Transgressive and darkly brilliant, the drama of John Webster has long been recognised as one of the crowning glories of the English Renaissance. But this apparently idiosyncratic individual, fascinated by insanity, corruption, and the macabre, was also a successful businessman, involved in trade networks beyond the theatre, and writing most of his plays in apparently amicable collaboration with a host of other dramatists. Such is the enigma of John Webster; caricatured as a pessimist obsessed with morbidity and death, Webster's true significance lies in his ability to perceive that the darkness at the heart of humanity must co-exist with the routine and the social interaction of everyday life. John Webster, Renaissance Dramatist locates Webster's remarkable plays within the context of the culture from which they sprang. Examining the uncertain political, religious, and economic climate of Jacobean London, this book offers a guide to one of the most distinctive, yet most elusive, voices of Renaissance England. Introducing readers to both the great tragedies, The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil, and the lesser-known works, this book explains why Webster has fascinated and horrified generations of critics and theatregoers, and argues that the relevance and resonance of Webster's drama continues to grow.

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 new guide to the English renaissance's most erudite and yet most street-wise dramatist strongly asserts the theatrical brilliance of his greatest plays in performance, then and now.The book integrates all of Jonson's major plays into the milieu of the turbulent years which produced them, and analyses the way each work examines the issues and challenges of those years: money, power, sex, crime, identity, gender, the theatre itself. It offers a lucid guide to the competing critical views of a playwright who is far more than the obverse of his friend and rival William Shakespeare, and it explains in detail how the undoubted power and energy of these plays in modern performance should be the touchstone of their quality to both critic and reader. The plays discussed include the early Comedies, the Roman Tragedies (Sejanus and Catiline), Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair and The Devil is an Ass.

This book offers a lively introduction to all of the plays of Christopher Marlowe and to the central concerns of his age, many of which are still important to us--religious uncertainty, the clash between Islam and Christianity, ideas of sexuality, and the role of the marginalised inidividual in society.Each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of Marlowe's work and its cultural contexts: Marlowe's life and death; the Marlowe canon; the theatrical contexts and stage history of the plays; Marlowe's interest in old and new branches of knowledge; the ways in which he transgresses against established norms and values; and the major issues which have been raised in critical discussions of his plays.

John Webster's play "The Duchess of Malfi" is a violent play that presents a dark, disturbing portrait of the human condition... The title character is a widow with two brothers: Ferdinand and the Cardinal. In the play's opening act, the brothers try to persuade their sister not to seek a new husband. Her resistance to their wishes sets in motion a chain of secrecy, plotting, and violence. The relationship between Ferdinand and the Duchess is probably one of the most unsettling brother-sister relationships in literature. The play is full of both onstage killings and great lines. The title character is one of stage history's intriguing female characters; she is a woman whose desires lead her to defy familial pressure. Another fascinating and complex character is Bosola, who early in the play is enlisted to act as a spy. Overall, a compelling and well-written tragedy. --Michael J. Mazza at Amazon.com.