Gender and Laughter in The White Devil

Camillo and Isabella hold similar positions in the play, yet their portrayals are strikingly different. Our Norton editors point out that it is hard to feel much sympathy for Camillo—despite the cruelty of his murder—because he is an “idiotic duped cuckold,” while we pity Isabella because of her loyalty to Bracciano. Doesn’t Isabella, though, understand that Bracciano has had an affair with Vittoria? Should we as readers respect her repeated failure to stand up for herself? Isabella serves as the loving, constant alternative to the adulterous Vittoria, but why do we find her so preferable to Camillo? Is it more acceptable (or expected) in society for a woman to forgive her husband’s disloyalty than it is for a man to accept his wife’s?

Does laughter hold some sort of significance in the play? I was struck by the points at which Webster makes his characters laugh or refer to laughter; the act always seems unacceptable or inappropriate. When Antonelli and Gasparo enter 3.3 laughing, they prompt Lodovico’s comment: “What a strange creature is a laughing fool, / As if man were created to no use / But only to show his teeth!” (84-86). In 5.3, Flamineo describes Francisco’s preferred “Machiavellian” tactics of murder by noting that he “tickles you to death, makes you die laughing, / As if you had swallowed down a pound of saffron” (195-199). In the final scene, Flamineo apparently laughs as he prepares to die; Lodovico asks, “Dost laugh?,” to which Flamineo replies “Wouldst have me die, as I was born, in whining?” (197-198). Do these (and other) instances of laughter tie into the fact that Webster opens the play with a character who invokes Democritus, the laughing philosopher (1.1.3)?