THE WHITE DEVIL

We are now Beneath her roof: Noble friend, You bind me ever to you: Sir, I thank you. Both flowers and weeds spring, when the sun is warm, And great men do great good, or else great harm. Their approbation, therefore, to the proofs Of her black lust shall make her infamous To all our neighbouring kingdoms. I wonder If Brachiano will be here? What, are you in by the week?

So — I will try now whether they wit be close prisoner — methinks none should sit upon thy sister, but old whore-masters ——. Or cuckolds; for your cuckold is your most terrible tickler of lechery. Whore-masters would serve; for none are judges at tilting, but those that have been old tilters.

For to sow kisses mark what I say , to sow kisses is to reap lechery; and, I am sure, a woman that will endure kissing is half won. True, her upper part, by that rule; if you will win her neither part too, you know what follows. I do put on this feigned garb of mirth, To gull suspicion. Oh, my unfortunate sister! I would my dagger-point had cleft her heart When she first saw Brachiano: Thou hast scarce maintenance To keep thee in fresh chamois.

This is lamented doctrine. When age shall turn thee White as a blooming hawthorn ——. Were I your father, as I am your brother, I should not be ambitious to leave you A better patrimony. Oh, my sprightly Frenchman! Do you know him? I saw him at last tilting: A lame one in his lofty tricks; he sleeps a-horseback, like a poulterer.

This business, by his Holiness, is left To our examination. May it thrive with you. At your pleasure, sir. Stand to the table, gentlewoman. Now, signior, Fall to your plea. Domine judex, converte oculos in hanc pestem, mulierum corruptissiman. By your favour, I will not have my accusation clouded In a strange tongue: Exorbitant sins must have exulceration. Why, this is Welsh to Latin.

My lords, the woman Knows not her tropes, nor figures, nor is perfect In the academic derivation Of grammatical elocution. Sir, Put up your papers in your fustian bag — [Francisco speaks this as in scorn. I most graduatically thank your lordship: I shall have use for them elsewhere. I shall be plainer with you, and paint out Your follies in more natural red and white Than that upon your cheek. I must spare you, till proof cry whore to that.

My honourable lord, It doth not suit a reverend cardinal To play the lawyer thus. Oh, your trade instructs your language! Shall I expound whore to you? They are cozening alchemy; Shipwrecks in calmest weather. Cold Russian winters, that appear so barren, As if that nature had forgot the spring. They are the true material fire of hell: They are those flattering bells have all one tune, At weddings, and at funerals. Take from all beasts and from all minerals Their deadly poison ——. You know what whore is. Next the devil adultery, Enters the devil murder.

Now he owes nature nothing. Now mark each circumstance. And look upon this creature was his wife! Had I foreknown his death, as you suggest, I would have bespoke my mourning. You shame your wit and judgment, To call it so. Let me appeal then from this Christian court, To the uncivil Tartar. Well, well, such counterfeit jewels Make true ones oft suspected.

For know, that all your strict-combined heads, Which strike against this mine of diamonds, Shall prove but glassen hammers: These are but feigned shadows of my evils. Terrify babes, my lord, with painted devils, I am past such needless palsy. Pray you, mistress, satisfy me one question: That question Enforceth me break silence: Why, I came to comfort her, And take some course for settling her estate, Because I heard her husband was in debt To you, my lord.

Why, my charity, my charity, which should flow From every generous and noble spirit, To orphans and to widows. Cowardly dogs bark loudest: There are a number of thy coat resemble Your common post-boys. Monticelso, Nemo me impune lacessit. For my part, I do not think she hath a soul so black To act a deed so bloody; if she have, As in cold countries husbandmen plant vines, And with warm blood manure them; even so One summer she will bear unsavoury fruit, And ere next spring wither both branch and root.

The act of blood let pass; only descend To matters of incontinence. Grant I was tempted; Temptation to lust proves not the act: Casta est quam nemo rogavit. You read his hot love to me, but you want My frosty answer. Condemn you me for that the duke did love me? Sum up my faults, I pray, and you shall find, That beauty and gay clothes, a merry heart, And a good stomach to feast, are all, All the poor crimes that you can charge me with. In faith, my lord, you might go pistol flies, The sport would be more noble. But take your course: I have houses, Jewels, and a poor remnant of crusadoes; Would those would make you charitable!

If the devil Did ever take good shape, behold his picture. My lord duke sent to you a thousand ducats The twelfth of August. Who says so but yourself? If you be my accuser, Pray cease to be my judge: Go to, go to. You were born in Venice, honourably descended From the Vittelli: I yet but draw the curtain; now to your picture: You came from thence a most notorious strumpet, And so you have continued.

Nay, hear me, You shall have time to prate. My Lord Brachiano — Alas! You, gentlemen, Flamineo and Marcello, The Court hath nothing now to charge you with, Only you must remain upon your sureties For your appearance. Do the noblemen in Rome Erect it for their wives, that I am sent To lodge there?

I must first have vengeance! I fain would know if you have your salvation By patent, that you proceed thus. Die with those pills in your most cursed maw, Should bring you health! That the last day of judgment may so find you, And leave you the same devil you were before! Instruct me, some good horse-leech, to speak treason; For since you cannot take my life for deeds, Take it for words. I will not weep; No, I do scorn to call up one poor tear To fawn on your injustice: Know this, and let it somewhat raise your spite, Through darkness diamonds spread their richest light.

How strange these words sound! Because now I cannot counterfeit a whining passion for the death of my lady, I will feign a mad humour for the disgrace of my sister; and that will keep off idle questions. Yes, uncle, I was taught to imitate you In virtue, and you must imitate me In colours of your garments. My sweet mother Is ——.

Is there; no, yonder: What do the dead do, uncle? Lord, Lord, that I were dead! I have not slept these six nights. When do they wake? Good God, let her sleep ever! For I have known her wake an hundred nights, When all the pillow where she laid her head Was brine-wet with her tears.

