John Webster

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John Webster wrote a few short poems, including commendatory verses to accompany publications by other poets and an elegy on the death of Prince Henry, heir to the English throne, entitled “A Monumental Column.” In prose, he is believed to have written the thirty-two new character sketches that appeared in Sir Thomas Overbury’s sixth edition of New and Choice Characters of Several Authors in 1615, including the famous one entitled “Excellent Actor.” He also wrote a pageant, “Monuments of Honor,” for the procession of John Gore, the lord mayor of London, in 1624.

Achievements

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John Webster is known for two powerful tragedies, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which have sufficiently impressed readers to rank him second only to William Shakespeare as a writer of English Renaissance tragedy. Each play presents an intense penetration into a world of evil, fully displaying Webster’s genius for horror in scenes in which characters are tortured to the limits of endurance. Webster’s deep psychological studies of ambition, lust, and revenge turn the morbid and macabre into great art. Webster’s title characters, unusual for Renaissance tragedy, are women who are different in nature. In The White Devil, the murderous intent of Vittoria and her impassioned defense of herself at her trial contrast with The Duchess of Malfi with the kind, loving nature of the Duchess and the quiet nobility with which she ultimately faces death. Webster’s poetry creates passages of great beauty and power, which in the Duchess’s death scene combine to create one of the great moments in world drama.

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