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Act 1, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. What does Castruchio say about rulers serving as soldiers?
2. How does Antonio describe the Cardinal?
3. What is the significance of Antonio’s release from the Quietus est?
4. What does Bosola call an intelligencer?
5. What is the Duchess’s objection to the speech between Ferdinand and the Cardinal?
Answers
1. Castruchio says that it is ill-advised, that “that realm is never long in quiet, where the ruler is a soldier.”
2. Antonio describes the Cardinal as “a melancholy churchman” who plots against those he is jealous of and who lost the Papacy by bestowing egregious bribes.
3. Antonio's release from the Quietus est frees him from being in the Duchess’s debt by testifying that his accounts are correct.
4. Bosola calls an intelligencer a “very quaint invisible devil in flesh.”
5. The Duchess suspects that the speech was practiced beforehand because “it came so roundly off.”