ano's
character, by making her an innocent and loving wife instead of an
adulteress. He has ascribed different motives from the real ones to
Lodovico in order to bring this personage into rank with the chief
actors, though this has been achieved with only moderate success.
Vittoria is abandoned to the darkest interpretation. She is a woman
who rises to eminence by crime, as an unfaithful wife, the murderess
of her husband, and an impudent defier of justice. Her brother,
Flamineo, becomes under Webster's treatment one of those worst human
infamies--a court dependent; ruffian, buffoon, pimp, murderer by
turns. Furthermore, and without any adequate object beyond that of
completing this study of a type he loved, Webster makes him murder his
own brother Marcello by treason. The part assigned to Marcello, it
should be said, is a genial and happy one; and Cornelia, the mother of
the Accoramboni, is a dignified character, pathetic in her suffering.
Webster, it may be added, treats the Cardinal Monticelso as allied in
some special way to the Medici. Yet certain traits in his character,
especially his avoidance of bloodshed and the tameness of his temper
after Camillo has been murdered, seem to have been studied from the
historical Sixtus.

III

The character of the 'White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona,' is perhaps
the most masterly creation of Webster's genius. Though her history is
a true one in its leading incidents, the poet, while portraying a real
personage, has conceived an original individuality. It is impossible
to know for certain how far the actual Vittoria was guilty of her
first husband's murder. Her personality fails to detach itself from
the romance of her biography by any salient qualities. But Webster,
with true playwright's instinct, casts aside historical doubts, and
delineates in his heroine a woman of a very marked and terrible
nature. Hard as adamant, uncompromising, ruthless, Vittoria follows
ambition as the loadstar of her life. It is the ambition to reign as
Duchess