My tragedy must have some idle mirth in't,
Else it will never pass (IV.i.119-20)
The Duke's comment suggests that an increasingly demanding audience will no longer accept the single-minded classical plays of strict comedy or tragedy, but demand a sophistication of genre. The White Devil is not unique in its admission of tragicomedy, but it is treated as an expression of doubt about the tragic absolutes and as part of a critical double-vision.
Incidents are repeated an parodied throughout Webster's play, and this system of parallels is used to undermine the tragic status of the patrician characters. In the final scene the tragic hero Flamineo acts out a grotesque fiction of his own death, which is ironically followed by real murder. The farcical ending is paralleled with the authentic tragic image. With its elaborate system of repetition and parody, its ironic contrasts between interpretations of events, and the insistence that every incident is intimately connected with other incidents, The White Devil emphasises the shifting values and ironic double-visions of tragicomedy into the tragic framework of aspiration, failure, and ultimately death, depicting the double standard of the new society.
The action of the play is confined to the relatively narrow setting of Rome and the court at Padua, hinting to the world beyond that of stage. Critics have often found the number of characters in The White Devil problematic, citing difficulties in staging a production with so many bodies on stage. However, John Russell Brown (1940) has called attention to 'Webster's power of using violent and crowded scenes for sudden and, therefore, striking manifestations of an individual's lies or hypocrisy, the “variety” of a “busy trade of life”' (Brown 453). In the final act, the presence of so many members of the courtly society emphasises Flamineo's fall from power, defining the extent of the competition for the Duke's favour and the uncertainty of Flamineo's future now that his relationship with his master is ruined. As a young lord reports to Flamineo concerning Bracciano, 'A new vp-start: one that swears like a Falckner, and will lye in the Dukes eare day by day like a maker of Almanacks' (V.i. 138-9).
The White Devil deals with private behaviour made public, and public behaviour motivated by questionable private interests. Vittoria's trial reveals her illicit liaison with Bracciano and the murderous consequences, but it is this public censure which results in private revenge. In comparison with Shakespearean tragedies such as Hamlet, or classical tragedies such as Oedipus Rex, the play is extremely social and emphasises Webster's preoccupation with the intertwined spheres of public probity and private corruption.
The White Devil focuses on the individual's freedom of choice between good and evil, human dignity and the fall from grace, binaries which appear to conform to the traditional Christian morality. Lodovico is accused by Antonelli and Gasparo: 'Worse then these, / You have acted certaine Murders here in Rome, / Bloody and full of horror' (I.i.31-32), and Gasparo continues 'O my Lord / The law doth sometimes mediate, thinkes it good / Not ever to steepe violent sinnes in blood, / This gentle penance may both end your crimes, / And in the example better these bad times' (I.i.33-37). Ludovico is presented a choice, but instead turns to criminality and revenge. His crimes have been presented, the possibility of reform and exoneration provided, and yet he wilfully chooses his course of conduct in spite of this. He exercises his free will, but unlike the Aristotelian tragic hero his destructive path is not redemptive in bringing out moral responsibility.
