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REVENGE
July 12, 1995
A few things about
John Webster's
"The White Devil" (1612):
I've heard from a number of sources
that "Hamlet" can be understood to
be an example of genre fiction,
where the genre in question is the Gene Wolfe once mentioned
"revenge play". But most of us are this in a talk at an SF
only familiar with this one example convention.
and so we are blind to what was
Shakespeare's invention and what was A "mere" genre author,
dictated by genre conventions. reminding us that the
acknowledged "greatest"
also wrote genre.
For me, "The White Devil" was my
second revenge play, and I was
reading it with an eye toward
inferring the genre conventions.
One thing I was looking out for is
an explanation of some of the weird
plotting near the end of Hamlet;
Hamlet is banished and meekly
leaves town, but in the next scene
he reappears after his ship has
been assaulted by pirates.
This whole business seemed so clumsy
that I figured that it was tacked on
for reason's of genre mechanics:
Perhaps it was considered a
required scene for the hero
to suddenly burst in after
the bad guys were convinced
he was long gone.
The only equivalent thing in
"The White Devil" is that the
villian Brachiano grabs
Vittoria from her convertites
home, and retires to his own
estates, and our heroes (?)
disguise themselves and sneak
in to kill everyone they can
get their hands on.
Maybe the idea is that
just when the villains
think they're safe, our
heroes storm in and
slaughter them?
The other thing I noticed is that early
on in the play they have a character
start feigning insanity.
At first this seemed a bit
odd to me, because in Hamlet
it's the main character that
does this, and in the White
Devil it's a guy who seems
like a fairly minor
character, Flamineo...
But as the play progresses,
it appears that Flamineo is
actually pretty central. If
the story is about any one
character, it's about
Flamineo... Could that actually be
a standard convention?
The hero feigns insanity.
Weird.
Flamineo seems a peculiar "hero":
he's a lowborn character, an
assistant to the Duke of
Brachaino, sister to Vittoria.
He helps Brachaino develop an
affair with his sister (perhaps
acting as her pimp?), and runs
little errands for Brachaino like
murdering his wife and Vittoria's.
Along the way he makes various
comments about how he's forced to
live this kind of life by poverty,
and makes a number of observations
about the lives of the great.
Which leads in to another matter: who or what is
the "White Devil" of the title? Is it supposed to
be the character Brachiano? Perhaps the woman
Vittoria? Or maybe Flamineo himself? All of these
characters are white, and they've got their
devilish aspects. There's only one black
character in the play, Zanache... servant of
Vittoria, mistress of Flamineo, assistant plotter
in some of the plays hugger mugger, but also
capable of some plotting of her own (I like this
character quite a bit... a small part, but with
some nice lines). Flamineo calls her a "black
devil" a few times. Does that make him the white one?
The notes for my edition of the play refer to contrasts
between whiteness / purity and devilishness / corruption...
this may actually be the key. There are many cynical
comments on the nature of the great, on the hypocritical
pious face they turn toward the world while secretly
indulging themselves. Many of the play's characters are
dissolute noblemen of some form or another. Lodovico,
Brachiano... It all comes down to the conflict between the
individual and the office, personal desires versus
responsibilities. The "white devil" then is the high born
man that chooses to live in a very low fashion.
(Much like "White Punks on Dope" by the Tubes:
All fucked up, with no excuses...)
The way I happened to start reading the White Devil,
is that it is quoted quite frequently by Neil Gaiman
in Sandman story "The Kindly Ones". I guess the
connection has something to do with this conflict
between individual and office... the idea behind
"The Kindly Ones" (as far as one can tell with this
rather excessively murky story) seems to be that the
main character wants to quit and yet is incapable of
quitting.
And the other point might be simply that Gaiman himself is a
genre writer, and is possibly interested in the "Revenge
Play" as a genre... and everyone quotes Shakespeare (including
Gaiman), so why not quote something a little more obscure?
I've heard from another Sandman fan (David Goldfarb) that
the phrase "the white devil" was a common term for hypocrisy
at the time. This would certainly make it eaisier to figure
out the theme of the play, though it leaves me puzzled why
they didn't think to mention it in the notes for my New
Mermaids press edition.
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