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The
White Devil is a re-telling of a true story. In
1573 Vittoria Accoramboni, of an old, proud, but poor family, was
married to a nephew of Cardinal Montalto.
She was sixteen and very beautiful.
In 1580, at the age of twenty-three, she met the
forty-three-year-old Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano
He had been married to Isabella Medici.
In 1576 Isabella had been murdered, probably by her husband’s
orders, because it became known that she had a lover.
Meeting Vittoria, Bracciano fell desperately in love.
He ordered her husband’s murder, and entered into a secret
marriage with Vittoria. Pope
Gregory ordered the lovers to part, and at one time Vittoria was
imprisoned in Castel Angelo in Rome under suspicion of having been
involved in the killing of her husband.
In 1585, during the confusion caused by the election of a new pope,
Vittoria and Bracciano were married and left Rome first for Padua and
then for Lake Garda. Bracciano
died eight months after the marriage.
The Medicis, wishing to protect the interests of Bracciano’s
heir, challenged his will which left Vittoria in charge of his fortune.
When Vittoria refused to listen to them, the Medicis had her
assassinated in Padua, the leader of the assassins being Lodovico Orsini,
a relative of Bracciano.
Webster based his play on newsletter versions of the story.
The
title The White Devil suggests
the point of the play, to present a character or characters who are
whited sepulchres, the wicked who seem to be good, deceitful hypocrites.
Vittoria has always been assumed to be the White Devil, and
indeed in the play she is called ‘devil in crystal,’ but from the
title page of the original edition it could be taken that Bracciano
himself is the White Devil. (In
The Revenger’s Tragedy the
Duke who has poisoned Gloriana is called ‘Royal Villian! White
devil!’). Francisco de
Medici, with his vicious political maneuvering, Monticelso, and Flamineo
could also lay claim to the title.
Under their smiles and charm they plot the downfall of others or
their own aggrandisement.
Throughout the play there is talk of this difference between show and
content. There is a
scepticism about position, worldly glory, and people’s outward
behavior that we recognize and feel deeply today.
Flamineo says
‘I have lived
Riotously ill, like some that live in court;
Have felt the maze of conscience in my breast . . .
We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry’
At her death Vittoria cries
O happy they that never saw the court,
Nor ever knew great men but by report . . .”
The Duke Francisco himself, from a position of some experience, says
‘Only
outside are respected . . . some men i’th’court seem
Colossuses in a chamber,
who if they came into the field
would appear pitiful pygmies’
And again Flamineo
‘Glories, like glow-worms afar off shine bright
But looked too near have neither heat nor light’
Flamineo voices other thoughts that strike deep with us, an
extraordinary obsession or anxiety about poverty and neglect.
His mother says to him
‘. . . because we are poor shall we be vicious?’
He rejects her plea and concludes
‘. . . to aspire some mountain’s top
The way ascends not straight, but imitates
The subtle folding of a winter’s snake . . .”
To advance oneself or maintain position no action seems too devious or
cruel.
Most of Webster’s characters see nothing to work for other than this
immediate gain. They
have little thought of the infinite—like insects with one day of life
in the hot sun. When they
die, with Vittoria they can say
‘My soul, like to a ship in a black storm
Is driven I know not whither’
or with Flamineo
“I do not look
Who went before, nor who shall follow me;
No, at myself I will begin and end . . .
Oh, I am in a mist’
‘Prodigious
comets’ of characters streak through Webster’s universe, but we do
not always see them as they present their faces to the world in general.
Much of the time we see how they behave in a domestic situation;
how they behave with their relatives; the face they present and the
things they say to their supposed friends. At times a play with great sweep, The White Devil is also a ‘chamber’ play of great intimacy and
the subtle convolutions of the language and plot are well worth tiptoe
attention.
Webster’s searching beyond glory and outward show must be applied to
one’s attitude to the play. It
is not just a flashy conventional Italianate tragedy of revenge.
It is a machiaevellian political intrigue and a devastatingly
intimate study of the nastier side of man.
Relations are subtle and complex, and reflect the detailed
intricacy of the construction of the piece.
Repetitions in extraordinary variations are characteristic not
only of the language, but also in situations within scenes.
An obvious example is the double death of Flamineo. Mirror phrases and mirror images are glimpsed throughout as
in the spurts of light from a flash-camera.
These often ironic repeats of words and scenes are paralleled by
ironic comment. For every
action there appears to be an observer.
We see things not only through our own eyes but also through the
eye of some witness in the play. It is as though Webster is determined
that we must be made to think more deeply by observing the same actions
or thoughts in infinite variation and to see beyond what we often take
as truth.
Critics have had conflicting views on Webster’s work.
All of them accept that at times his poetry surpasses that of any
other dramatist. Some of
them see a moral purpose to his play; others, like Rupert Brooke, see
the characters as ‘. . . writhing grubs in an immense night.
And that night is without stars or moon.’
Webster was clearly an innovator in his construction which, whilst often
seeming chaotic, has a baroque planning.
He is a man fascinated by death and by the problem of how to
live. To further his purpose Webster was notable for ‘artistic
greediness [and] unwillingness to accept any limitations and abide by
them.’ Webster may be
obsessed with the despair of living, but the grandeur of the defiance of
his characters for the horror of the world and the means he uses to
express it are a joy.
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