The White Devil by John Webster

 1/ The White Devil opens with a gripping word: “Banish’d!”. 

Banished is Count Lodovico. 

“LODOVICO […] Fortune’s a right whore; 

If she give aught, she deals it in small parcels, 

That she may take away all at one swoop…” 

(Act 1 scene 1) 

Whilst it’s often debatable, if not downright wrong, when a character in Shakespeare is banished, it’s not the case here—Lodovico is a criminal and despicable man. 

“ANTONELLI […] We see that trees bear no such pleasant fruit, 

There where they grew first, as where they are new set, 

Perfumes the more they are chaf’d the more they render 

Their pleasing scents; and so affliction 

Expresseth virtue fully, whether true 

Or else adulterate.” 

(ibid.) 

This is one of his men trying to cheer him up, but I do like that—relatable, shall we say? 

2/ My first thought, as I looked at the dramatis personae, was that it made me realise how simple and straightforward relationships in Shakespeare’s plays were. 

The relationships in The White Devil are quite dense. 

Paulo Giordano Orsino, Duke of Bracciano and called Bracciano throughout the play, is married to Isabella and in love with Vittoria. 

He and Isabella have a son called Giovanni. 

Isabella has a brother, Francisco the Medici, Duke of Florence. 

Vittoria Corombona is first married to Camillo, and later married to Bracciano. Camillo’s cousin is Monticelso, a Cardinal. 

Vittoria has two brothers named Marcello and Flamineo, a mother named Cornelia, and a servant named Zanche (who is a Moor). Marcello is an attendant of Francisco, the Duke of Florence. Flamineo is secretary to Bracciano, and acts as a pandar. 

Webster also complicates the relationships of supporting characters: Antonelli and Gasparo are friends of Lodovico and dependents of Francisco; Carlo and Pedro are followers of Bracciano but secretly in league with Francisco; Zanche is servant to Vittorio and in love with Flamineo and later with Francisco, and so on and so forth. 

However, when you read the play itself, Webster handles it so superbly that everything is clear and there’s no question about who’s who or who’s related to whom. 

3/ The poetry is so good.  

“CORNELIA [aside] My fears are fall’n upon me; O my heart! 

My son the pandar! Now I find our house 

Sinking to ruin; earthquakes leave behind, 

Where they have tyrannized, iron, or lead, or stone, 

But, woe to ruin, violent lust leaves none.” 

(Act 1 scene 2) 

That is when Cornelia sees her son Flamineo bring Bracciano to Vittoria. 

“CORNELIA O that this fair garden

Had with all poisoned herbs of Thessaly

At first been planted; made a nursery 

For witchcraft; rather than a burial plot 

For both your honors. 

VITTORIA Dearest mother, hear me. 

CORNELIA O thou dost make my brow bend to the earth 

Sooner than nature. See the curse of children! 

In life they keep us frequently in tears, 

And in the cold grave leave us in pale fears.” 

(ibid.) 

I’ve read that Webster changed the character of the mother and made her a moral woman. That I think is good for the balance of the play, as there are many immoral, scheming, and cruel characters.  

Cornelia is also more likable and sympathetic than Monticelso, the Cardinal. When we first see him, he and Francisco warn Bracciano against having an affair and try to bring him and Isabella together again. 

“MONTICELSO […] O my lord, 

The drunkard after all his lavish cups

Is dry, and then is sober; so at length, 

When you awake from this lascivious dream, 

Repentance then will follow: like the sting

Plac’d in the adder’s tail. Wretched are princes

When fortune blasteth but a petty flower 

Of their unwieldy crowns, or ravisheth 

But one pearl from their scepter; but alas! 

When they to wilful shipwreck loose good fame

All princely titles perish with their name.” 

(Act 2 scene 1) 

I like that. But Monticelso’s language is very different at the trial of Vittoria. 

“MONTICELSO Shall I expound whore to you? sure I shall, 

I’ll give their perfect character. They are first, 

Sweetness which rot the eater; in man’s nostril 

Poisoned perfumes; they are coz’ning alchemy; 

Shipwrecks in calmest weather. What are whores? 

Cold Russian winters, that appear so barren, 

As if that nature had forgot the spring. 

