The White Devil is set in various courts and courthouses in Renaissance Italy, primarily in the city-states of Padua and Rome. During the Jacobean era, Italy was often viewed as a decadent place, marked both by great wealth and by corruption and inequality. This common English perception of Italy is mirrored in the play, in which Italy is depicted as a society marked by moral decay. Many playwrights, including Webster and Shakespeare, used Italian settings to add an element of exoticism and intrigue to their plays.
Italy also provided these playwrights with a politically safe location in which to set their stories, which might otherwise be perceived as critiquing the English aristocracy—a politically dangerous move in a period of absolute monarchy. Further, Italy was a “safe” target for critique because it was a primarily Catholic nation; England, in comparison, adopted Protestantism after the English Reformation, and was therefore opposed to Italy on religious grounds.
Following the trial in which his sister is sentenced to live in a house for “penitent” prostitutes, Flamineo rails against the injustices and corruption of the Italian society of the play:
FLAMINIO
Proof? ’Twas corruption. O gold, what a god art thou! And
O man, what a devil art thou to be tempted by that cursed mineral! Yon diversivolent
lawyer, mark him. Knaves turn informers as maggots turn to flies; you may catch
gudgeons with either. A cardinal? I would he would hear me. There’s nothing so
holy but money will corrupt and putrify it, like victual under the line.
You are happy in England, my lord;
here they sell justice with those weights they press men to death with.
O horrible salary!
ENGLISH AMBASSADOR
Fie, fie, Flaminio!
Seeing the English ambassador to the court in Rome, Flamineo condemns the ease with which money distorts justice in the Italian legal system and conversely praises England, where he imagines men are “happy.” This line seems to celebrate England for its relative commitment to truth and justice, though the English Ambassador’s ambivalent response calls this praise into question. Ultimately, Webster’s critique of the Italian upper classes applies just as well to those of his home nation.
