The White Devil

Abstract

Much work has been done on establishing the sources of Webster’s play, and comparing the sources with the finished product.1 It appears that Webster’s version of the events that had actually taken place in Italy a generation earlier is substantially modified, and that the modifications do more than simply tidy the story up. All subsequent events in Webster’s version stem from this murder of Isabella, Duke Brachiano’s innocent wife, as the Duke pursues another man’s wife, Vittoria, the White Devil of the title. Specifically, there follow the eventual deaths of Brachiano and Vittoria themselves, at the hands of Isabella’s brother, Francisco de Medici; deaths which were accounted for quite differently in the main source, where the death of Brachiano especially stemmed from mere natural causes. What this amounts to is that Webster superimposed on a relatively formless, lurid sequence of events, the specific dramatic form of the revenge play. To do so, he invented a main revenger, a new character for Isabella, accomplices for the revenger, an occasion, and a set of revenge-devices.KeywordsIndependent FormMoral ExperimentReal MotiveBlack BookMoral FeelingThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.