Oh, all of my poor sister that remains! Believe me, I am nothing but her grave; And I shall keep her blessed memory Longer than thousand epitaphs. We endure the strokes like anvils or hard steel, Till pain itself make us no pain to feel. Who shall do me right now? Your comfortable words are like honey: Oh, they have wrought their purpose cunningly, as if they would not seem to do it of malice! In this a politician imitates the devil, as the devil imitates a canon; wheresoever he comes to do mischief, he comes with his backside towards you.

O gold, what a god art thou! Your diversivolent lawyer, mark him! I would he would hear me: If they were racked now to know the confederacy: Religion, oh, how it is commeddled with policy! The first blood shed in the world happened about religion. Would I were a Jew! You are deceived; there are not Jews enough, priests enough, nor gentlemen enough. I must wind him. Physicians, that cure poisons, still do work With counter-poisons.

The god of melancholy turn thy gall to poison, And let the stigmatic wrinkles in thy face, Like to the boisterous waves in a rough tide, One still overtake another. I do thank thee, And I do wish ingeniously for thy sake, The dog-days all year long. Yes; and, like your melancholic hare, Feed after midnight. What a strange creature is a laughing fool! As if man were created to no use But only to show his teeth. My lord, I bring good news. I thank you for your news. Look up again, Flamineo, see my pardon. Why do you laugh?

There was no such condition in our covenant. You shall not seem a happier man than I: Wilt sell me forty ounces of her blood To water a mandrake? Like one That had for ever forfeited the daylight, By being in debt. This laughter scurvily becomes your face: If you will not be melancholy, be angry. See, now I laugh too. A pox upon him; all his reputation, Nay, all the goodness of his family, Is not worth half this earthquake: We see that undermining more prevails Than doth the cannon.

Aim like a cunning fowler, close one eye, That you the better may your game espy.

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Free me, my innocence, from treacherous acts! Sir, I do; And some there are which call it my black-book. Well may the title hold; for though it teach not The art of conjuring, yet in it lurk The names of many devils. Thou canst not reach what I intend to act: Your flax soon kindles, soon is out again, But gold slow heats, and long will hot remain.

For lawyers that will antedate their writs: Here is a general catalogue of knaves: Fold down the leaf, I pray; Good my lord, let me borrow this strange doctrine. I do assure your lordship, You are a worthy member of the State, And have done infinite good in your discovery Of these offenders. Dearly, sir, I thank you: If any ask for me at court, report You have left me in the company of knaves. And thus it happens: Did I want Ten leash of courtesans, it would furnish me; Nay, laundress three armies. See the corrupted use some make of books: Call for her picture?

Thought, as a subtle juggler, makes us deem Things supernatural, which have cause Common as sickness. Statesmen think often they see stranger sights Than madmen. Come, to this weighty business. I am in love, In love with Corombona; and my suit Thus halts to her in verse. I have done it rarely: Oh, the fate of princes! Brachiano, I am now fit for thy encounter: The Pope lies on his death-bed, and their heads Are troubled now with other business Than guarding of a lady. I would entreat you to deliver for me This letter to the fair Vittoria.

With all care and secrecy; Hereafter you shall know me, and receive Thanks for this courtesy. Who was the messenger? I have found out the conveyance. Read it, read it. Oh, I could be mad! Would you have your neck broke? I tell you, duke, I am not in Russia; My shins must be kept whole. Oh, my lord, methodically! As in this world there are degrees of evils, So in this world there are degrees of devils. I do look now for a Spanish fig, or an Italian sallet, daily. All your kindness to me, is like that miserable courtesy of Polyphemus to Ulysses; you reserve me to be devoured last: Oh, sir, I would not go before a politic enemy with my back towards him, though there were behind me a whirlpool.

Can you read, mistress? There are no characters, nor hieroglyphics. You need no comment; I am grown your receiver. Sir, upon my soul, I have not any. Whence was this directed? Confusion on your politic ignorance! How long have I beheld the devil in crystal! Thou hast led me, like an heathen sacrifice, With music, and with fatal yokes of flowers, To my eternal ruin. Woman to man Is either a god, or a wolf. That hand, that cursed hand, which I have wearied With doting kisses! You did name your duchess. What do you call this house? Is this your palace?

To this incontinent college? Fare you well, sir; let me hear no more of you! For your gifts, I will return them all, and I do wish That I could make you full executor To all my sins. O that I could toss myself Into a grave as quickly! I have drunk Lethe: What do you ail, my love? Wilt thou hear me? Can nothing break it? Sister, by this hand I am on your side. And yet, sister, How scurvily this forwardness becomes you!

Shall these eyes, Which have so long time dwelt upon your face, Be now put out? Hand her, my lord, and kiss her: Never shall rage, or the forgetful wine, Make me commit like fault. Be thou at peace with me, let all the world Threaten the cannon. A quiet woman Is a still water under a great bridge; A man may shoot her safely. Am I not low enough? Your dog or hawk should be rewarded better Than I have been. Stop her mouth With a sweet kiss, my lord.

Oh, sir, your little chimneys Do ever cast most smoke! I sweat for you. Couple together with as deep a silence, As did the Grecians in their wooden horse. My lord, supply your promises with deeds; You know that painted meat no hunger feeds. Soft; the same project which the Duke of Florence, Whether in love or gallery I know not Laid down for her escape, will I pursue. And no time fitter than this night, my lord.

You two with your old mother, And young Marcello that attends on Florence, If you can work him to it, follow me: The fish, glad of ease, but ungrateful to her that did it, that the bird may not talk largely of her abroad for non-payment, closeth her chaps, intending to swallow her, and so put her to perpetual silence. Your application is, I have not rewarded The service you have done me. You, sister, are the crocodile: It may appear to some ridiculous Thus to talk knave and madman, and sometimes Come in with a dried sentence, stuffed with sage: So, my lord, I commend your diligence.

