The White Devil Themes

Betrayal provokes revenge in this play: Brachiano, Flamineo and Vittoria betray Camillo and Isabella, and end up getting murdered by Lodovico and Gasparo. Even Zanche, who betrays Vittoria by decid...

The families in The White Devil aren't exactly what you'd call models of domestic stability. Some family members genuinely care for each other—like Francisco, Isabella, and Giovanni—but others...

Lust leads to violence in The White Devil. In committing and aiding acts of murder, Flamineo and Vittoria might be looking mainly to improve their social status, but Brachiano is all about lust. It...

Revenge is a reaction—you can't get revenge without someone else provoking you into pursuing it, obviously. In The White Devil, revenge takes the form of murder: it follows the same physical law,...

Flamineo is probably the most ambitious character in the play—though Vittoria likely isn't too far behind. He wants to increase his status in the world by aiding a "great man" like Brachiano, and...

The White Devil is chockfull of shocking and misogynistic statements about women, on the part of its male characters. These don't seem to represent Webster's views, however—since he has the audie...

Death becomes increasingly important as the play goes on, and the main characters are forced to confront their mortality. Flamineo and Brachiano seem to have a pretty bleak attitude towards death:...

Power is pretty closely related to ambition, because what are people ambitious usually about? That's right: power. Even if the ambition is focused on money—like how Vittoria wishes she was the "o...

Webster's characters express some pretty dark philosophies in The White Devil. No one seems to discuss Christianity in any meaningful way (though Cornelia seems sort of Christian). Instead, older G...