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Allegory
Definition of Allusion
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals, historical events, or philosophical ideas... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to... read full definition
Act 1, Scene 1
Explanation and Analysis—Mummia:
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.
Act 1, Scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—Politic Enclosures:
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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.
Act 3, Scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—Sodom and Gomorrah:
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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.
Related Themes:
Act 5, Scene 3
Explanation and Analysis—Machiavelli:
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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.