Guard well the conclave; and, as the order is, Let none have conference with the cardinals. I could describe to you Their several institutions, with the laws Annexed to their orders; but that time Permits not such discovery. Stand, let me search your dish. Why doth he search the dishes? You that attend on the lord cardinals, Open the window, and receive their viands.

Behold, my Lord of Arragon appears On the church battlements. Denuntio vobis gaudium magnum: Reverendissimus Cardinalis Lorenzo de Monticelso electus est in sedem apostolicam, et elegit sibi nomen Paulum Quartum. Let the Matrona of the Convertites Be apprehended. How fortunate are my wishes!

The hand must act to drown the passionate tongue, I scorn to wear a sword and prate of wrong. Concedimus vobis Apostolicam benedictionem, et remissionem peccatorum. Now, though this be the first day of our seat, We cannot better please the Divine Power, Than to sequester from the Holy Church These cursed persons. Make it therefore known, We do denounce excommunication Against them both: Most of his court are of my faction, And some are of my council.

Noble friend, Our danger shall be like in this design: Give leave part of the glory may be mine. Why did the Duke of Florence with such care Labour your pardon? Come, what devil was that That you were raising? I ask you, How doth the duke employ you, that his bonnet Fell with such compliment unto his knee, When he departed from you? Why, my lord, He told me of a resty Barbary horse Which he would fain have brought to the career, The sault, and the ring galliard: Take your heed, Lest the jade break your neck.

Do you put me off With your wild horse-tricks? Sirrah, you do lie. And yet I care not greatly if I do; Marry, with this preparation. Holy father, I come not to you as an intelligencer, But as a penitent sinner: Dost thou imagine, thou canst slide on blood, And not be tainted with a shameful fall? Bear him these thousand ducats to his lodging. Tell him the Pope hath sent them. Happily That will confirm more than all the rest. His Holiness hath sent you a thousand crowns, And wills you, if you travel, to make him Your patron for intelligence.

His creature ever to be commanded. Oh, the art, The modest form of greatness! He sounds my depth thus with a golden plummet. Flamineo and Hortensio remain. This marriage Confirms me happy. One thing makes it so: Enter Brachiano, Francisco disguised like Mulinassar, Lodovico and Gasparo, bearing their swords, their helmets down, Antonelli, Farnese.

You are nobly welcome. To you, brave Mulinassar, we assign A competent pension: Your wish is, you may leave your warlike swords For monuments in our chapel: You shall have private standings. Noble my lord, most fortunately welcome; [The conspirators here embrace. That while he had been bandying at tennis, He might have sworn himself to hell, and strook His soul into the hazard! Oh, my lord, I would have our plot be ingenious, And have it hereafter recorded for example, Rather than borrow example.

And yet methinks that this revenge is poor, Because it steals upon him like a thief: It had been rare: For by this light, I do not conjure for her. I pray thee pardon her. I beseech you do. Oh, that I had seen Some of your iron days! I pray relate Some of your service to us. I did never wash my mouth with mine own praise, for fear of getting a stinking breath. The duke will expect other discourse from you. I shall never flatter him: I have studied man too much to do that.

What difference is between the duke and I? If I were placed as high as the duke, I should stick as fast, make as fair a show, and bear out weather equally. If this soldier had a patent to beg in churches, then he would tell them stories. I will now give you some politic instruction. Enter Hortensio, a young Lord, Zanche, and two more. Thou art my sworn brother: She knows some of my villainy. I do love her just as a man holds a wolf by the ears; but for fear of her turning upon me, and pulling out my throat, I would let her go to the devil. Now, my precious gipsy. Marry, I am the sounder lover; we have many wenches about the town heat too fast.

Their satin cannot save them: I am confident They have a certain spice of the disease; For they that sleep with dogs shall rise with fleas. Believe it, a little painting and gay clothes make you loathe me. How, love a lady for painting or gay apparel?

And yet, amongst gentlemen, protesting and drinking go together, and agree as well as shoemakers and Westphalia bacon: Is not this discourse better now than the morality of your sunburnt gentleman? Is this your perch, you haggard? Why do you kick her, say? Do, like the geese in the progress; You know where you shall find me.

Hence petty thought of my disgrace! I am sunk in years, and I have vowed never to marry. Nor blame me that this passion I reveal; Lovers die inward that their flames conceal. Of all intelligence this may prove the best: Sure I shall draw strange fowl from this foul nest. I hear a whispering all about the court, You are to fight: What is the quarrel? Publish not a fear, Which would convert to laughter: I have heard you say, giving my brother suck He took the crucifix between his hands, [Enter Flamineo.

And broke a limb off. Do you turn your gall up? Oh, mother, now remember what I told Of breaking of the crucifix! There are some sins, which heaven doth duly punish In a whole family. This it is to rise By all dishonest means! Let all men know, That tree shall long time keep a steady foot, Whose branches spread no wider than the root. Pray leave him, lady: Oh, you abuse me, you abuse me, you abuse me! Will you lose him for a little painstaking? I would not pray for him yet. He lies, he lies! The God of heaven forgive thee! Dost not wonder I pray for thee? Mother, pray tell me How came he by his death?

I pray thee, peace. And we command that none acquaint our duchess With this sad accident. For you, Flamineo, Hark you, I will not grant your pardon. Only a lease of your life; and that shall last But for one day: Noble youth, I pity thy sad fate! Now to the barriers. They fight at barriers; first single pairs, then three to three. Away with him to torture. There are some great ones that have hand in this, And near about me. A plague upon you! We have too much of your cunning here already: Oh, I am gone already!

