6. John Webster and his plays. The White Devil.

Little is known about the personal history of John Webster. Webster’s best work is concentrated in his two Italian tragedies, The White Devil (c. 1611) and The Duchess of Malfi (c. 1613). In both plays the action has a melodramatic character, revenge is the dominant theme. It is exacted by means of poisoned pictures, the refinement of cruelty and torture, we witness strangling on the open stage, the dance of madmen, and other horrors. Webster’s plays live by their author’s gift on poetry –not only the poetry of word and image, but the poetry of suggestion and atmosphere, expressing an embittered and tragic view of life. In the words of F. S. Boas, Webster possesses poetic imagination in its quintessential quality, a gift which he shares with Marlowe and Shakespeare alone. Webster’s plays reveal the powerful individualism of the Renaissance together with the despair of its later phase. The nobility of Webster’s tragic outlook has been finely praised by Swinburne. The courage and self-reliance of man in a hostile universe: this is the basis of Webster’s stoic morality.

The White Devil

By contrast The White Devil is a more unequal, if more dynamic, play, with a definite moral ambiguity at its core. The play is based on a tragedy of real life which had made a deep impression in Italy a quarter of a century before. Webster’s heroine, Vittoria Corombona (or Accoramboni, as she was really called) is guilty for adultery and murder; yet when she is at bay, before her judges, the dramatist presents her in a sympathetic light and exposes the hypocrisy of her accusers. This great trial scene is one of the peaks of Elizabethan drama.

7. John Webster and his plays. The Duchess of Malfi.

Little is known about the personal history of John Webster. Webster’s best work is concentrated in his two Italian tragedies, The White Devil (c. 1611) and The Duchess of Malfi (c. 1613). In both plays the action has a melodramatic character, revenge is the dominant theme. It is exacted by means of poisoned pictures, the refinement of cruelty and torture, we witness strangling on the open stage, the dance of madmen, and other horrors. Webster’s plays live by their author’s gift on poetry –not only the poetry of word and image, but the poetry of suggestion and atmosphere, expressing an embittered and tragic view of life. In the words of F. S. Boas, Webster possesses poetic imagination in its quintessential quality, a gift which he shares with Marlowe and Shakespeare alone. Webster’s plays reveal the powerful individualism of the Renaissance together with the despair of its later phase. The nobility of Webster’s tragic outlook has been finely praised by Swinburne. The courage and self-reliance of man in a hostile universe: this is the basis of Webster’s stoic morality.

The Duchess of Malfi

His tragic masterpiece is The Duchess of Malfi. The subject of the play connects Webster with popular humanism; the main theme is the revolt of the Duchess against established conventions, against the doctrine of social inequality. The story is based on a novella by Bandello. The Duchess, a young widow, falls in love with Antonio, the steward of her household, and marries him in secret. Her ‘proud Aragonian’ brothers, the Cardinal and Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, set the melancholy malcontent Bosola to spy upon the lovers. When her secret is found out, the brothers stung to the quick in their aristocratic pride and their greed for her possessions, decide on her. The Duchess is subjected to a series of tortures constantly rising in horror; she is finally strangled (megfojtották) by Bosola and his executioners.

Punishment overtakes all the participants in the crime, and the play ends in bloodshed death. Elizabethan drama, as has been stressed by M. G. Bradbrook, usually works with rigid, static characters, but the Duchess is one of the great examples of a developing character, outside Shakespeare. At first she is an instinctive creature who follows the dictates of her heart; the scene of her wooing to Antonio, in the latter part of I. 1. is outstanding for its emotional balance and serene beauty. It is only gradually, in the fire of terrible suffering, that she grows into tragic character. The horrors reach their climax in Act IV; Elizabethan drama, as has been stressed by M. G. Bradbrook, usually works with rigid, static characters, but the Duchess is one of the great examples of a developing character, outside Shakespeare. At first she is an instinctive creature who follows the dictates of her heart; the scene of her wooing to Antonio, in the latter part of I. 1. is outstanding for its emotional balance and serene beauty. It is only gradually, in the fire of terrible suffering, that she grows into tragic character. The horrors reach their climax in Act IV;