Revenge Tragedy

Features

• 'Revenge is a wild kind of justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out' 
• Senecan/Blood tragedy 
• Motivated by revenge/codes of honour
• Violence/Blood
• Supernatural
• Set in different countries- Spain/Italy which are associated with corruption,sin and lust
• Corruption- political/social 
• Machiavelli/Malcontent
• Grotesque comedy- tragic events and gruesome
• Revenger dies and causes them to become morally corrupt
• Madness

Genre

• Aristotle/Seneca
• Aspects of revenge tragedy
• Morality play tradition
• Emerging trend of domestic tragedy eg. Othello
• Tragedy of the state = Hamlet and King Lear but The White Devil is one of sex and lust

Introduction and Guided Reading: The White Devil OCR

'Lamentable Tragedy, Mixed Full of Pleasant Mirth'

The 'mixed' moral standard, it is not surprising that readers find it hard to gauge the tone of Webster's 'tragic' writing.

Webster's tone is rarely solemn for long, but endlessly decorated with parts that are quirky and camp so that the audience should be able to laugh comfortably. In Jacobean tragedy, the sustained serious tone of Shakespearean tragedy is the exception rather than the rule.

                         


Horrid Laughter

A mixed even confused response to the events of his tragedy is probably therefore one of Webster's aims. Torturers and  murderers in TWD wind the nerves of their victims and the audience so tight that they take such contorted delight in what they are doing that our laughter may often be no more than an escape valve.

                               



An example is Flamineo staging his death rather than dying in earnest. His language can, in retrospect, seem comically exaggerated. It becomes a chilling parody of the conceits revengers.

A Play of Paradox 

The title itself is a paradox and is assumed to refer to the nature of Vittoria. However, this sense of ambiguity, even duplicity is not confined to Vittoria. It is reflected in every major character of the play- eg. Flamineo whose speeches are hard to interpret

Not What I say, but What I do!

The double signals Webster's characters continually give out is partly owing to the 'mixed' nature of his tragic form. But some critics insist it is also due to the unusual nature of Webster's writing methods.

                                 


Webster focuses more on how events and outcomes, might, after many windings and surprises combine to establish a tragic figure and how much of his meticulously gathered poetry that figure might then plausibly be made to speak.

The Morality Tradition

Before permanent professional theatres in England opened this meant that theatrical performances were given by itinerant companies specializing in Morality plays with characters that were labelled as Vice or Virtue.

                             


It follows that many of the plays of the Jacobean repertoire were expected to convey firm 'morals' so Webster in TWD gives a sententious moral statements to most of his characters. Giovanni, the moral anchor of the play says these a lot (what a fucking wanker)

Yet wise saws are repeatedly placed into the mouths of characters whose actions contradict their statements. Despite the flag-waving conviction of its 'authority figures', moral ambiguity remains the play's prevalent note.

Webster's Women

Women are frequently seen be men as mere commodity. Heroines are accused of lust, infidelity, and men, under the guise of honour are violent and derogatory towards them, partly through malice, partly through an imperial sense that the blood that beats in the veins of a female relation is literally their own.

Dod and Cleaver- Influential 1598 Conduct Book
"Silence is the best ornament of a woman and therefore the law was given to the man, rather then to the woman, to shew that hee should be the teacher and she the hearer."
 
                                

Vittoria's role is its comparative brevity for a title character and how different is her impact in each of them.
In Act 1 -  resilient under sexist curing but tempts Brachiano
Act 2- dispatches the shit lawyer and personates 'masculine virtue' but regains her female voice to cry rape. Assume the qualities of both genders
Act 4: silence and unexpectedly squashed
Final scene: poetic adventurer trying on many modes and roles, from glimmering acceptance of misfortunes to eternal dread

Remakes herself radically between appearances and may be echoing her Flamino.

Her changing role reflects not a shifting or duplicit personality but the brutal accomodations and decit demanded of all women if they are to survive in the patriarchy. An actress not synthesise not a single composite personality but to play a series of distinct, raw female stereotype.


                                    

Zanche is inured to intrigue, promiscuity, theft and betrayal is more professional victim even than Vittora. Traded her emotions so long she seems only vaguely aware of them. Isabella = chaste wife and is a toy for her powerful male relatives and has unpleasantly punitive fantasies towards her rival.