O thou strong heart! Remove the boy away. Had I infinite worlds, They were too little for thee: What say you, screech-owls, is the venom mortal? I that have given life to offending slaves, And wretched murderers, have I not power To lengthen mine own a twelvemonth? O thou soft natural death, that art joint-twin To sweetest slumber! On pain of death, let no man name death to me: It is a word infinitely terrible.

Withdraw into our cabinet. To see what solitariness is about dying princes! He was a kind of statesman, that would sooner have reckoned how many cannon-bullets he had discharged against a town, to count his expense that way, than think how many of his valiant and deserving subjects he lost before it. Wilt hear some of my court-wisdom? To reprehend princes is dangerous; and to over-commend some of them is palpable lying. He talks of battles and monopolies, Levying of taxes; and from that descends To the most brain-sick language.

His mind fastens On twenty several objects, which confound Deep sense with folly. Such a fearful end May teach some men that bear too lofty crest, Though they live happiest yet they die not best. See, here he comes. Indeed, I am to blame: For did you ever hear the dusky raven Chide blackness? No, some fried dog-fish; your quails feed on poison. That old dog-fox, that politician, Florence! Why, there, In a blue bonnet, and a pair of breeches With a great cod-piece: Do you not know him?

How the rogue cuts capers! It should have been in a halter. He will be drunk; avoid him: Look you, six grey rats that have lost their tails Crawl upon the pillow; send for a rat-catcher: See how firmly he doth fix his eye Upon the crucifix. Oh, hold it constant! It settles his wild spirits; and so his eyes Melt into tears. Domine Brachiane, solebas in bello tutus esse tuo clypeo; nunc hunc clypeum hosti tuo opponas infernali. You that were held the famous politician, Whose art was poison. And thou shalt die like a poor rogue. Oh, the cursed devil Comes to himself a gain!

Strangle him in private. Will you call him again to live in treble torments? For charity, for christian charity, avoid the chamber. You would prate, sir? This is a true-love knot Sent from the Duke of Florence. The snuff is out. Oh, yes, yes; Had women navigable rivers in their eyes, They would dispend them all.

Surely, I wonder Why we should wish more rivers to the city, When they sell water so good cheap. Oh, the rare tricks of a Machiavellian! Now have the people liberty to talk, And descant on his vices. One were better be a thresher. I would fain speak with this duke yet. You shall hear that hereafter. I would have you look up, sir; these court tears Claim not your tribute to them: I knew last night, by a sad dream I had, Some mischief would ensue: Wilt thou believe me, sweeting?

Verily I did dream You were somewhat bold with me: Come, sir; good fortune tends you. I did tell you I would reveal a secret: In coin and jewels I shall at least make good unto your use An hundred thousand crowns. What harms it justice?

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Now, to his face — all comparisons were hateful. Wise was the courtly peacock, that, being a great minion, and being compared for beauty by some dottrels that stood by to the kingly eagle, said the eagle was a far fairer bird than herself, not in respect of her feathers, but in respect of her long talons: When you are dead, father, said he, I hope that I shall ride in the saddle. Study your prayers, sir, and be penitent: I am falling to pieces already. I care not, though, like Anacharsis, I were pounded to death in a mortar: It is the pleasure, sir, of the young duke, That you forbear the presence, and all rooms That owe him reverence.

So the wolf and the raven are very pretty fools when they are young. It is your office, sir, to keep me out? Verily, Master Courtier, extremity is not to be used in all offices: Doth he make a court-ejectment of me? Your reverend mother Is grown a very old woman in two hours. I will see them: I would have these herbs grow upon his grave, When I am dead and rotten.

Will you make me such a fool? Can blood so soon be washed out? Cowslip water is good for the memory: Do you hear, sir? Call for the robin redbreast, and the wren, [Cornelia doth this in several forms of distraction. Let holy Church receive him duly, Since he paid the church-tithes truly. Now the wares are gone, we may shut up shop. Bless you all, good people. I pray leave me. I can stand thee: What a mockery hath death made thee! In what place art thou? Or in the cursed dungeon?

I pray speak, sir: This is beyond melancholy. I do dare my fate To do its worst. For my part, I have paid All my debts: Sit down, sit down. Nay, stay, blowze, you may hear it: The doors are fast enough. Yes, yes, with wormwood water; you shall taste Some of it presently. Come, therefore, here is pen and ink, set down What you will give me. I will read it: Thou hast a devil in thee; I will try If I can scare him from thee. My lord hath left me yet two cases of jewels, Shall make me scorn your bounty; you shall see them.

For your own safety give him gentle language. Look, these are better far at a dead lift, Than all your jewel house. And yet, methinks, These stones have no fair lustre, they are ill set. Turn this horror from me! What do you want? Is not all mine yours? Pray thee, good woman, do not trouble me With this vain worldly business; say your prayers: Neither yourself nor I should outlive him The numbering of four hours.

For my death, I did propound it voluntarily, knowing, If he could not be safe in his own court, Being a great duke, what hope then for us? Fool thou art, to think that politicians DO use to kill the effects or injuries And let the cause live. Shall we groan in irons, Or be a shameful and a weighty burthen To a public scaffold?

This is my resolve: My life hath done service to other men, My death shall serve mine own turn: Are you grown an atheist? Makes us forsake that which was made for man, The world, to sink to that was made for devils, Eternal darkness! I pray thee yet remember, Millions are now in graves, which at last day Like mandrakes shall rise shrieking. Leave your prating, For these are but grammatical laments, Feminine arguments: I have held it A wretched and most miserable life, Which is not able to die.

Only, by all my love, let me entreat you, Since it is most necessary one of us Do violence on ourselves, let you or I Be her sad taster, teach her how to die. And, O contemptible physic! These are two cupping-glasses, that shall draw All my infected blood out. Whither shall I go now? O Lucian, thy ridiculous purgatory! Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, Or all the elements by scruples, I know not, Nor greatly care.

