The Parasites of Machiavel

Abstract

In Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy, Vindice, having been drawn into the role of informing and plotting parasite, wholeheartedly embraces his social function and his downfall exemplifies its critique. Like Webster’s Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi, he is an indispensable outsider operating inside the political establishment and he takes the heat for a society which is dysfunctional in its own imperatives and mechanisms of control. The Malcontent’s parasitic Malevole, Marston’s creation, is also both a metadramatic actor and as a displaced Duke is a satiric exemplar of the decadence and corruption of his society, thought by some contemporaries to offer a critique of the court of James I. Each resounds with the popular image of the Machiavel and functions within recognisably metadramatic modes, the natural province of the informer, here facilitating a critique of the structures of authority which license it.