All these women seem victim beneficiaries of a sexist society showing 'masculine virtue' when challenged, but a tendecy to exploit the role of 'wronged woman' when their going is easier.

Malcontents- Liam McNamara

An Introduction to the Malcontent 

Malcontents are central to many Jacobean plays- Jacques in As You Like It or Malvolio in Twelfth Night or The White Devil or Changeling. 

According to Julie Lacey Brooke a malcontent is:

"cynical commentator and judge of a society to which he patently does not belong, as well as, in some cases a rogue disruptor, one who is not only prepared to question but to damage anything and everything that comes within his compass."  

David Gunby argues that malcontents are 'mouthpieces' for satirical parts in drama.

"The malcontent is a man divided within himself. On the one hand he is a blunt, moralist, ruthlessly exposing the vices and follies of mankind. On the other he participates in the viciousness and self-seeking of the world he rails against." 

Learning without Living

Dramatic malcontents were linked to a historical change where aspiring young men were involved in a kind of misery associated with 'relative deprivation' ie they were given career and educational opportunities that they were unable to realise.
As Lord Chancellor Ellesmere writes:
"I think that we have more need of better livings for learned men than of more learned men for these livings, for learning without living doth but breed traitors." 

These men were trained up for a role that did not appear and therefore cynicism was the end result. They prepared too many men for too few places. From 1603 to 1640 universities enrolled under 25,000 students with frustrated intellectuals making up to 15-20% of that amount.

Black Bile and Melancholic Hares

In TWD, the malcontents are social radicals. The historical phenomenon  that produced Sir Francis Bacon's warning that ' there are more scholars bred than the State can prefer or employ' is explored in the play.

Malcontents saw their own status as fashionable, a cynical identity that then fuelled widespread and disproportionate fears about their existence. As Lacey Brooke writes being a malcontent was 'a cult of the young, embodying disaffected decadent youth, perceived by the majority as undesireable misfits."

The outward projection of this image is a fake and pretentious kind of identity that is parasitic upon society.  In TWD Webster challenges the perception of the malcontent in an metatheatrical scene which criticises the crude stereotyping that seeks to undermine their symbolism power.

The characters are seen as ironically commenting on society's understanding of the malcontent. Primarily on the medieval thinking that there was a link between the state of being melancholy and an excess of 'black bile' , and malcontentedness.

The end result is a 'moral panic' about the potential threat of malcontents as a destabilising force that could challenge society's values. Webster seems to challenge the misrepresentation of oppositional elements of society by showing the 2 characters ridiculing the popular perception of the malcontent.

From the Malcontent to the 'Punk' 

Lacey Brooke draws a link to the Punk movement which was 'an ambiguously glamorous and vicious reputation' that appealed to some and repelled others. According to Jackie Moore in 1979 production of TWD by The Acting Comapny, New York, Flamineo was 'dressed like a punk rocker sporting a dog collar and spiked hair."

Intellectual and Cultural Context- Webster's Sources

Webster was a magpie who read widely and kept extensive notes and this can be evidenced through the extent of intertextuality seen in his plays.

Dent analysed The White Devil and was able to compare it to its literary sources.
Monticelso: Well,well such counterfeit jewels. Make true ones off suspected.
I'll type the rest later

Dent concluded "the extent of Webster's borrowings was extraordinary even for the age in which he wrote."
Webster had heavy use of non-original material should not be thought as unthinking plagarism or artistic laziness. As John Russell Brown argued "his restless mind was constantly leading him to repeat and modify what he had written."

Webster used his audience familiarity with many of his sources to "bond" particular cultural resonances  or associations to the utterances of his characters ."

An example of this is when Cornelia quotes from KL as she weeps over the corpse of her son in V + Ophelia as she goes mad so the audience hears two voices at once. Memories of earlier plays inflect the meanings of those they make their own.  In her fried and madness C borrows the tragic stature of the earlier Shakespearean characters.

Many characters echo recognisable proverbs + Richard Allen Cave argues that would have given the effect of " a character seeking comfort + security in proverbial wisdom which the audience with its greater awareness of the play's action knows to be cruel illusion"

Dent notes that Flamineo's speeches are drawn from Michel de Montaigne allowing the character "to effect a nonchalance in evil he thinks a sign of sophistication and to pretend an easy familiarity with Bracciano as of two men of the world conversing with one another."