Of all deaths, the violent death is best; For from ourselves it steals ourselves so fast, The pain, once apprehended, is quite past. In thine own engine. I tread the fire out That would have been my ruin. Will you be perjured? Oh, that we had such an oath to minister, and to be so well kept in our courts of justice! This thy death Shall make me, like a blazing ominous star, Look up and tremble. Shall I have no company? Oh, yes, thy sins Do run before thee to fetch fire from hell, To light thee thither. Oh, I smell soot, Most stinking soot! Wilt thou outlive me? I am not wounded.

I knew, One time or other, you would find a way To give me a strong potion. O men, That lie upon your death-beds, and are haunted With howling wives! How cunning you were to discharge! We lay our souls to pawn to the devil for a little pleasure, and a woman makes the bill of sale. That ever man should marry!

There was a shoal of virtuous horse leeches! Here are two other instruments. A matachin it seems by your drawn swords. Yes; and that Moor the duke gave pension to Was the great Duke of Florence. You shall not take justice forth from my hands, Oh, let me kill her! Let all that do ill, take this precedent: Man may his fate foresee, but not prevent; And of all axioms this shall win the prize: Oh, your gentle pity!

Princes give rewards with their own hands, But death or punishment by the hands of other. Naught grieves but that you are too few to feed The famine of our vengeance. What dost think on? To prate were idle. O thou glorious strumpet! Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough, Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman: If thou be, do thy office in right form; Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness. Oh, thou hast been a most prodigious comet! Kill the Moor first. You shall not kill her first; behold my breast: I will be waited on in death; my servant Shall never go before me.

Methinks, fear should dissolve thee into air. Conceit can never kill me. I have blood As red as either of theirs: Strike, strike, With a joint motion. A Toledo, or an English fox? I ever thought a culter should distinguish The cause of my death, rather than a doctor. Search my wound deeper; tent it with the steel That made it. Oh, my greatest sin lay in my blood! I love thee now; if woman do breed man, She ought to teach him manhood. She hath no faults, who hath the art to hide them. My soul, like to a ship in a black storm, Is driven, I know not whither.

Vittoria and Bracciano ignore the strictures of the Church on adultery and homicide. Vittoria herself refuses to stay in the prescribed role for women in her famous trial scene. She appropriates male language in her own defense, saying that she must "personate masculine virtue. Further, none of the characters with the exception of Cornelia and Isabella acts in anything but their own interest.

But it is Flamineo, more than any other character, who places the whole of creation in jeopardy. In the murder of his brother, he reenacts the first homicide, that of Cain's against Abel. Renaissance audiences would have recognized in this action a complete rejection of order and an embrace of chaos. In many ways, The White Devil serves as a cautionary tale for its audiences of what can happen when the proper hierarchical structures are ignored: The Revenge Tragedy was a popular genre of drama during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. Thomas Kyd 's The Spanish Tragedy is one of the earliest examples of this type of play.

Likewise, William Shakespeare 's Hamlet has often been considered a revenge tragedy. According to William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman in their book A Handbook to Literature, revenge tragedies generally include the revenge of a father for his son, or vice versa, often directed by a ghost. Other characteristics may include insanity, suicide, intrigue, sensational horror, and a scheming villain. Webster plays with these conventions in The White Devil.

Vittoria, Flamineo, and Bracciano are responsible for the deaths of Isabella and Camillo, and the revenge perpetrated on the threesome is not by fathers or sons. Rather, the entire revenge tragedy motif is a study of lust and sexuality. The original set of murders takes place because of an adulterous relationship between Bracciano and Vittoria. Ultimately, although it is Isabella's family who arranges for the slaying of the villains, it is Lodovico, a man who lusts after Isabella himself, who actually kills the three.

In addition, Flamineo feigns insanity during the court scene, not to further his revenge plot, but rather to escape punishment for his role as both panderer and murderer. Flamineo himself is visited by the ghost of Isabella; her avengers are not. While Flamineo is the most scheming of villains, he is outdone by the scheming of the revengers—Francisco, Duke of Florence, and, ironically, Cardinal Monticelso, who later becomes Pope Paul IV. Finally, Webster uses sensational horror in this play; nearly all the characters are dead by the end of the play, murdered in spectacular fashion.

Although Webster ably uses the conventions, he does so in ways that would be unexpected to his audience. Thus, he uses the conventions of the revenge tragedy genre in order to comment on the corruption and immorality of the royal court of England without seeming to do so. Another convention of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage is the dumb show. This is a pantomime included within the structure of the play to show some dramatic scene without dialogue. In The White Devil , Webster chooses to include two dumb shows: Dramatists such as Webster had specific reasons for choosing to incorporate a dumb show in the play rather than present the action directly.

Sometimes, a writer might want to condense a very complicated set of actions into a shorter time frame. Another reason a dumb show might be included is to somehow set the action portrayed in the dumb show apart from the characters in the play and from the audience. Dumb shows often reveal hidden motives, making visible what the characters in the play strive to keep secret. Kate Aughterson in her book Webster: The Tragedies argues that the dumb shows are particularly important in The White Devil.

She writes, "Their silent delivery reinforces our sense of a claustrophobic, self-interested political world that is propelled by inner desires and demons which remain hidden by the surface world. The dumb show itself becomes emblematic of the larger drama. Consequently, those around him constantly vied for position.

James was famous for his favorites, men he seemed almost romantically attached to. His life style, and the gifts he gave to his favorites, expanded the royal debt to such an extent that it led to bitter disagreements with Parliament, who refused to pay for the King's pleasures.

At the heart of James' rule was his utter belief in the doctrine of the divine right of kings. That is, James believed that he was chosen by God to rule absolutely over his subjects and his realm. He believed that he could make and break rules and laws as he saw fit.

