The White Devil

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.