Webster's key sources were:

• Historical Vittoria Accoramboni
• Desiderius Erasmus- Fungus (The Funeral) 1526
• Pierre Boaistuau- Theatrum Mundi
• John Florio - A Letter Lately Written from Rome 
• Fugger Newsletter

Intellectual and Cultural Context- Women and Misogyny

In Shakespeare's Cymbeline there is a violently misogynistic tirade

"There's no motion that tends to vice in man but I affir

It is the woman's part.... The woman's; flattering, hers;deceiving hers;

Lust and rank thoughts; hers, hers; revenges

Ambitious, covetings, change of prides, disdain

Nice longing, slanders, mutability"  

This speech shows a set of ideas that were disturbingly common during the Jacobean period. 

The idea that women were inherently sinful is found in the first book of the Bible. In the story of Adam and Eve. God was angry at Eve's disobedience and devises a punishment. 

"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children: and they desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." 

The story was used as 'both the justification and the cause of woman's subjugation." (Dympna Callaghan) An example of this is the Elizabethan text The Praise and Dispraise of Women where the author remarks "Eve did first transgress, whose fault brought us in thrall." 

Women had a clear hierarchical position and were subordinate to men. A Godly Form of Household Government describes it as 'a monstrous matter... for the wife to rebel against the husband... a disobedient wife is like a body refusing to obey its own head." The Place of Pleasure by William Painter makes it clear that women were expected to be submissive and deferential. "as soon as she steppeth out of the right tract... thrust herself into infinite troubles" 

The early modern women notes Lisa Jardine 'has no means of escape: any single act which does not square with this emblem of passive and dutiful behaviour condemns the individual as fallen from the pedestal." 

During the Jacobean period it was common for women to defend themselves in ecclesiastical courts from accusations of being a 'whore', just as Vittoria does in the play. 90% of cases concerning a female plantiff involved her sexual reputation

Women were defined primarily according to their relationships with men, whether daughter, wife or widow. This idea central in the Book of Genesis- God creates Eve by taking a rib from Adam. The independent, assertive woman was seen as an aberration: the masculine woman bold in speech and impudent in action was described as 'most monstrous.' in the Man Woman (an anonymous pamphlet in 1620) 

Webster depicts a highly sexist and patriarchial world. B and Francisco dominate their respective dukedomes + characters like I are symbolic bargaining tokens rather than active individuals in their own right. Play is skewed towards a male perspective. Male characters are allowed long soliloquies whilst female characters are not. Also all female characters would be played by male actors. 

Play gives expression to misogynistic ideas

• Monticelsco invective against whores in the trial scene
• Flamineo has a sexist commentary throughout

A key theme is the deceitful and duplicitious nature of women. Vittoria is repeatedly deceptive. 

But, just because Webster depicts a misogynistic world it doesn't mean that he endorses its values. Vittoria is a strong and potentially sympathetic female characters whose victimisation at the hands of powerful men might provoke outrage and indignation in the audience. 

Although v. few people spoke out about the oppression of women; the play could be ambiguous. 

This was a central debate shown in the pamphlet war in 1615 started by the publication of An Arraignment of Lewd, Idle , Froward and Unconstant Women by Joeseph Swetnam. It was an odd mix of jokes, historical anecdotes, biblical references and misogynistic invective aimed at 'the ordinary sort of giddy-headed young men.' 

Swetnam denounced women condemning them as animalistic, dishonest, disloyal, deceptive and uncontrollable.  

The pamphlet provoked anti misogynistic responses, mostly by women, The satirical play Swetnam the Woman- Hater, Arraigned by Women was published in 1620. The latter was performed at the Red Bull Theatre by the Queen Anne's Men- same company + theatre that staged TWD- but an inversion of the trial scene. 

In his pamphlet he writes: 

• "The beauty of women hath been the bane of many a man, for it hath overcome valiant and strong men"

• Then who can but say that women sprung from Devil? Whose heads, hands and hearts, minds and souls are evil, for women are called the hook of all evil because men are taken by them as fish is taken with the hook" 

• "in their beds there is hell, sorrow and repentance." 

• "women devour them alive, for a woman will pick thy pocket and empty thy purse, laugh in thy face and cut thy throat."

• "They are ungrateful... and cruel yet there were by God created and by nature formed, and therefore by policy and wisdom to be avoided. 

• "aim more at thy wealth than at thy person." 

