Devouring Dead

During the torturous scene of the Duchess' death in Act IV, the Duchess prophetically proclaims before her strangulation, "Go tell my brothers, when I am laid out/they may feed in quiet."  This notion of devouring is echoed again in Act V.  It is revealed that Ferdinand has fallen into madness, exhibiting wolf-like behaviors, digging up graves in the dead of night, and coming home bearing dead body parts over his shoulder.  Ferdinand has been "devouring" graves, and this moment is incredibly creepy and disturbing if one questions exactly whose grave he has been eating?  Is it the Duchess's leg he steals?  

Not only does Webster provide a literal fulfillment of this devouring prophecy, but a metaphorical one.  Ferdinand becomes mad because he has been nursing, or feeding himself with the haunting memory of his dead sister.  Bosola also is haunted with the death of the Duchess.  He cries, "Still methinks the Duchess/Haunts me.  There, there!-/'Tis nothing but my melancholy./O Penitence, let me truly taste thy cup,/That throws them down only to raise them up."  Bosola, though haunted by the memory of murdering the Duchess, reasons that it is his cup of bitterness to drink, to consume, to bear.  In a sense, he too, is devouring the Duchess.

Ironically, though Ferdinand and Bosola are men who devoured the Duchess until she was no more, and continue to devour her even after she is gone, they are in turn devoured by her memory.  Ferdinand and Bosola, as well as the Cardinal are slain in order to avenge the Duchess' death, while Antonio, perhaps the sole survivor who retains a vivid memory of his beloved, remains, allowing her memory to live on.