They are the true material fire of hell; 

Worse than those tributes I’th’ Low Countries paid, 

Exactions upon meat, drink, garments, sleep, 

Ay, even on man’s perdition, his sin. 

They are those brittle evidence of law

Which forfeit all a wretched man’s estate

For leaving out one syllable. What are whores? 

They are those flattering bells have all one tune 

At weddings and at funerals; your rich whores

Are only treasuries by extortion fill’d 

And emptied by curs’d riot. They are worse,

Worse than dead bodies, which are begg’d at gallows

And wrought upon by surgeons, to teach man 

Wherein he is imperfect. What’s a whore? 

She’s like the guilty counterfeited coin,

Which whoso’er first stamps it brings in trouble

All that receive it.” 

(Act 3 scene 2) 

Is that the language for a Cardinal? It is revolting. Whereas Cornelia comes across as moral and full of grief for her scheming children, Monticelso appears full of hate and bitterness. 

The trial however belongs to Vittoria. She dominates it. Vittoria is calculating and heartless but so compelling a character, and she knows the law—she knows they have no proof of her involvement in Camillo’s death, and knows that Montilcelso is acting out of bounds (it’s very likely that Webster himself was legally trained, as there was record of a John Webster admitted to the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court). 

“VITTORIA You are deceived. 

For know that all your strict-combined heads

Which strike against this mine of diamonds

Shall prove but glassen hammers, they shall break: 

These are but feigned shadows of my evils. 

Terrify babes, my lord, with painted devils,

I am past such needless palsy. For your names 

Of “whore” and “murd’ress”, they proceed from you 

As if a man should spit against the wind,

The filth returns in’s face.”

(ibid.) 

How could anyone not like such a speech? 

Personally, it’s rather interesting to read The White Devil after reading the chapter about the bawdy court in Jonathan Bate’s Soul of the Age. 

“Women, who were habitually encouraged to be silent and submissive, had the opportunity to become active agents in the bawdy court, just as fictional women are active agents—usually wittier and more eloquent than the men—in Shakespeare's comedies.

According to one historian, in the city of London in the early seventeenth century, 80 percent of sex and marriage cases were brought to the bawdy courts by women. A woman's reputation was her most precious commodity. The bawdy court was the place where she could publicly defend her honor. But it was also the place where quarrels between women could be formalized and played out.” (Ch.11) 

That’s not quite the case here, as Vittoria is charged with murdering her husband, but she does take the opportunity to defend herself in public, and makes a compelling case for herself. With her strong personality and supreme confidence, Vittoria dominates the courtroom from the first moment, when she tells the lawyer not to speak Latin, despite understanding it herself, and mocks him for using jargon and big words, as she wants everyone present to understand the charges against her. 

4/ Vittorio’s brother Flamineo is also a compelling character. 

“FLAMINEO Pray what means have you 

To keep me from the galleys, or the gallows?” 

(Act 1 scene 2)  

Flamineo is talking to his mother Cornelia—poverty is how he justifies his immoral actions. The entire speech is interesting, but I have to cut it short and point to the last few lines of the speech: 

“FLAMINEO […] And shall I, 

Having a path so open and so free

To my preferment, still retain your milk 

In my pale forehead? No, this face of mine

I’ll arm and fortify with lusty wine 

’Gainst shame and blushing.” 

(ibid.) 

“Arm”, “fortify”—isn’t that an interesting metaphor? 

Later, when he watches Bracciano dying: 

“FLAMINEO To see what solitariness is about dying princes. As heretofore they have unpeopled towns, divorc’d friends, and made great houses unhospitable, so now (O justice!), where are their flatterers now? Flatterers are but the shadows of princes’ bodies; the least thick cloud makes them invisible.” 

(Act 5 scene 3) 

Now look at the scene where the mad Cornelia is with Marcello’s corpse, and sees Flamineo (who killed his own brother): 

“CORNELIA Will you make me such a fool? Here’s a white hand. 

Can blood so soon be wash’d out? Let me see: 

When screech owls croak upon the chimney-tops, 

And the strange cricket i’th’oven sings and hops, 

And yellow spots do on your hands appear, 

Be certain then you of a corse shall hear…”

(Act 5 scene 4) 

It is a moving scene, and Flamineo has a bad conscience. 