Intellectual and Cultural Context- Power and Politics in Jacobean England

Jacobean depictions of corrupt and decadent Italian courts were not simply criticisms of a far-off culture on the other side of Europe. The court of James I, by 1612 had developed a reputation as a hotbed of vice and favoritism. The king, himself was renowned for his extravagance.

In one five year period he bought 2000 pairs of gloves and in 1604 spent £47,000 on jewels. He often nibbled handsome young men while hearing the presentation of minsters. In 1606 James and his brother in law King Christian IV of Denmark undertook a 'drunken and orgiastic progress' through the stately homes of the Thames Valley with the latter at one point collapsing 'smeared in jelly and cream'.

Events that cemented the shittiness of James's court occured 1613-1616. But 'The White Devil' was written in 1612 so don't be going and making absolute links. Don't be that dumbass.

The first case was Sir Thomas Overbury who was the secretary and close adviser to Sir Robert Carr (James's favourite court).

• Carr began liasion with Frances Howard, the married Countess of Essex which led to a high profile divorce
• Overbury opposed the match which led to his rapid demise
• Fell out of favour with the King + refused an ambassadorial commission from him in April 1613. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London where he died months later of a mysterious illness
• Rumours of foul play. The governor of the Tower caught Overbury's keeper Robert Weston bringing him poisoned food. 
• Weston put on trial and didn't say anything until he threatened with being pressed to death with weights.  Found guilty and put to death
• Carr and his wife were tried, found guilty but their lives were spared by the King's intervention. 

Widely condemned as an example of gross injustice + of abuse of power + influence. Anne Turner (France's servant) and Gervase Elwes (GOT)  denounced the court. Turner accused the majority of courtiers of 'malice, pride, whoredom, swearing and rejoicing in the fall of others.' 

Occurred after TWD, similarities are striking.

• Like Overbury, Flamineo is a secretary to a great man who acts as a go between
• Like Vittoria, Frances Howard was widely condemned as a whore in a public trial
• Main victims in TWD, as in the Overbury case are the accessories whilst the truly powerful escape punishment 
• Webster's characters speak out against the court

Webster probs knew Overbury pretty well. He dedicated A Monumental Column to Carr in 1612 and in 1615, he contributed to Characters, a collection of vivid descriptions of contemporary character types which was posthumously attributed to Overbury. 

Arbella Stuart

• 1610 James's cousin Lady Arbella Stuart married William Seymour without seeking the permission of James
• James had her imprisoned in the Tower. She never saw her husband again + died in the Tower in 1615 from illness caused by her refusal to eat

This would be fresh in audience psyche. Flamineo seems to directly refer to this incident when he remarks:

"Say that a gentlewoman were taken out of her bed about midnight, and committed to Castle Angelo, to the tower yonder.... would it not show a cruel part in the gentleman porter to lay claim to her upper garment, pull it o'er her head and ears and put her in naked?"

Temporarily collapsing the distance between the fictional Italian court and the real Jacobean one, Webster makes a direct link between Vittoria's abuse as a political pawn and Lady Arbella Stuart's 

Intellecutual and Cultural Context- Renaissance Italy on the Jacobean Stage

Italian settings were immensely popular. This can be seen in 'The White Devil' where Vittoria is described as being a 'Venetian Curtizan' despite not being from Venice or a courtesan.

                                

The tagline allowed Webster to indicate that this play is concerned with political and sexual intrigue. Italy and in particular Venice were associated with both. Roger Ascham wrote about this in The Schoolmaster:

"In one city, more liberty to sin than I ever heard tell of in our noble city of London in nine years."

The stereotype was ingrained as Thomas Coryat wrote: "the name of a Cortezan of Venice is famoused over all Christendom."

Although Italy was seen as a hotbed of vice and passion. Venice was especially renowned for its courtesans or high-class prostitutes. They were well-educated, cultivated, beautiful and well-dressed, sometimes aristocratic by birth, sometimes kept by wealthy nobles and often shrewd business women who profited handsomely by their trade..





Sex was only one aspect of it. In aristocratic culture marriage was a dynamic arrangement and couples often led seperate lives. The courtesan could provide the companionship and friendship not expected of a wife. Making Vittoria Venetian is a shortcut in her characterisation and explaining the nature of her relationship with Bracciano.

As Jones argues: "If Vittoria comes across as less... she distills English fantasies of Italianate excesses into an unstable personification of Venetian vice and allure."

