The White Devil

I find that, the more plays I read, the more I'm able to focus in on what is important about that play--what makes it unique, what connects it to other stuff. Webster's The White Devil, though, is going to be hard. It's so like The Duchess of Malfi and yet not . . . I'm not sure yet what I think about it. Maybe writing will help.



I made a Wordle of the play. It took a long time because, after I made it the first time, I realized that I had to take out speech prefixes and stuff like that. I could still benefit by taking out some stuff but I really liked how the "ha" is inside the "oh". And this disproves something I thought--that "wolf" would be among the most used words in the play. It still may be important, though--it's in the first scene when Lodovico describes Fortune, and it is one of the most quoted lines of the play as Brachiano rages at Vittoria, saying that "woman to man is either a god or a wolf," either worshipped or a devourer.

This play has a lot in common with the Duchess of Malfi--a tragic female brought down by her unsanctioned sexual desires who faces trial by her peers with defiance and death with bravery, whose brother takes a greater interest in her sex life than strictly necessary. A trio of brothers-in-law take her and Brachiano, her noble lover, down. And the survivor of the bloodshed, the innocent young son and heir, has the last word in the play.

I am interested in how this play constructs itself and its characters as theatrical. There is the Isabella's performance in front of her brothers, of course, as the vengeful wronged wife (again withholding sex!) from her husband, when in actuality he is the one who has spurned her and said that they will never sleep together again. There is the dumb-show in which we see the separate murders of Isabella and Camillo through spirits or sorcery, I'm not sure. But the trial is as consciously theatrical as this, and more interesting for the meaning of the play. Vittoria, knowing that she's "on show," demands to be questioned and sentenced in plain language, not in Latin. She wants those listening to be able to understand the proceedings, probably to gain their sympathy. It begins to work, too; the ambassadors believe that the cardinal is "too bitter" in his attack on her.

Vittoria also shows an acute awareness of the way theater and public shows work. She says that the names of "Whore and Murderess" proceed from those charging her, not from herself, and refuses to accept their projection. She has a projection of her own--that of the staunchly innocent wrongly-accused--but she knows that people on stage often are subjected to the ideas of others, so she fights this. When she is taken from the courtroom to the house of convertites, she cries out histrionically "A rape! A rape!" framing this moment on her own terms, rather than letting those watching interpret it as a criminal being brought to justice.

Of course, the murders are significant, too, and theatrical in their own ways. I'm indebted to my friend Victoria for this idea, that the spouses, in the moment of their murder, are enacting normative spousal roles--Isabella, the chaste and dutiful wife, is poisoned by kissing the picture of her husband before bed. Camillo, the husband whose masculinity is threatened by rumors of his wife cuckolding him, is killed supposedly in the act of jumping a hurdle with a horse, the self-consciously showy act of a manly man.

And then there's Flamineo. I do not know what to do with this guy. He's a malcontent, a very Bosola, in some ways--except not as likeable. He's sort of whiny--"I was never rich enough, and now that I'm trying to advance myself in the world, I get caught!"--and heartless. He doesn't really like his sister or Brachiano that much but he helps them because he wants to help himself. And when it doesn't work out, he just sort of fumes about it and keeps making terrible plans. I like his name--he sort of flares up and flames out like his name.

There are some really interesting Hamlet resonances in this play, too--a ghost, a skull, a grief-maddened female singing and strewing flowers about. But I don't really have time to think about them too much. Onto the next play! I hope I get to come back to this one, though; Webster is good (when he's not writing comedy.)

edit: After listening to Emma Smith's lecture on this play, I see more Duchess correspondences. The male relatives are angry/vengeful because of a slight on their house (the Duke's unfaithfulness to, and murder of, Isabella; some "strong-thighed bargeman" "leaping" their sister the Duchess). For both, there is a challenge to posterity. If the Duke is sleeping around on Isabella, might he not raise some bastard child above Giovanni? If the Duchess is having an adulterous relationship, might she not raise bastards to inherit in her line, tainting her house's name?