“FLAMINEO […] I have liv’d 

Riotously ill, like some that live in court; 

And sometimes, when my face was full of smiles 

Have felt the maze of conscience in my breast. 

Oft gay and honor’d robes those tortures try: 

We think cag’ birds sing, when indeed they cry.” 

(ibid.) 

That is believable, and the scene of Flamineo with Vittoria and the pistols is very good. The play is full of energy and excitement and conflict to the very end. 

I like Flamineo’s speech when he’s dying and Lodovico asks what he’s thinking: 

“FLAMINEO Nothing; of nothing; leave thy idle questions: 

I am i’th’way to study a long silence, 

To prate were idle. I remember nothing. 

There’s nothing of so infinite vexation 

As man’s own thoughts.” 

(Act 5 scene 6) 

The play is full of interesting passages like that. 

5/ We know that Shakespeare and John Fletcher wrote a (lost) play called The History of Cardenio, most likely based on an episode in Don Quixote. 

Ben Jonson references Don Quixote in The Alchemist. 

Now I’ve come across what looks like a Don Quixote reference in The White Devil. 

“CONJURER […] Others that raise up their confederate spirits 

’Bout windmills, and endanger their own necks

For making of a squib…” 

(Act 2 scene 2) 

6/ The main difference between Webster and Shakespeare is that Webster has a much darker vision of life and human nature—humanity to him seems to be driven by lust or cruelty or a thirst for power—and he often uses animal imagery as though humanity’s not much better than beasts. And, unlike Shakespeare, Webster doesn’t examine evil as such—he just depicts it. 

And the evil, the sense of horrors he depicts is vivid and compelling. Webster is a superb playwright. The scene where Bracciano and Vittoria argue because he becomes jealous and calls her a whore, then ends up promising to get her out of “the house of convertites” and make her a duchess, is excellent, for example. The courtroom scene, or the scene of Francisco getting from Giovanni the news of Isabella’s death is also excellent.

One thing I’d note is that he feels narrow—I don’t mean in comparison with Shakespeare, as everyone is narrow compared to Shakespeare—I mean that he feels narrow in general. He’s mostly known for two plays, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, and repeats himself. Both present a bleak vision of the world, reeking of depravity and cruelty. Both are revenge plays in which the avenger is a criminal not much better than the people he kills. Both have a woman who falls in love with someone on the avenging side and reveals the crime, otherwise unknown (deus ex machina, no?). 

When there are parallels between Shakespeare’s plays (or, say, Jane Austen’s novels), the parallels illuminate each other; whereas these similarities I’ve pointed out in Webster’s plays are more like repetitions. In The White Devil, Zanche falls in love with Francisco, disguised as a Moor, and tells him about how Bracciano, Flamineo, and Vittoria were involved in the murder of Camillo and Isabella; in The Duchess of Malfi, the Cardinal’s mistress Julia falls for Bosola and helps him discover the truth about the Cardinal’s involvement in the Duchess’s death; these are deus ex machina, or at least the same plot device that Webster reuses, rather than conscious parallels. 

I’m probably talking nonsense. 

Between the two plays, I think The Duchess of Malfi is better. Firstly, in The White Devil, the two victims don’t have lots of time on stage and aren’t very compelling, and Webster mostly focuses on the villains, especially Vittoria, whereas in The Duchess of Malfi, he shifts the focus to the victim and creates her as a good and compelling character. There’s more light in the play, so to speak. The killing scene of the Duchess is also central to the play, and it is striking; one can’t say the same about the killing of Camillo and Isabella in The White Devil. 

More importantly, there’s a strange beauty in The Duchess of Malfi that I can’t quite explain. Is it the scene with the madmen? The scene at the cemetery, with the echo from the grave? The way the Duchess dies twice (like Desdemona)? I’m not sure. But amidst all the horrors in the play, there’s a curious beauty.  

Addendum: When I wrote the blog post, I forgot to mention Webster’s fabulous Preface. I just love Webster.

If you read the play, don't skip the Preface.