The White Devil by John Webster

This led to a chaotic and difficult time for those under him, as statutes of the realm could not be considered stable or permanent. Likewise, although James was a great patron of the theatre of his day, he enforced strict censorship over the content of the plays that could be presented. Thus, playwrights had to be very careful about the subject matter they addressed.

Shakespeare, for example, chose to write Macbeth in order to flatter James I, who was interested in the Scottish succession that led to his investiture as king of Scotland, and in witchcraft and the supernatural. Webster, on the other hand, had to disguise his contempt for the court of James I by setting his play in far-off Catholic Italy. Although there was no clear cut understanding of the role of the female monarch in Britain, by the time James I ascended to the English throne, there had been three powerful women on the thrones of the island, dominating the politics of the previous half-century.

Mary embraced her mother's faith, and her marriage to Philip of Spain placed her squarely in the Catholic camp. During her reign, there was widespread persecution of Protestants, earning her the name of Bloody Mary. Queen Mary died without an heir, and there was considerable turmoil surrounding the succession. Their reasoning was that Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon was illegal and that his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn , consequently, was not a marriage.

In the eyes of Catholics in England, Scotland, and across Europe, this rendered the young Elizabeth, Henry's daughter by Anne, a bastard and thus, ineligible to inherit the throne. Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland just eight days after her birth in but was promptly sent to France by her mother, who served as regent in Scotland. In France, Mary was betrothed to the heir to the French crown and raised as a Catholic in the French court.

She returned to Scotland at the death of her young husband and assumed the leadership of the country. This, in addition to her inappropriate intimacy with her Italian secretary, David Riccio, further alienated her from the Protestant factions in Scotland. Ultimately, Mary was forced to abdicate her throne to her son in and flee Scotland to England, seeking protection from her cousin Elizabeth, who was crowned queen of England in She lived under house arrest for nearly twenty years.

At the same time, however, Mary continued to hatch plots with her French family abroad and Catholic supporters in Scotland and England to overthrow Elizabeth's moderate Protestant government. Reluctantly, Elizabeth had Mary executed for treason. Under Elizabeth, the hostilities between Catholics and Protestants went underground. Some of the population continued to object to a female monarch nonetheless.

Thus, the issue of the monarchy became increasingly murky in the midst of both the anti-Catholicism and the misogyny of the Reformed Church. When Elizabeth died without an heir, English men were relieved to be able to find a monarch of the appropriate gender and religion in James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England.

His marriage to Anne of Denmark , who converted to Catholicism, however, again raised the specter of a Catholic succession. In , Roman Catholic hostility toward the English government and monarchy flared in the failed Guy Fawkes gunpowder plot, in which a group of rebels attempted to blow up both the Parliament and the king. As a result, Catholics were subjected to increasing harassment across the country. The King James Version is a poetic masterpiece and makes the Bible available to a growing number of people.

The King James Version of the Bible is still in wide use among English-speaking Christians, in spite of a growing number of translations in contemporary English.

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While most English people are either secular or members of the state sponsored Church of England , there is little or no discrimination against Catholic citizens. Women have few rights under the law in England. They may not serve in any political or legal capacity, their inherited wealth is under the direction of their husbands, and their chances for employment are nearly non-existent.

English women enjoy full privileges of citizenship under the law and serve in every capacity in English culture. The twin anxieties of religion and gender, then, brought about by this historical context, inform Webster's play. He is able in The White Devil to demonize both women and the Catholic Church in the characters of Vittoria, Zanche, and Cardinal Monticelso, who later becomes the pope. By couching his play in these terms, Webster is able to make what would otherwise be considered subversive statements about the rule of James I himself, neatly hidden in the familiar language of anti-Catholicism and misogyny.

The White Devil , however, has not always been well received by audiences and critics. Webster himself complained about the first staging of the play and its reception, blaming the weather, the venue, and the audience. Nevertheless, the play continued to be performed throughout the seventeenth century with success. This was not the case in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when, Margaret Loftus Ranald notes in John Webster that there were no performances of the play at all. The chaotic, bleak world of The White Devil appealed to audiences and critics alike in the twentieth century; over ten major productions were mounted, including one by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Likewise, scholars who study the play have found much to write about in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

According to Don D. Moore in his book John Webster and His Critics: Leavis did much to bring Webster into the critical spotlight. Indeed, Moore writes, "Almost all of the important later Webster criticism owes something to their doctrines. In the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, new historicist sometimes called cultural materialist and feminist critics in particular have found much to occupy themselves in the text of The White Devil. Dympna Callaghan, for example, examines the way the white Vittoria and the black Zanche mirror each other.

Further, she argues that "it is untamed sexual desire that leads to Vittoria's imprisonment. Others, such as Sheryl Stevenson and Laura Behling, are concerned with the importance of sexual difference in the play. Stevenson, writing in Sexuality and Politics in Renaissance Drama, argues that it is through "their sudden accession to unrestrained language [that] these women are perceived by male characters as not simply unwomanly but inhuman. Cultural materialist critic Jonathan Dollimore, in an alternative reading, examines the way that the power structure of a society both defines and destroys identity.

He argues, "It is in the death scene that we see fully the play's sense of how individuals can actually be constituted by the destructive social forces working upon them. Although the text of The White Devil has not changed significantly since its first publication, the way critics view the play has changed dramatically, from a straightforward critique of the plot of the play, to a consideration of the violation of the unities, to finally a full consideration of the bleak and shifting world Webster creates for his characters. In this, critics use their own historical contexts to find meaning in The White Devil.

Henningfeld is a professor of English literature and composition who has written widely for educational and academic publications. In this essay, Henningfeld uses new historical and feminist criticism to demonstrate the ways that The White Devil reflects and reinforces Elizabethan and Jacobean ideas about women. In recent years, new historical and feminist critics have provided some of the most compelling readings of The White Devil by placing the play within the contexts of the culture from which it comes.

