The White Devil (RSC Roaring Girls Season) (NHB Classic Plays) - Softcover

John Webster

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1848424027 ISBN 13: 9781848424029

Publisher: Nick Hern Books, 2014

Synopsis

Duke Bracciano is besotted by the beautiful Vittoria. When he makes her an indecent proposal she can't refuse, she enlists the help of Flamineo to fool her husband, and begins an illicit affair. But their infidelity does not go unnoticed.

Accusations of adultery are made and Vittoria and Flamineo find themselves snared in a web of corruption, passion and retribution as their single minded pursuit of personal gain reaches an epic and bloody conclusion.

One of the great works of Jacobean theatre, Webster's violent tragedy was last performed by the RSC in an acclaimed 1996 production. The White Devil is now part of The Roaring Girls Season, a season of plays with some of the greatest parts ever written for women, put on to raise the question of gender inequality on the British stage and in wider society.

About this title

About the Author

Born in c.1580, John Webster came from an evidently prosperous middle-class London family, his father a coachbuilder and wagonmaker with premises in Smithfield, just north-west of the City. The business was continued by John’s brother Edward, and perhaps helped to subsidise Webster’s playwriting career – for, by contrast with most professional dramatists, his output was scarcely sufficient to provide an adequate living. His law studies in the Middle Temple evidently incomplete, he is first heard of in the theatre from payments made to Dekker, Middleton and himself by the manager Philip Henslowe in 1602, and two years later he was entrusted with the task of fleshing out Marston’s The Malcontent, a play written for a children’s company, to meet the needs of the adult players. A number of satirical ‘citizen comedies’ of London life, written in collaboration, followed – then, around 1610, came his first known independent work, The Devil’s Law Case, written in the then-fashionable form of a tragi-comedy. Two or three years later, the two great tragedies which have sustained his reputation in the theatre followed in quick succession: but whereas The White Devil received its first performance at the Red Bull, an open-air theatre of low repute, The Duchess of Malfi was performed by Shakespeare’s old company, the King’s Men, at their prestigious indoor house, the Blackfriars – and no doubt also at the second Globe, where the company still played in the summer months. Webster’s later dramatic output was largely collaborative, with civic celebrations and occasional verse completing a modest canon. Beyond these bare facts we know little of his life – or even the exact date of his death, though his fellow playwright Thomas Heywood seems to refer to him as dead by 1634.

Edition details

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1848424027
• ISBN 13: 9781848424029
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 96