John Webster

The White Devil (eBook, PDF)

Redaktion: Bovilsky, Lara

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

This fully re-edited, modernised play text is accompanied by insightful commentary notes, while its lively introduction explains why Webster's interests in complex female lead characters and questions of social tension related to sexuality, gender, race, and law and equity - unusual for the play's time - have led to its increasing relevance for modern audiences and readers. Exploring the challenges of staging this highly melodramatic play, Lara Bovilsky guides you through the most interesting points of its rich performance history, and explores the onslaught of recent productions with race-conscious and regendered casts. Analysing its masterful poetry, she shows how the work can be harnessed to engage debate about the abuse of political and religious authority, the troubling fruits of economic desperation, and personal freedom, and empowers you to do likewise.

Supplemented by a plot summary, annotated bibliography, production images, and essential contextual grounding in the court scandals that inspired Webster's tragedy and Webster's unusual composition practices, this edition is the most enlightening and engaging you will find.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 224
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. Juli 2021
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781350059962
• Artikelnr.: 61776143

Autorenporträt

John Webster was born in c. 1580 to a London coachmaker, and appears to have studied law at the Middle Temple. Although he is recorded as the author of several other works, including a history play, Lady Jane, his only surviving works are Westward Ho! and Northward Ho! (1604-05), written in collaboration with Thomas Dekker, the comedy The Devil's Law Case (1620), and two tragic masterpieces, The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1614).