Chapter - 15

"The Duchess of Malfi"

- John Webster

Question- John Webster as English Jacobean dramatist.

Answer -

John Webster (born 1580, London, England, died 1632), English dramatist whose "The White Devil" (1609-1612). The Duchess of Malfi (1612, 1613, published 1623) Little is known of Webester, generally regarded as the paramount 17th century English tragedies apart from those of Shakespeare.

Webster's life is obscure and the dates of this birth and dates are not well known. His father, carriage maker also named John Webster, married a Blacksmith is daughter named Elizabeth Coates. His father John and uncle Edward were freeman of the merchant Taylor's company and Webster attended merchant Taylor's school in Suffolk Lane, London. On 1 August 1598, "John Webster laterly of the New Inn" was admitted to the middle Temple, one of the Inns of court, in view of the legal interests evident in his dramatic work, this may be the playwright. Webster married 17 years old Sara Peniall on 1605 at St. Mary's Church, Islington. As special licence was needed to permit a wedding in Lent, as Sara was seven months pregnant. Their first child, John Webster III, was baptised at the perish of St. Dunstan- in-the-west on 8 march 1806. Bequests in the will of a neighbour who died in 1617, indicate that other children were born to him.

Webster was still writing plays in the mid 1620. Included a tragedy, Caesar's fall (writter with Michael Drayton Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton and Anthony Munday) a collaboration with Dekker, Christmas comes but once a year (1602) with Dekker he also wrote sir Thomas Wyatt, which was printed in 1607 and had probably been first performed in 1602. He worked with Dekker again on two city comedies, Westward Ho in 1604 and Northward Ho in 1605. Also in 1604, he adopted John Marston's, The Malcontent for staging by the king's men.

The Major Tragedies : Webster is best known for two brooding English tragedies based on Italian sources. The white devil, a retelling of the intrigue involving Vittoria Accoramboni, an Italian woman assassinated at the age of 28, was failure when stayed at the Red Bull Theatrea in 1612. The Duchess of Malfi, first performed by the King's Men about 1614. He also wrote a play called "Guise", based on French History, of which little else is known Webster wrote one more. play on his own "The Devil's Law Case" a tragicomedy. His later plays were collaborative city comedies. Anything for a Quiet Life co-written with "Thomas Middleton" and a cure for a cukoid, co- written with William Rowley. He also co-wrote a topical play about a recent scandal, Veep the Widow Walking (with John Ford, Rowley and Dekker) His tragic comedy - The Fair maid of the Inn with John Fletcher, Ford and Philip massinger. His Appius and Virginia, probably written with Thomas Heywood.

Often ranked second only to Shakespeare among Jacobean tragedies, Webster is the author of two major works, The White Devil (1612) and the Duchess of Malfi (1614), which are more fréquently revived on stage than any plays of the period other than Shakespeare's Webster is tragedies, while praised for their poetic language by some commentators. Many scholars regard the White Devil and the Duchess of Malfi as Webster's greatest dramatic accomplishments, with the dramatist's concerted effort at developing a tragic vision conceived in the former and fully realized in the latter. Both plays reflect the characteristic darkness and profound consciousness of evil that characterized the Jacobean period, an age that questioned and preceding Elizabethan era's belief that all social, political and even spiritual relations were defined in an unchanging hierarchy. The chaos lies beyond such order - glimpsed in Elizabethan concerned with Machiavellianism following the publication of Niccolo. Machiavell's "The Prince" (1513), which described politics as an amoral and ruthless 'striving to acquire and maintain power. The spread of such ideas contributed to the deterioration of faith in traditional values and fostered a general anxiety associated with societal disarray - The fear being that following the breakdown of order, people would drift aimlessly through a meaningless world.

Like white Devil, The Duchess of Malfi is based on Italian history. Against the wishes of her brothers, the widowed Duchess secretly marries beneath her position, to her servant Antonio. Suspicious of their sister's activities the brothers the financial Ferdinand and the scheming cardinal plant a spy, Bosola. In the Duchess's household. A character similar to Flamineo in The White Devil, Bosola is even more complex, vacillating between delight and a sense of degradation in his sister role. When Bosola exposes the truth of the Duchess herself is one of the greatest tragic heroines of the period. Her attitude of christen resignation in the face of her brothers vicions cruelty and sexual obsession with her imbues her with a profound dignity, and the depiction of her murder is commonly judged as one of the most moving scenes in all Jacobean drama.

The dramatic art of John Webster difficult to assess. While undeniably horiflying (T.S. Eliot once characterized the dramatist as a man "possessed by death") his depictions of people struggling to make sense of their lives in a apparently regarding his treatment of feminine characters. "He is not afraid to portray women of power, whether evil...... dignified and tragic..... or manipulative" who "choose to take risks and is so doing they broaden the female horizons of the Jacobean era, while at the same time undermining norms of established behaviour". The White Devil and the Duchess of Malfi retain a vitality that continues to appeal to actors, audience and critics. That Webster's best works are still performed, read and debated is perhaps the finest testament to his standing as a dramatist.

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