More widely studied and more frequently performed than ever before, John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi is here presented in an accessible and thoroughly up-to-date edition. Based on the Revels Plays text, the notes have been augmented to cast further light both on Webster's amazing dialogue and on the stage action. An entirely new introduction sets the tragedy in the context of pre-Civil War England and gives a revealing view of its imagery and dramatic action. From its well-documented early performances to the two productions seen in the West End of London in the 1995-96 season, a stage history gives an account of the play in performance. Students, actors, directors and theatre-goers will all find here a reappraisal of Webster's artistry in the greatest age of English theatre, which highlights why it has lived on stage with renewed force in the last decades of the twentieth century.
This volume offers John Webster's two great Jacobean tragedies, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, together with his brilliant tragicomedy, The Devil's Law-Case, and the comedy written with William Rowley, A Cure for a Cuckold. Webster is a radically and creatively experimental dramatist. His tragedies deploy shifting dramatic perspectives which counteract and challenge conventional moral judgements, while the predominantly gentler tone of his comedies and tragicomedies responds inventively to contemporary changes in dramatic taste and fashion. All four plays display the provocative intelligence of a profoundly original playwright. Under the General Editorship of Michael Cordner of the University of York, the texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. In addition, there is detailed annotation, a glossary, and a critical introduction which traces Webster's artistic development, defends him against charges of overindulgence in violence, and explores his sophisticated staging and scenic forms.
These four plays, written during the reigns of James I and Charles I, took revenge tragedy in dark and ambiguous new directions. In The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil, John Webster explores the role of women and the problems of power, sex and corruption in the Italian court, creating two unforgettable anti-heroines. In The Broken Heart, John Ford questions the value of emotional repression as his characters attempt to subdue their desires and hatreds in ancient Greece. Finally, Ford's masterpiece 'Tis Pity She's a Whore explores the taboo theme of incest and forbidden lust in a daring reworking of Romeo and Juliet. Jane Kingsley-Smith has edited the plays from the earliest quartos and added invaluable editorial material, including explanatory glosses and a new introduction that discusses how the playwrights explored issues around women, sex, power and violence. JOHN WEBSTER was born in about 1578 in London. He studied law at the Middle Temple before embarking on a career in the theatre, collaborating on many plays with contemporary dramatists. But it was his two solo-authored tragedies, The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1614), which sealed his reputation. He died in the 1630s. JOHN FORD was born in 1586 in Devon. His early career was wholly concerned with poetry and philosophical works, and it was not until the 1620s that he began collaborating on stage plays. In the late 1620s, he began writing alone, producing the eight plays on which his reputation would be based, including The Broken Heart (1620) and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (c.1630). Nothing more is known of Ford after the performance of his last play in 1638. JANE KINGSLEY-SMITH completed her PhD at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon and is the author of two monographs: Shakespeare's Drama of Exile (2003) and Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (2010). She is a Reader at Roehampton University, London, and a regular guest speaker at Shakespeare's Globe.
Excerpt from The White Devil and the Duchess of Malfy Since 1830, when Dyce put forth a complete edition of Webster, there has been published no edition of the playwright's two masterpieces, in critical text with adequate apparatus of introduction and annotation. Dyce, indeed, admirable editor as he was, left many difficult allusions unexplained, and, in modernizing his text, occasionally changed a meaning as well as a spelling or a stop. The present edition reverts to the original spelling, and seeks to note every variation of the slightest consequence occurring in the quartos. The Introduction discusses somewhat fully the dramatist's debt to his sources, essays to define the Shakespearean resemblance, and offers reasons for dating the plays within a narrower limit than has hitherto been accepted. In the Notes will be found comment on a number of points previously overlooked - some of these appear on pp. 190, 194, 201, 205, 388, 390, 392, 400 -but several allusions still remain obscure. I wish to offer my grateful acknowledgements to those who have given me assistance in the preparation of this volume, Mr. A. W. Pollard, Dr. Richard Garnett, Mr. P. A. Daniel, Mr. W. W. Greg, Professor George P. Baker, my colleague Professor Henry Stephenson, and most of all Mr. W. J. Craig. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
This introduction locates Webster's plays within the context of the culture from which they sprang. Examining the uncertain political, religious, and economic climate of Jacobean London, the book offers a guide to one of the most distinctive, yet most elu
Following the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign in the early seventeenth century, the new court of King James was beset by political instability and moral corruption. This atmosphere provided fertile ground for the dramatists of the age, whose plays explore the ways in which social decadence and the abuse of power breed resentment and lead inexorably to violence and bloody retribution. In Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy, the debauched son of an Italian Duke attempts to rape the virtuous Gloriana - a veiled reference to Elizabeth I. Webster's The White Devil depicts a sinister world of intrigue and murderous infidelity, while The Changeling, perhaps Middleton's supreme achievement, powerfully portrays a woman bringing about her own unwitting destruction. All three are masterpieces of brooding intensity, dominated by images of decay, disillusionment and death.
In publishing this tragedy, I do but challenge myself that liberty, which other men have taken before me; not that I affect praise by it, for, nos hæc novimus esse nihil, only since it was acted in so dull a time of winter, presented in so open and black a theatre, that it wanted (that which is the only grace and setting-out of a tragedy) a full and understanding auditory; and that since that time I have noted, most of the people that come to that playhouse resemble those ignorant asses (who, visiting stationers' shops, their use is not to inquire for good books, but new books), I present it to the general view with this confidence: Nec rhoncos metues maligniorum, Nec scombris tunicas dabis molestas.
Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) was one of the most prolific and fascinating playwrights of the Jacobean era, producing nearly fifty theatrical pieces in a quarter of a century. This collection comprises five of his most powerful plays, from the comedies satirizing city life, A Trick to Catch the Old One, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, to his later tragedies Women Beware Women and The Changeling, in which Middleton reveals a world dominated by the corrupting power of lust and subject to the futility of human pretensions. Also included is The Revenger's Tragedy, originally ascribed to Cyril Tourneur, a Revenge Play infused with sardonic wit and biting irony.
