‘As befits so multifaceted a character as [Vittoria], the responses evoked by this train of metaphors are
tentative and complex, blending as they do a sense of her negative qualities (artifice, hardness, and surface
glitter) with a feeling for the admirable features of her personality (glowing passion, radiant physical splendour,
and gem-like inner strength)’ – John F Mc Elroy.
‘Vittoria’s character has been constructed by the assumptions and interpretations of the characters who
surround her’ – Dr June Waudby
‘Vittoria’s character epitomises contrariety and paradox throughout the play’ – Dr June Waudby
‘[Vittoria] appropriates the masculine privilege of public voice’ – Dr June Waudby
‘one of the noticeable features of Webster’s heroines is that they
never address the audience directly’ - Kate Aughterson
‘The lack of soliloquies is not a hindrance to characterization, but illustrates how Webster constructs
character through dramatic action’ – Kate Aughterson
Vittoria as a ‘dialectical counterforce to all those black and despairing elements in the play which
achieve their focus in Flamineo.’ Layman
Her speeches ‘illustrate a strength and nobility of character which is actually enhanced by her own
knowledge of her past wrong doing’ - Kate Aughterson
‘[Vittoria] constructs herself indirectly as a martyr’ - Kate Aughterson
Flamineo
‘None of the other characters present the illusion of psychological depth to the
extent that Flamineo does’ Andrew Strycharski
‘a fantasy of control’ Andrew Strycharski
‘In violently protecting his sister’s social standing, Flamineo
simultaneously seeks to protect his own.’ Andrew Strycharski
‘halting between his inherited and his individual values’ John Russell Brown
‘Mephistophelean entrepreneur’ Layman
Form/Structure
On Webster’s plays ‘They are not constructed plays, but loose-strung,
go-as-you-please romances in dialogue.’ J M Symmonds
‘The escape of Francisco, the play’s most cold-blooded egoist, is a thumb
in the eye of peoptic justice Andrew Strycharski
‘Webster wrote a mongrel drama ... although he borrowed from
others, few borrowed so widely as he’ John Russell Brown
‘The situation remains almost the same at the end of it as it was at the beginning’ John Russell Brown
Gender/Misogyny
‘The commodification of women is institutionalised’ – Dr June Waudby
Morality
‘Aside from the broad assumption that life is hell, there is nothing resembling a coherent moral
attitude in the play ...Anything can mean as much or as little in The White Devil as anything else.’
Arthur C Kirsch
All ‘humane intuition’ is ‘distorted by a malignant social ethos’ Andrew Strycharski
‘The text criticises the Jacobean era yet cannot be considered to be separate from it’ Liam
McNamara
‘Webster heightens the desolateness of his world by making his few decent persons…completely ineffectual in their
struggle against evil. Their virtues…hold no rewards, worldly or otherwise’ Layman
Religion
The ritual inversions of the play ‘dramatically, though metaphorically, the inverted,
evil-oriented nature of the society of the play’ James Hurt
Power
Attempts to ‘exorcise’ Machiavellian thought
through its various ‘travesties’, but ‘his desperate
perceptions lingered in the air, together with an
oppressive and occasionally hallucinatory sense of
their validity’ Layman
Appearance/Reality
‘Webster uses duplication ... to emphasise and restate the theme of duality’ Susan H Mc Leod
‘Rhetorical devices [such as subjunctio] dissemblance and false-seeming in
the action’ – Susan H Mc Leod
The trial is designed to ‘erase the difference between “truth” and “opinion”’ Layman