New historicists, in particular, believe that literary works do not exist in a vacuum, but are rather artifacts of a given culture. That is, a play such as The White Devil does not exist apart from the other forms of discourse circulating in the culture that produces it. These forms of discourse might include pamphlets, art work, legal texts, religious teachings, and medical knowledge. These texts both reflect and reproduce cultural assumptions, or "what everybody knows. Likewise, feminist critics often employ new historical methods to consider the ways that a culture constructs the idea of woman.

The assumptions a culture makes about women can sometimes be uncovered by examining the cultural artifacts. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as in any age, literary depictions of women necessarily reflect contemporary understandings of the physical, religious, and legal status of women.

In addition, the literary constructions of female characters also often reveal deep-seated cultural anxieties about gender, sexuality, and social stability. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that in The White Devil , Webster both reflects and reinforces contemporary ideas about women. Moreover, Webster engages the very patriarchal structures that serve to maintain the position of women in the culture, most notably the church and the state.

That Webster's female characters seem so ambiguous in their roles reveals the essentially ambiguous position occupied by women in Jacobean England. To begin, an important, yet often neglected, place to look for an understanding of women of the period is in the medical literature.

Throughout the period, writers debate the nature of women and the purpose of their bodies. Because men are seen as the norm, female bodies are considered oddly "other. Virtually all contemporary seventeenth century writers agree, however, that women are inferior to men physically; whereas men are active and strong, women are weak and passive. In addition, women are more prone to the demands of their bodies. Their monthly periods, their susceptibility to impregnation, and their ability to nurture and sustain children through lactation all demonstrate this concentration on the body.

Thus, while men are associated with the function of the mind and reason, women are associated with the function of the body and passion. In this, women are closer to beasts than to men. This thinking, of course, leads to an understanding of women as the sites of unbridled sexual passion, a passion that was very dangerous for the culture. According to Kate Aughterson, "female sexuality was publicly perceived as dangerous and even murderous, and … it was also visibly seen to be subject to systematic patriarchal control and potential abuse. Webster demonstrates from the beginning of The White Devil these ideas.

Thus, Camillo's first response to his concern about Vittoria's chastity is to consider locking her up. Flamineo reinforces the commonly held ideas about women by telling Camillo that locking her up might produce the opposite of what Camillo wants. Flamineo states, "These politic enclosures for paltry mutton makes more rebellion in the flesh than all the provocative electuaries doctors have uttered since last Jubilee.

It would be easy to dismiss Flamineo as nothing more than a misogynistic villain; however, these sentiments would have been very familiar to Webster's audiences. While they might reject the speaker of these ideas, it is likely that there would be some nodding in assent to the ideas themselves. After all, for that audience, this is something "everybody knows.

A second important source for information about women is in the religious writing of the period. Much of this thought is based on earlier writings from late antiquity and the Middle Ages , first inscribed by the early Church fathers. These texts provide women with two models: According to this theology, women as a group bear the entire blame for the loss of Eden.

This model, like the medical one, also demonstrates the belief that women are both filled with lust and sexual desire and that this desire is dangerous for all of creation. The world of The White Devil , then, is a very dangerous place indeed, since from the opening lines the reader understands that this is a world reduced to lust, corruption, and sexuality. Lodovico, who both opens and closes the play, considers even Fortune to be female, stating, "Fortune's a right whore.

Even Fortune is figured as a prostitute, foreshadowing the traffic in human flesh that underpins the entire play. Clearly, in a world where everything can be bought and sold, everything is prostitution. Flamineo, for example, sells himself to Bracciano in order to keep himself in the style to which he has become accustomed.

Indeed, he tells his mother his history of selling himself: Moreover, in his willingness to sell himself, he, like Fortune, is a prostitute, and by extension, gendered female. Ironically, although it is Flamineo, acting as pimp, who sells his sister, it is Vittoria herself who goes to trial and is punished for adultery.

Twenty-first century audiences might see Vittoria's choice to engage in the assignation with Bracciano as an opportunity to better herself financially and materially. It is likely, however, that Jacobean audiences would see her acquiescence to Bracciano as the expression of her lust-filled body. Moreover, for the patriarchal structures maintaining stability in the culture, Vittoria's adultery is far more dangerous than is Flamineo's pandering. The reason for this is clear, as an examination of the legal theory and records of the day reveal. The inheritance of property and wealth in England from the time of the Norman Conquest into the Jacobean period is patrilinear.

That is, the wealth moved from father to eldest son. Concurrent with this system, however, is the nagging anxiety that a man can never know for sure that the son who will inherit his property is really of his own bloodline. Should a wife engage in an extramarital affair, it is possible that a husband's wealth could pass to his rival's son. Thus, the culture exhibits ongoing and obsessive preoccupation with cuckolding.

Furthermore, Vittoria's appropriation of male language in her trial presents yet another dangerous challenge to the patriarchal structures of the culture. Legal writing of the period reports that women have no voice in court. They are unable to serve as lawyers or on juries. Rather, except in rare instances of rape or the murder of their husbands, women are legally silenced. Humbly thus Thus low, to the most worthy and respected Lieger ambassadors, my modesty And womanhood I tender; but withal So entangled in a cursed accusation That my defence, of force like Perseus, Must personate masculine virtue.

Find me but guilty, sever head from body, We'll part good friends; I scorn to hold my life At yours or any man's entreaty, sir. That Vittoria's statement is heard at all is rare; that she chooses to liken herself to a man, surprising; and that she "scorns to hold [her] life … at … any man's entreaty" is downright dangerous. For the legal, religious, and physiological truths of the day to have any power at all, each member of the culture must agree to play his or her part. In this case, Vittoria clearly does not. Consequently, while her affair with Bracciano threatens his bloodline, her speech in the court threatens the entire world.

