Publisher's Synopsis
Webster (c1580-c1634) was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi which are regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century stage. The White Devil was first performed in 1612 but according to the author the play's first performance was a notorious failure, being put on in the dead of winter before an unreceptive audience. Unsurprisingly the play's complexity, sophistication and satire made it a poor fit with the Queen Anne's Men repertory company at the Red Bull Theatre, an inn-yard conversion in Clerkenwell, London, where it was first performed, but it was successfully revived in 1630 and published again in 1631.
