The lessons taught in the treatises were culturally pervasive, also inspiring creative engagement with the preparations to be habitually made for death. Take, for example, such warnings as we find in this anonymous 1579 poem included in A Poor Knight, his Palace of Private Pleasures:

Prepare to dy, out of this world of woe, 
Prepare to dy, out of this sea of sin: 
Prepare to dy, to hauty heauen to goe, 
Prepare to dy, the heauenly life to win: 
Prepare to dy, to liue within the sky, 
Prepare to dy, I say prepare to dy.  (sig. J4^r)

9There is, then, much to unpack in the Cardinal’s command to the Duchess: it is a maxim, ‘Wisdom begins at the end,’ which offers a scripturally-based commonplace about how true knowledge is discovered at life’s end, and which also functions as a memento mori to remember one’s own mortality. The Cardinal, a figure in and of the church, commands that the Duchess should remember this, with the implication that the remembrance of her inevitable mortal ‘end’ will force her to act with due Christian Prudence. The Cardinal thus seeks to condition the Duchess through a multiplied act of memory: remember to remember your mortality for this memory will guide your proper Christian conduct.

10The second line or so I wish to dwell upon is the Duchess’s response. The Cardinal says this line, as we have seen: ‘Wisdom begins at the end: remember it.’ He then exits, leaving the Duchess with the unhinged Ferdinand. She says: ‘I think this speech between you both was studied, / It came so roundly off.’ When the Duchess speaks with suspicion of ‘speech’ that is ‘studied,’ she is inferring that her brothers have planned and rehearsed the speech given; that they have prepared the speech to be given. She is referring to the practical techniques of the art of rhetoric.

12The art of rhetoric, a phrase and practice frequently deployed in the period, is one such forgotten art situated at this intersection point. The phrase ‘art of rhetoric’ is used some 286 times across 193 texts printed by the end of the seventeenth century. Indeed, there are six distinct books titled The Art of Rhetoric written by English authors: Leonard Cox, Thomas Wilson, John Barton, John Prideaux, John Newton, and Thomas Hobbes. Wilson’s book from 1553, the most widely-read and influential, was re-issued seven times between 1560 and 1585. Wilson defines the art of rhetoric as such:

Rhetorique is an art to set furthe by vtteraunce of wordes, matter at large, or (as Cicero doeth saie) it is a learned, or rather an artificiall declaracion of the mynde, in the handelyng of any cause, called in contencion, that maie through reason largely be discussed. (Wilson sig. A1^r)

13Wilson proceeds to outline and remediates into English the five parts of rhetoric first codified in classical Roman treatises about the subject: invention, disposition, elocution, memory, and utterance. It is the fourth of these memory, or memoria, from which emerges the rules for artificial memory in antiquity that I described earlier. So, to produce that ‘artificiall declaracion of the mynde’ (Wilson sig. A1^r), Wilson, as many would-be mnemonists before him, prescribes the use of artificial memory to supplement the natural. There are detailed sections in his study about the origins and implementation of the memory arts, but I want to draw attention to another pertinent section of this study. In a chapter titled ‘To aduise one, to study the lawes of Englande,’ Wilson finds himself forced into a significant digression about the four ‘chief’ virtues—prudence, justice, manhood (that is, courage), and temperance. For he writes, ‘he that will knowe what honestie is, muste haue an vnderstandyng, of all the vertues together’ (Wilson sig. E1^v). Earlier I noted that the medieval scholastics appropriated the art of memory under the banner of prudence, but Wilson, who completes his book during the reign of Edward VI but whose book is first published in 1553, the year of the reversion of state to Catholicism under Mary, does not make that connection explicit in his study. He does, however, note that memory is one of three constituent parts of Prudence, alongside understanding, and foresight. For Wilson, prudence is synonymous with wisdom: ‘Prudence or wisedome (for I will here take theim bothe for one) is a vertue that is occupied euer more, in searchyng out the truthe.’ (Wilson sig. E1^v) Recalling the Cardinal’s injunction, Wilson’s reformulation might read, ‘prudence begins at the end: remember it.’ When Wilson turns to the role that memory plays in Prudence he notes: ‘The memorie calleth to accompte those thynges, that wer doen heretofore, and by a former remembraunce, getteth an after witte, and learneth to auoyde deceipt.’ (sig. E1^v)

14Wilson's reading of memory's contribution to prudent behaviour suggests that there is an innate tautology in the Cardinal’s command: a speech about conduct to be remembered is itself identified as an act of remembrance; remember to remember, the Cardinal says. Prudence’s other parts—understanding, that is fully perceiving what is in those ‘thynges presently dooen’ and ‘waiyng and debatyng them, vntill [the] mynde be fully contented’, and foresight, that is ‘a gatheryng by coniectures, what shall happen, and an euident perceiuyng of thynges to come, before thei do come’ each play their part in codifying prudent conduct (Wilson sig. E1^v). As this digression is included in a chapter advising the reader to study the laws of England, Wilson makes a clear connection between prudent conduct and subjection: to live within the laws one must understand, anticipate, and remember them.

