Textual Echoes in Duchess

A row of Mausoleums from the famous cemetery, Pere Lachaise, in Paris

Last week, you spent time searching EBBO for material that put the archive in conversation with the drama. For this week’s post, we will move from the general to the particular, by taking up Webster’s verse.

Michel de Marolless, The Nymph Echo Changed into Sound, 1655. 

In class, we discussed the unsettling “echo” scene from Act V (an act, as we suggested, haunted by the presence of the Duchess) in which Delio describes for Antonio their surroundings thusly:

“…this fortification/Grew from the ruins of an ancient abbey;/And to yon side o’th’ river, lies a wall/Piece of a cloister, which in my opinion/Gives the best echo that you ever heard,/So hollow, and so dismal, and withal/So plain in the distinction of our words,/That many have suppos’d it is a spirit/That answers.”
(5.3.1-9)

Using this particularly rich and strange moment as a model, your assignment is to try to find an example in which the play functions similarly as its own “echo chamber.”

David Alfaro Siqueiros, Echo of a Scream, 1937.

Consider, for instance, the line that Sarah discussed in her presentation:

"Some would think the souls of princes were brought forth by some more weighty causes than those of meaner persons—they are deceived: there's the same hand to them" (2.1.105-8).

The line resonates interestingly in the "severed hand" scene that Tricomi writes about.

Your task is to find your own “echo” within The Duchess and describe its resonance. Questions to consider: How is the earlier moment evocative of what comes later? Does it seem prophetic, ambiguous, contradictory, or some combination thereof? Is it creepy? Why or why not?

Note: please carefully cite the lines or stage directions that you discuss.