Webster, John - Dympna Callaghan (essay date 1989)
Dympna Callaghan (essay date 1989)
SOURCE: "Tragedy," in Women and Gender in Renaissance Tragedy: A Study of King Lear, Othello, The Duchess of Malfi, and The White Devil, Humanities Press International, Inc., 1989, pp. 49-73.
[In the excerpt below, Callaghan contends that traditional "masculinist" criticism has erroneously focused on the dramatist's "defective dramaturgy" rather than "regarding Webster's play as a demonstration of certain flaws in the critical construction of tragedy," particularly those associated with the roles for women.]
The critical preoccupations surrounding Webster's plays have been those of structural coherence, and moral vision (or lack of it). John Russell Brown writes in a critical commentary on The White Devil [in his 1979 edition of Webster's work]: 'By borrowing some structural devices from chronicle plays, Webster was bound to lose something of the concentration which is often considered a hallmark...
[The entire page is 1864 words long]
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