15Though memory is but a constituent part of prudence, and only one of five parts of rhetoric, Wilson leaves the reader in little doubt as to its fundamental concomitant importance for both conduct and rhetorical performance. He writes that:‘the Memorie […] must be cherished, the whiche is a fast holdyng, bothe of matter and woordes couched together, to confirme any cause’ (Wilson sig. A4^r). Differentiating between artificial and natural memory, he writes that ‘Naturall memorie is, when without any preceptes or lessons, by the onely aptenesse of nature, we beare awaie suche thynges as wee heare.’ (Wilson sig. Ee4^v) For artificial memory, Wilson sets out the Simonides foundation myth before offering an account of the rules for the use of places (loci) and images (imagines) in the classical tradition. Wilson is largely skeptical of the value of artificial memory, but still notes that its techniques could work (‘time and exercise shall make [the practitioner] perfect’, Wilson sig. Ff4^v). Commending especially the value of images for memory (‘sight printeth things in a mannes memorye, as a seale doth prynte a mannes name in waxe’, Wilson sig. Ff4^v), Wilson, in a far-reaching example, notes that the use of images for ‘remembraunce of Sainctes’ in the Catholic tradition ‘serued gayly well’ for the purpose of artificial memory. Wilson, a committed Protestant, observes however that it is ‘well done that suche Idolles are cleane taken oute of the church,’ and that which is to be remembered should be for ‘good entente.’ (Wilson sig. Ff4^v ) Thus, both forms, natural and artificial, are seen to be of utility because of memory’s greater ethical significance for the individual in helping to guide their conduct.

16We can, therefore, readily understand the Cardinal’s command, though repetitive in form it may be: keep in memory this command to keep in memory your own mortality to keep in memory the implications for imprudent conduct in the present and future. What seems intriguing is that the Duchess then calls attention to the mnemonic nature of the command itself: that the brothers have prepared and memorized this speech which seeks to force the Duchess to take responsibility for her conduct, to make her a director of her discretion. The Duchess’s disdain for their command is expressed through her calling attention to the artificial, rehearsed, socially performative nature of their set of commands, the studied speech. The Duchess is not alone in casting aspersions against the artificial nature of such use of studied speech. Examples abound in the period, but I will draw from two works with allusions to studied speech which were written in the same decade as Webster’s play.

Ruckwood out of a studied speech vvould faine haue made his bringing vppe and breeding in idolatrie, to haue beene some excuse to his villanie, but a faire talke, could not helpe a fovvle deed, and therefore being found guiltie of the treason, had his iudgement vvith the rest of the traytors. (T. W. sig. B4^v)

The ‘studied speech’, this ‘faire talke’, cannot excuse the ‘fovvle deed’; words cannot save him, and it is implied that there is something morally dubious about how he has prepared and memorized such a speech in his attempts to do so. It is unnatural, artificial, false.

18A speech, however studied, by one of the country’s most notorious traitors was always likely to be regarded with suspicion. But the correlation of artificial speech and falsehood had agency beyond such contexts. In Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra we find a similar allusion to, and disparaging of, studied speech. In Act two, Scene two, Agrippa, having advised Mark Antony to take Octavia for his wife, appears to realize he has spoken out of turn. He says:

Pardon what I have spoke,
For ’tis a studied, not a present thought,
By duty ruminated. (2.2.138-140)

19This distinction between ‘studied’ and ‘present thought’ is striking; Agrippa has prepared such a speech for an opportune moment—he has prepared for kairos—but now suspects he has misjudged the moment and that ‘present thought’, that is, unprepared spontaneous-albeit-well-judged speech, is what was called for. In this moment, he calls attention to his rhetorical technique, how his words are memorized to be later deposited when most opportune and persuasive, but also alerts to how he has perhaps failed in his task, how he has misunderstood the moment, the opportunity.

20Drawing these disparate parts of my argument together, then, I wish in concluding to return to the Cardinal’s command and the Duchess’s response. The Cardinal’s command that the Duchess remembers to remember to guide her present and future action sets up a choice for the protagonist. She can heed this command, realizing that the implied threat—that her mortal fate, as well as her immortal state, are dependent upon her course of action. Yet she chooses to forego the warning. Much more bluntly, Ferdinand informs his sister that she faces death should she go against their ruling, saying that if she re-marries the wedding would be ‘executed,’ rather than celebrated, and that he is loath to see their father’s poniard look so ‘rusty’. Upon the brothers’ exit from the stage, however, the Duchess decides to proceed despite the warnings:

Shall this move me? If all my royal kindred
Lay in my way unto this marriage,
I’d make them my low footsteps: and even now,
Even in this hate, as men in some great battles,
By apprehending danger, have achiev’d
Almost impossible actions – I have heard soldiers say so –
So I, through frights, and threat’nings, will assay
This dangerous venture. (1.1.341-48)

21She is seemingly aware of the risk but willing to take it. The three children of Antonio and the Duchess are the product of this transgression; the Duchess and Antonio’s deaths, the horrible spectacles of the waxwork effigies of the children, and the later execution of the two youngest children is the resulting punishment. ‘Shall this move me?’, she asks (3.1.341, my emphasis). What she has listened to, she believes, is a contrived studied speech, out of time in that it was written to be delivered when opportune, one at odds with the very present tense to which she clings to as she nears her fate, famously asserting ‘I am the Duchess of Malfi still’ (4.2.141). Yet it is this moment, when the future is forecast and foresight, when that crucial part of prudence is required, she sees only contrivance and artificiality in her brothers’ words. As she prepares to pursue the life she desires, this exchange reveals that which preparation could avoid. Brown is surely right in noting the Cardinal’s command is both a memento mori and counsel of prudence, but it is the interdependence of the two that is emphasized through this remembered call to remember to remember. Recalling Robert Greene’s note about once-burnt children avoiding future fires, the Duchess too is forewarned but chooses not to be forearmed.