It is fitting, then, that in the final scene, it is Giovanni, Bracciano's rightful heir, who witnesses the death of Lodovico, and orders all the bodies, including the masculinized Vittoria and the feminized Flamineo, to be removed. By so doing, he reestablishes himself and patriarchy, thus stabilizing the world.

Only through the eradication of both Vittoria and Flamineo can proper gender coding be reestablished. Given the cultural understanding of, and preoccupation with, the subversive nature of women's sexuality, therefore, it is little wonder that this play takes as its central character a woman who refuses to be controlled by the patriarchal structures designed to hold her in her place: Throughout the period, the role of women becomes increasingly problematic as the culture struggles with changing physiological, legal, and religious ideas.

Thus, because The White Devil is only a play, and not reality, Webster's audience can examine from afar the cultural assumptions underpinning their own changing world view through what John Russell Brown calls "Webster's presentation of an entire world, of a divided and changing society. Guyette, a longtime journalist, received a bachelor's degree in English writing from the University of Pittsburgh.

In this essay, Guyette describes how John Webster's depiction of court life in Renaissance Italy can be viewed as a cautionary tale that still has relevance today. The White Devil is based on a true story that occurred about 30 years prior to the writing of this Elizabethan drama circa The core of historical truth was this: In the black-magic lantern of Webster's imagination, it all made for darkly glittering theater.

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Amidst that dark glitter, the play's major themes are relatively easy to discern. Travis Bogard, in an essay that appears in Shakespeare's Contemporaries, identifies three prominent threads that run throughout: His view is well summarized by the character Vittoria as she utters her dying words: This is a brutal, blood-gorged play populated by characters that have not a trace of morality. They lie and scheme and kill. They betray each other—even members of their own family—without a second's thought. To feed their greed for wealth and power.

Take for example Flamineo, a truly despicable character that stops at nothing in a desperate, ultimately futile attempt to obtain riches. He falsely flatters those in power, murders his own brother, and offers up his sister as little more than a prostitute in order to ingratiate himself to the duke, Brachiano. The duke, too, is a despicable person, willing to betray and murder in order to obtain the woman he covets. In this sense, lust is greed's close cousin. Both are base motives, and, as this play demonstrates, blindly pursuing them leads to ruin. Like her brother Flamineo, Vittoria has few redeeming qualities.

To clear a path to the altar, she encourages Brachiano to murder both his wife and Vittoria's husband. Brachiano complies by having both of them killed. Neither spouse, both of whom are innocent of any wrongdoing, deserves such a cruel fate; that is highlighted in particular by the death of Brachiano's wife, Isabella, who receives her fatal dose of poison by lovingly kissing a portrait of her husband.

A more ironic death is difficult to imagine. Bogard's observations are certainly accurate as far as they go. There is no doubt Webster's play is an indictment of a specific time and place. It is also, in terms of the broad picture, historically accurate. Perhaps the most famous account of the political culture that flourished in Renaissance Italy can be found in the The Prince, a book written by Niccolo Machiavelli in the early s. It is from his name that the term Machiavellian is derived. This term is used to describe a person who sees morality as having no place in political affairs.

In Machiavelli's view, when it comes to the quest for power and political dominance, any means is justified if it leads to achieving the desired result. In his two-volume book The Outline of History, author H. Wells describes Machiavelli as the epitome of all that was wrong in the society that spawned him. This man manifestly had no belief in any righteousness at all. Wells goes on to describe Machiavelli as a "morally blind man living in a little world of morally blind men. It is clear that his style of thought was the style of thought of the Court of his time.

Harrison describes their overall thrust this way: It is inhabited by people, driven like animals, and perhaps like men, only by their instincts, but more blindly and more ruinously. This is ultimately the most sickly, distressing feature of Webster's characters, their foul and indestructible vitality. A play of Webster's is full of the feverish and ghastly turmoil of a nest of maggots. What is it that prevents a society from remaining mired in that sort of primal muck? The answer can be found by understanding exactly what is absent from Webster's world: Whatever its source, a society must have a foundation of rules defining right and wrong.

It must have some sort of moral base that dictates what is acceptable conduct. Otherwise, the result is chaos found in this play, with people reduced to the lowest type of life form as they seek to brutally satisfy their greed and lust, their quest for power, and their desire for revenge. Webster seems to be saying that these instincts are indeed primal, and without some sort of social contract to keep them in check, the result will be a world in which no one is safe. This play is not a pleasant one. It is as bloody as any modern tale of gangsters or drug lords. But the message it contains is important because mankind's baser instincts have not disappeared over the centuries since this play was written.

Look around at different parts of the world today and examples of brutal dictatorships, where the only rule is that of the iron fist, can still be found far too often. But the opposite is also true: Without such a moral compass guiding society, man is reduced to living under the law of the jungle—even though he may wear jewels and clothes of fine brocade—with survival depending on sheer power, treachery, and cunning stealth. It is a life of torture, a life without peace. By focusing a critical eye on the culture of the Italian court of the sixteenth century, Webster illustrates a more universal lesson, which is that life in a society that lacks a moral foundation is truly hellish.

Eliot's The Waste Land. The play centers on the treacherous affair of the Duke of Brachiano and Vittoria Corombona. Into this Italian wasteland, a symbolic knight appears in the form of Vittoria's brother, Marcello, who is murdered by his own brother, the ignominious Flamineo. As a consequence of Marcello's death, the redemptive force is aborted, several Italian duchies are in fragments, and the play ends devoid of hope.

Aborted efforts, cultures in fragments, and the implied absence of hope are conditions which aptly describe Eliot's Waste Land. The lines are from the dirge which she sings over the body of Marcello, her dead son:. Call for the robin red breast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flow'rs cover The friendless bodies of unburied men… But keep the wolf far thence: In the context of the play, Cornelia's plaintive desire for the burial of her son's body exceeds a simple wish for propriety.