Italy was not just associated with sex but also with the murky world of politics. The Catholic Church were depicted as particularly corrupt. England had been Protestant since the reign of Elizabeth I and Catholics were viewed with extreme suspicion.  Lurid tales of sexual scandal, political corruption. passion, jealously and even revenge set in Italy were a favorite literary theme. As Isabella states: "My jealousy/ I am to learn what that Italian means."

"The Italy of English playwrights from the 1580s on was not a geographer's record but a fantasy setting for dramas of passion, Machiavellian politics and revenge- a landscape of the mind." - Ann Rosalind Jones

Webster was not the only playwright to set his plays in Italy. Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", "The Taming of the Shrew", Ben Johnson's "Volpone" and John Ford's "Tis Pity She's a Whore' were all set in Italy. Italy was associated with the refined aristocratic manners on one hand and on the other the analysis of ruthless realpolitik of Renaissance princes.

Intellectual and Cultural Context- Webster's Career

Webster's Career 

Webster was born around 1579, he was from a comfortable middle class background as his father was a prosperous coach maker. As a result Webster would have encountered a 'cross section of Elizabethan society as he grew up'. 

                                       

His father was also a member of a prestigious guild, Company of Merchant Taylors so it's very likely that Webster attended the Merchant Taylors' School. Boys of the school had a good reputation as an acting troupe. The rest of his education was probably completed at Middle Temple where he would have trained in the legal profession hence the recurring theme of Law and its corruption in his plays. 

                   
                                

The theatre had flourished as Webster progressed in his career. 'The Theatre'  was built in 1576. It is not known exactly when Webster stepped into this burgeoning industry (The fuck do we know about him then?). But by 1602 he was firmly entrenched as a regular collaborative dramatist. Phillip Henslowe lists Webster as a co-author of 3 plays for The Rose Theatre.



                                          


Webster's earlier plays were satirical portraits of contemporary middle-class London life, drawing on Webster's own background. The influence of city comedy on Webster's tragedies, while faint, can nonetheless can be traced in scenes such as Flamineo's orchestration of his master's extra-marital affair in The White Devil. 

But The White Devil was not well-received upon its first performances. His preface is the definition of pressed. The rush to the play into publication indictates that he thought the play would've had greater success as a piece of literature. He published 'A Monumental Column' an elegy for the death of Prince Henry, in 1612.

The Duchess of Malfi was performed by the King's Men at the indoor Blackfriars and the outdoor Globe. Webster did not return to single-authored plays after The White Devil, probs cause everyone thought it was shite.


                                        

There is no record of Webster's death but he is referred to in the past tense in Heywood's Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, in 1634, which implies that he was hella dead. 

Jacobean Tragedy 

The White Devil is advertised on its title page as a 'Tragedy'. During the Jacobean age, tragedy was very popular.

One of the most influential and earliest definitions is from the philosopher Aristotle who described it as 'an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude' and identified several key components of a tragic plot- hamartia, anagonrisis and peripeteia.

The chorus in Aeschylus' play Agamenon sums up the conclusion of dramatic tragedy: "Men shall learn wisdom by affliction schooled."

                            



Well known tragedies such as King Lear, Macbeth and Othello features heroes who make great errors of judgement in the first act of the play only to realise their mistakes too late.  Webster's Flamineo and Vittoria can be seen as protagonists in the same mould yet they choose a sinful path in Act 1 and seem to reach comfort and security in Act V but only right at the end do they realise their actions have brought about their ruin.

                                  

There is a strong ethical dimension to this pattern as it seems to be giving instructions to the audience. Thomas Heywood (Webster's co-author) concluded that the moral of the tragedy was to "to persuade men to humanity and good life.... showing them the fruits of honesty and the end of villainy."
Protagonist of The Revenger's Tragedy remarks: "When the bad bleeds, then is the tragedy good."

But good and bad are elastic categories.The laws of God and the laws of the state were officially one and the same in Jacobean England- as James I remarked in a speech
"to dispute what God may do is blasphemy,,, so is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power." - Divine Right of Kings 

                             
                           

Many Jacobean tragedies illustrate the dangerous consequences of abandoning the laws of the state and God.
Macbeth - murders the king
Lear- abdicating flouts the established order

Flamineo and Vittoria willfully reject traditional morality in order to advance themselves + they pay the ultimate price. John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore' expresses the principle of divine retribution suggesting that though "Great men may do their wills... Heaven will judge them for't another day."
Sin against the prevailing social order, these tragedies seem to say you will suffer the consequences both in this life and the next.