Also, both Bosola and Flamineo act sort of as spies or go-betweens. I'm not sure if this is that significant, but I thought I'd add it.

Anything for a Quiet Life

Another play that comments extensively on the woman question, this one written in 1621 by Middleton and Webster (of all people) borrows a lot from Dekker's The Patient Grissill and Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. It centers around three couples where the wives want to teach the husbands a lesson.

The first couple, the Cressinghams, are newlyweds. Sir Cressingham is old, landed, and dabbles in alchemy. His wife, Lady Cressingham, is young, beautiful, and demanding. She browbeats him (withholding sex) into giving up alchemy, gaming, and an old family manor so that she can use the money to buy some new property in London which will give them more revenue with rents. She is a canny businesswoman and once the deal is done, treats her husband like a child and gives him an allowance. She is also a harsh and unloving stepmother to his children, sending the two young ones away and selling the land that is to be the eldest son's inheritance.

In the end, though, it is discovered that she has reverse-Patient Grisel'd this guy, pretending to be harsh and demanding to get him to give up his bad habits, but actually willing to be guided by him. He gets his lands back and they are reconciled. I have to wonder, though, how true her repentance can be. She's willing to be guided by him, but only after she's guided him away from all the bad stuff in his life? It seems more likely that the repentance is a ploy to continue to gain her husband's and step-son's favor in the future.

The second couple, the Camlets, are housing Cressingham's younger children. The wife, Rachel, is upset at this. She is a loud, complaining woman who is certain that their two wards are actually bastards of Camlet's. She leaves him, swears to never sleep with him again, and only comes back when Camlet's resourceful employee George tricks her into believing that Camlet is going to divorce her and marry a new woman (echoes of Grisel again!). She comes back, penitent, and agrees to many demands, one of which is that she keep her voice low and doesn't use harsh words like "rogue" or "rascal." She agrees, and this is the play's tamed wife--tamed not by the husband, though, but by the tricky servant.

The third couple, the Knavebees, are playing out (with a different ending) the wittol subplot of Chaste Maid. Sib Knavesbee is beautiful and intelligent; her husband, though, is a dolt, a lawyer who asks a nobleman for a promotion. The nobleman, Sir Beaufort, agrees on the condition that he gets to sleep with Sib. Knavesbee is excited at this prospect, agrees, and tries to trick Sib into it by telling her that he has been unfaithful to their marriage (thus motivating or condoning her unfaithfulness?). He says a bunch of hilarious stuff, like after this bit of sex with Beaufort, that their relationship will begin again, fresh and new, and it will be like a totally faithful marriage.

Sib doesn't agree or disagree to the plot; instead, she gets angry at her impending prostitution and decides to trick both men. She tells Beaufort that she will sleep with him if she also gets to sleep with his page. He is upset and leaves. She then tells Knavebee that she slept with Beaufort and now, having slept with a knight, she is no longer interested in her husband sexually. Both men are repaid for trying to prostitute her out and, after threatening to kill himself, she and Knavesbee are reconciled.

I think it's interesting that a bit of with-holding sex enters into each plot here (as in Lysistrata and The Tamer Tamed). It doesn't work out so well for Rachel Camlet; this is, after all, a play for the masses and we must have a shrew-taming somewhere, right? Keep those women in their place? And while we can't be certain about Lady Cressingham's motives, at the end she is restored to a normative position within her hierarchical marriage. It seems like the play dramatizes a spectrum of spouse-taming tactics and effectiveness. As long as the marriage bed is kept pure (Camlet and Knavesbee) and there is enough money to go around (Cressingham), women are content to stay within the cage (to use Julia's term from The Patient Grissill) of marriage, even if that means being (or seeming) dutiful and quiet or, in Sib's situation, staying with an idiot wittol of a husband. Which dramatizes another point that Moll Cutpurse makes in The Roaring Girl about the fact that sometimes women, who are the fish to men's fishermen, are actually the fish consuming the male bait from a gilded hook. Women gots to get fed, and whether they do it by staying an unsatisfactory marriage or by taking other measures, it's not entirely true that they are being completely controlled by the system.