Introduction


Title page from John Webster’s The White Devil, published in 1612
Jacobean playwright John Webster was a late bloomer. Although he did well enough in his own time, his stature in theater history was fairly low in the years after his death. For nearly two centuries, his plays were largely ignored and unfairly compared to the stylistically different works of Shakespeare. It was only in the late twentieth century, when Jacobean tragedy was rediscovered by scholars and theater artists, that Webster began to be fully appreciated for his powerful writing. His dark, intense tragedies foreshadowed the angry and violent plays of the early German Romantic period nearly two decades later. His most famous work, The Duchess of Malfi, is a full-bodied, tragic tale full of larger-than-life characters.

Essential Facts

  1. Little is known about John Webster’s early years...or his later ones for that matter. What precious little documentation of his life there is centers mostly on his playwriting career, making the man himself something of a mystery.
  2. Like Francis Beaumont and Thomas Fletcher, Webster collaborated on a number of plays, including Caesar’s Fall and Christmas Comes but Once a Year.
  3. Early in his career, Webster wrote several comedies, yet these works have been overshadowed by his reputation as the master of Jacobean tragedy.
  4. Late in life, Webster turned to writing tragicomedies, a mixed-genre form popular in the mid-seventeenth century.
  5. Webster’s plays The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil are prime examples of Jacobean tragedy, whose dark worldview and violent nature set them apart from other tragic works.