                          



But many tragedies of the period contain potentially subversive challenges to the social status quo.
Doctor Faustus and Tis Pity She's a Whore depict sympathetic athetist characters whilst The Duchess of Malfi illustrates that true nobility is in a person's actions, not their birth.

Tragedy must offer the possibility of subversion. 'The White Devil' is a revenge tragedy inspired by tragedies from Roman playwright, Seneca. Which developed a tragic form which focused on the private revenge of a protagonist who had been the victim of a terrible injustice. The most famous example is The Spanish Tragedy (Thomas Kyd) which was a mix of political intrigue, ghostly visitations, plotting, madness and bloody recrimination.
J.W. Lever described this format as 'a wide range of characters , a court setting, a dynamic of complicated intrigue and delayed revenge, with a final spectacular catastrophe."

                                        


Revenge tragedy is different to classical tragedy as the revenger experiences no anagnorisis- tends to be determined to fulfill his vengeful mission until the bloody end. But the protagonists' hamartia could be the very willingness to take up the call to revenge. So revenge tragedy presents its audience with a thorny moral ambiguity. Torn between private honour and public law.

Francis Bacon in his essay 'Of Revenge' in 1597
"Revenge is a wild kind of justice which the man's nature runs to, the more ought the law to weed it out."
The revenger is caught between irreconcilable values

• Honour bound to avenge
• Christian morality dictates that he should not commit murder. 

                               

                                    

Renaissance tragedy is bare graphic in its presentation of death and violence. Gruesome physical images of widspread as well as images of cruelty. The effect of all this brutality on stage is often to paint a bleak portrait of human society. 

• King Lear famously asks of the 'poor, bare, forked animal' he sees before him 'Is man no more than this?'
• Tis Pity She's a Whore' emphaises a similar view- man is described as a 'wretch, a worm, a nothing.'
• Iago in 'Othello' refers to humans in terms of animal imagery which is also seen in The White Devil which is loaded with images of human beings as animals or birds

Central figure in Jacobean drama is the 'malcontent', A man who is born into high social status who as somehow lost his position and has become educated but an impoverished outsider. His outsider stats leads him at once both to desire social advancement and to disdain the system which continues to exclude him

                             

Vittoria Accoramboni vs. The White Devil

Based on the history of Vittoria Accoromboni although Webster significantly deviates from the published accounts. The White Devil is based on real occurrences in Italy barely 30 years before Webster wrote the play.

The events took place between 1576 and 1585 + was widely reported.

Born in 1557 at Gubbio, a small town in Tuscany. Her family was aristocratic but poor + moved to Rome to improve her fortunes.

She was a great beauty, full of charm and gaiety and despite her modest dowry she married Francesco Peretti, nephew to the powerful Cardinal Montalto in Rome when she 16 yrs.
About 7 yrs later she met  Paulo Giordano Orsinin (Duke of Bracciano) and became his lover, partly through the determined efforts of her ambitious mother and her scheming brother Marcello who was in his service.

                                             


The duke was 20 yrs older, physically obese and already married to Isabella de Medici, sister of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and was the father of 3 children. Isabella, however, was having an affair with a relative of her husband's Trolio Orsini.

Isabella's brother arranged the death of Trolio Orsini and either her brother or her husband arranged for Isabella to meet her own death. Marcello shot Peretti in a deserted alley leaving Bracciano and Vittoria free to marry.

Pope Gregory XIII ordered the couple to separate and while an inquiry into Peretti's death was held, Vittoria was imprisoned in the Castello San Angelo in Rome. The investigations revealed nothing and Vittoria was released.

She and Bracciano married for a 2nd time and lived together on his ancestral estates. Pope continued his disapproval of the union and when he died 4 yrs later they celebrated with a 3rd wedding in public only to learn that Cardinal Montalto has been elected as the new popr, Sixtus V.

They fled to Venice and then to Padua. But the Duke was seriously ill, he suffered from a leg ulcer and died by Lake Garda in 1585. Vittoria attempted suicide but failed and returned to Padua where Isabella's family saw her as a threat to Isabella's son Virgino's inheritance.

