John Webster

John Webster

At Writers Theatre: The Duchess of Malfi

John Webster wrote in early 17th century London. The precise dates of his birth and death are unclear and many of his plays are believed to be lost. Of his surviving works, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi are considered to be two of the greatest dramas of the Jacobean era and of the revenge tragedy genre. Webster also frequently collaborated on such plays as Appius and Virginia presumably written with Thomas Heywood, Anything for a Quiet Life with Thomas Middleton and Cure for a Cuckold with William Rowley. In his early career, Webster and Thomas Dekker wrote a series of dueling satires entitled Westward Ho and Northward Ho pitted against contemporaries John Marston, George Chapman and Ben Jonson's team retaliatory effort Eastward Ho.