Act 5: In which everyone goes crazy.

Awesome. Just Awesome. I guess the first thing I'd like to talk about is Ferdinand. I was completely thrown off when he went mad, the description the Doctor gives of him behind St. Mark's church is absolutely ridiculous and over the top. I loved it. I think it's a brilliant device to use, that's smart and underused in a lot of these dramas. Having the character virtually exact revenge upon themselves, driven mad by guilt over their actions, makes them much more dynamic, and thus more identifiable. The same's true with Bosola, who is still sort of an enigma to me, since he seems to be so full of self-loathing that it's hard to see his true reasoning. The Cardnal too, still scheming, poisoning Julia with a bible, which I thought was a great idea, but could it be seen as a commentary on the church? I mean, the English had no love for Catholics.
A lot of dark stuff in this act, like I talked abotu in my last post. The aforementioned scene with the Duke's doctor. Ironically, by surrounding his sister with madmen in order to drive her mad, Ferdinand actually drove himself mad. The other thing is the echo from the grave. Webster uses the dialogue to actually allow the Duchess to speak after she is dead. She kind of resembles the nymph, who's love could never be anything more than an echo. At the same time I think it's a stretch to take it farther than that. If I remember correctly, Echo was driven away by Narcissus, the man she loved, not her family.