In the first scene of the play, Gasparo uses a simile and an allusion while criticizing Lodovico, a rich and powerful count who has been exiled from Rome due to his flagrant criminal behavior. Urging Lodovico to accept the terms of his exile, Gasparo states:
Your followers
Have swallowed you like mummia, and being sick
With such unnatural and horrid physic
Vomit you up i’the kennel.
In a simile, Gasparo compares Lodovico’s former followers, who have since abandoned him, to people suffering from illness who have swallowed “mummia” and vomited it. Here, he alludes to “mummia,” a substance that was prized in Renaissance Europe as a valuable remedy with mystical properties. The exact composition of mummia varied, but it was typically made from the powdered remains of mummies, which were imported from Egypt and other parts of the world. Mummia was thought to possess magical or curative properties, and it played a role in both medical treatments and alchemical experiments. Mummia was used in various forms, including powders, ointments, and elixirs. It was employed to treat a multitude of health issues, including wounds, infections, digestive problems, and even as a general panacea.
Gasparo’s simile suggests that Lodovico’s former entourage turned to him to fix their problems, but ultimately grew sick and disgusted with the “horrid” methods he employed. Just as a patient might “vomit” a disgusting remedy, so too have his followers abandoned him as a result of his intolerable behavior.
In the first act of the play, Flamineo helps his master, Brachiano, conduct an affair with his sister, Vittoria. In order to allay the suspicions of her husband, Camillo, Flamineo uses a paradox and alludes to recent political events in England:
Wear it i’th’ old fashion: let your large ears come through; it will be more easy. Nay,
I will be bitter. Bar your wife of her entertainment; women are more willingly and
more gloriously chaste when they are least restrained of their liberty. It seems you
would be a fine, capricious, mathematically-jealous coxcomb; take the height of your own horns with a Jacob’s staff afore they are up.
These politic enclosures for paltry mutton makes more rebellion in the flesh than
all the provocative electuaries doctors have uttered since last Jubilee.
Women, Flamineo claims, are more “willing” to be chaste (and to resist the temptations of other men) when they are “least restrained of their liberty.” To Webster’s audience, this logic would have been understood as a paradox, as chastity and “liberty” would have been understood as opposite or contradictory ideals. Further, Flamineo argues that the “politic enclosures” have created more “rebellion” than all the “provocative electuaries” (or aphrodisiacs) created by “doctors.” Here, Flamineo metaphorically compares Camillo’s attempts to keep his wife away from other men to the early modern practice of “enclosing” land, or in other words, of converting previously-public land into private property for the wealthy. Flamineo’s reference to “rebellion” is an allusion to the many revolts by peasants in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, who opposed the practice of “enclosure.” Flamineo, then, suggests that Camillo’s attempts to keep his wife “private” will spur her to rebel against his possessiveness, just as the peasant farmers rebelled against the enclosure of once-public land.
Monticelso serves as a judge, but also an accuser, in the trial of Isabella for the murder of Camillo, her husband. In a short exchange with the accused, he makes numerous biblical allusions, befitting his status as a Cardinal or leader in the Catholic Church:
MONTICELSO
Oh, your trade instructs your language!
You see, my lords, what goodly fruit she seems.
Yet like those apples travellers report
To grow where Sodom and Gomorrah
stood,
I will but touch her and you straight shall see
She’ll fall to soot and ashes.ISABELLA
Your envenomed ’Pothecary should do’t.MONTICELSO
I am resolved,
Were there a second paradise to lose
This devil would betray it.
Monticelso is deeply opposed to Isabella, whom he believes to be guilty of the murder. First, he highlights the contrast between her attractive appearance and her immoral behavior, stating that she appears like “goodly fruit” but is in fact like “those apples” that are reported by travelers to grow on the site of “Sodom and Gomorrah” which “fall to soot and ashes.”
Here, the Cardinal alludes to two cities that, according to the Bible, were destroyed by God for their unlawful sexual practices, generally associated in Renaissance thought with sodomy, or non-procreative sexual acts. His language of “soot and ashes” is similarly derived from the Bible. Next, against Isabella’s objections, he claims that Isabella is a “devil” who would “betray” a “second paradise,” alluding to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, in which the devil tempts Adam and Eve into disobeying God and therefore being expelled from Eden, or paradise.
In a scene suffused with dramatic irony, Flamineo alludes to Niccolò Machiavelli, a prominent Italian statesman, philosopher, and diplomat who gained notoriety in the century prior to the production of The White Devil:
FRANCISCO
Sure, this was Florence’ doing.FLAMINIO
Very likely.
Those are found weighty strokes which come from th’hand,
But those are killing strokes which come from th’head.
Oh, the rare tricks of a Machiavellian!
He doth not come like a gross, plodding slave
And buffet you to death. No, my quaint
knave
He tickles you to death, makes you die laughing, As if you had swallowed down a pound of saffron. You see the feat; ’tis practised in a trice –
To teach court-honesty it jumps on ice.
Francisco, disguised as a Moor named Mulinassar, tells Flamineo that the death of Brachiano is “Florence’ doing.” Francisco is in fact the Duke of Florence; in other words, he attributes the murder to himself under the guise of a false identity. This scene demonstrates marked dramatic irony, as Flamineo is unaware that he is speaking to Francisco himself, and agrees with “Mulinassar’s” assessment. Francisco, Flamineo claims, is a “Machiavellian.”
Here, he alludes to Machiavelli, whose book The Prince presents advice to kings and rulers. Throughout Europe, Machiavelli’s tactics were often regarded as devious and cunning, and so his name became synonymous with conniving and unscrupulous scenes. In comparing him to Machiavelli, Flamineo highlights the “tricks” employed by Francisco, who does not attack his enemies directly, but rather pretends to be friendly with his enemies. The dramatic irony of this scene is heightened by the fact that Francisco is there, employing one such “trick” in order to get closer to Flamineo.