They hired Lodovico Orsini a banished kinsman of the duke, to kill Vittoria and her younger brother Flamineo. Lodovico was later captured and strangled and his accomplices publicly executed, The Duke of Florence died 2 yrs later most likely from poison and Marcello was extradited to Ancona where he was beheade.

Changes between The White Devil and the Source Material 
                         
                           

• Vittoria is an innocent by stander in the historical source- Brachiano seems to force her into this marriage whilst all the murderous actions seems to stem from him. But in 'The White Devil' Vittoria seems to be more complicit in the murders as shown in 1.2 where she dreams of both Camillo and Isabella being murdered. 

• Webster chooses to make Isabella live longer and presents her as a more saintlier character. Her love for Brachiano remains no matter how many times he is a piece of shit towards her. She is killed by kissing the poison on her husband's portrait - metaphor of their marriage. But in the historical context she is murdered by either her brother or husband . Whilst in historical context Isabella was having an affair with Trolio Orisini and she is killed off pretty quickly

• Source material her mother is seen as scheming as Flamineo. But in 'The White Devil' she is disgusted and accuses Brachiano and Vittoria of adultery.She foretells them that this adultery will lead to their early deaths. 

• Vittoria was born in Gubbio, a small town in Tuscany rather than Venice as  Monticelso claims 

• In 'The White Devil' both Vittoria and Bracciano are seen as scheming whilst in the the historical source only Brachiano is seen as truly evil. 

• Vittoria meets Brachiano 7 years after she gets married and keeps rejecting him but in 'The White Devil' it seems instantaneous 

• After being implicated for the murder of her husband in 'The White Devil' she is sent to a nunnery whilst in the historical context she is placed into a prison. 

• More important, he has almost entirely invented the character of Flamineo, for the manuscripts carry little more than a passing reference to a person of that name. Whereas, in 'The White Devil', Flamineo is seen as the chief instigator of all the violence and is almost seen as a conductor as he orchestrates all the vile situations and manipulates people.  

INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

Fugger newsletter clearly the source of TWD. It was a newspaper circulated to clients of the German bank, or A Letter Lately Written from Rome which translated into English in 1585. Webster clearly adds:

• Vittoria recounting of her dream - means of manipulating B
• Trial and subsequent imprisonment of V in the house of convertites
• Manner of B death
• Marcello's murder
• Cornelia's madness
• Appearances of ghosts
• Historical Vittoria appears to be completely innocent- far cry from Venetian Curtizan 

The Murder of Signora Accaramboni 

Described as a 'pitiful act of murder' which occurred in 1585, Padua. Duke Paolo Giordano Orsini was one of the noblest Roman families and was married to the sister of the reigning Duke of Florence. But his lust for Vittoria meant that he desired to break his marriage vows.

• He had a 'burning passion' for the wife of the nephew of Pope Sixtus- but she did not wish to turn unfaithful. 
• The Duke then murdered Vittoria's husband. He asked her again but she curtly refused
• Duke then murdered his own spouse so she was 'put out of the way'.
• Marcello (V brother) acts as a go between  
• 3rd time he addressed, she finally said yes but on the condition that he would marry her. She wasn't going to be his mistress of whore. 
• The Cardinal (present pope) did not rest the desire to avenge the blood of his innocent nephew, When he became the Duke he wanted to reconcile. He knelt before him and begged for forgiveness. 
• Duke then removed himself and Vittoria to Padua (Venetian territory)
• Before 2 months passed he died at Salo- foul play was suspected
• He left Vittoria a large property. But the Duke of Florence was hella pissed + took charge of Giovanni's place in the will
• The Duke of Florence urged her to enter a convent but she refused + decided to keep the retinue of 100 people
• 50 armed men entered her home + shot her brother, Duke Flaminio and stabbed Vittoria during prayer
• One of these men were Ludovico Orsini, cousin of Paolo Giordano 
• Ludovico was to be strangled 3 hrs after the delivery of their letter who admitted that he had perpetrated this murder at the command of great personages  
• 3 hours after the decision was reached LO was sentenced to death. He had murdered 40 people but never thought justice would lay a hand upon him due to his elevated social status and hoped he would not be publicly executed. 
• He was to be strangled in a chamber-  "And just as high as the house of Orsini had stood in high esteem, as deep is now its fall"
• The two servants of Vittoria who opened her dwelling were accomplices and were burned with red hot tongs, killed with a hammer and then quartered.