The White Devil (New Mermaids)

by John Webster (Author)

• Used

  Illustrated
  2008

  $4.19

  Woman to man is either a god or a wolf John Webster's first independent play, The White Devil, originally performed in 1612, centres on the beautiful Vittoria Corombona and her lover, Duke Brachiano, whose passionate, adulterous affair unleashes the powerful revenge of their enemies. While clearly guilty of lust and murder, these unsavoury characters become startlingly heroic under pressure, challenging both conventional moral judgments and oppressive social forces. This revised student edition contains a lengthy new Introduction with background on the author, date and sources, theme, critical interpretation and stage history. The Introduction discusses Webster's radical experimentation with tragic modes, his interest in the heroic potential of women, and evaluates the handling of both in recent stage productions.

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.25

  An acute reader of contemporary drama and a consummate parodist, Webster achieves in his plays a density of allusion that often produces moments of brilliant psychological insight and theatrical ingenuity. Working with the established conventions of revenge tragedy, the malcontent youngster and dark sexual intrigue, he created in The White Devil (1612) an exciting, if dramatically flawed, version of a recent Italian scandal involving the Montalto, Orsini and de' Medici families. The introduction to this edition disentangles the various plotlines, illuminates Webster's interest in women as an exploited group with innate heroic potential and shows how he dissects the misogynist rhetoric of his male characters.

• New

  Paperback
  1996

  $6.97

  Webster's other masterpiece of Jacobean tragedy.