This chapter examines “true substantial bodies” in John Webster's 'The Duchess of Malfi' by discussing three processes: division, duplication, and mortification. It argues that these processes work in combination to lend “substantial” weight to Webster’s additions to the Duchess’s story. It begins by discussing the Duchess’s two bodies, i.e. her body politic and her body natural, which are paradoxically divorced as a consequence of her marriage, before discussing a key, dramatic physical manifestation of this division: the “dead man’s hand” purportedly taken from her husband. It then analyzes the meaning of the references to the artist(s) involved in Ferdinand’s macabre “presentations” (109) which immediately follow the discovery of the “dead man’s hand”, highlighting the theological and moral duplicity at work in the play. It ultimately contrasts the elements which lend life to The Duchess of Malfi and its characters, or, contrariwise, favor stasis and mortification of the flesh, by considering the difference between the printed play as we have it, and its staged embodiments. The play is the locus of a constant struggle to represent, or vindicate, “true substantial bodies”.