Macabre Vitality: Texture and Resonance in The Duchess of Malfi

consider the lamprey: a boneless, jawless, slime-coated, eel-like aquatic parasite with a suction-cup mouth housing concentric rings of sharp teeth and a tongue—also studded with teeth—which it jams into host fish in order to feed on their blood. Today the lamprey is a rare and protected species in England; it is comparatively abundant in the Great Lakes of North America, where it is considered a nightmarish invasive threat to native fisheries. During the early modern centuries, when it was widely eaten in pies, the lamprey’s otherworldly visage (well worth an online search) would have been a more regular sight at market—albeit still a terrifying one. And so it appears—parasitic, spineless, and slimy—in a fleeting moment in the first act of John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi. The corrupt Duke Ferdinand, having spent some thirty lines discouraging his newly widowed sister from remarrying, springs a lamprey on her—and us: