John Webster
born c. 1580, London, Eng.
died c. 1632
English dramatist whose The White Devil (c.
1609–c. 1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (c.
1612/13, published 1623) are generally regarded
as the paramount 17th-century English tragedies
apart from those of Shakespeare.
Little is known of Webster’s life. His
preface to Monuments of Honor, his Lord Mayor’s
Show for 1624, says he was born a freeman of the
Merchant Taylors’ Company. He was probably a
coachmaker, and possibly he was an actor. Apart
from his two major plays and The Devils Law-Case
(c. 1620; published 1623), his dramatic work
consists of collaborations (not all extant) with
leading writers. With Thomas Dekker, his main
collaborator, he wrote Westward Ho (1604) and
Northward Ho (1605), both of which were
published in 1607. He is also believed to have
worked to varying degrees with William Rowley,
Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher, John Ford, and
perhaps Philip Massinger. Eight extant plays and
some nondramatic verse and prose are wholly or
partly his; the most standard edition is The
Complete Works of John Webster, ed. by F.L.
Lucas, 4 vol. (1927).
