He, indeed, loads his scene with horrors almost past the point which modern taste can bear but the intensity of his dramatic situations, and his superb power of flashing in a single line a light into the recesses of the human heart at the crises of supreme emotion, redeems him from mere sensationalism, and places his best things in the first rank of dramatic writing. Four plays exist which he wrote alone, 'The White Devil,' 'The Duchess of Malfi,' 'The Devil's Law-Case,' and 'Appius and Virginia.'Webster's tragedies come toward the close of the great series of tragedies of blood and revenge, in which 'The Spanish Tragedy' and 'Hamlet' are landmarks, but before decadence can fairly be said to have set in. The dates 1580-1625 given for his birth and death are conjectural inferences, about which the best that can be said is that no known facts contradict them.The first notice of Webster so far discovered shows that he was collaborating in the production of plays for the theatrical manager, Henslowe, in 1602, and of such collaboration he seems to have done a considerable amount. In any case, it portrays with a terrible vividness one side of the court life of the Italian Renaissance and its picture of the fierce quest of pleasure, the recklessness of crime, and the worldliness of the great princes of the Church finds only too ready corroboration in the annals of the time.Of John Webster's life almost nothing is known. 1 His life and career overlapped with Shakespeare s. revenge of her brothers has fascinated and appalled. 1632) was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often seen as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. The story of the Duchesss secret marriage and the cruel. early modern period and remains popular in the theatre as well as in. The Duchess of Malfi is one of the major tragedies of the.

It is based on a story in Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure,' translated from the Italian novelist, Bandello and it is entirely possible that it has a foundation in fact. The Duchess of Malfi (New Mermaids) 28.40. The Duchess of Malfi, five-act tragedy by English dramatist John Webster, performed 1613/14 and published in 1623. 'The Duchess of Malfi' was published in 1623, but the date of writing may have been as early as 1611.

The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster