The White Devil Discover’d: Backgrounds and Foregrounds to Webster’s Tragedy

This is the first extensive close reading of John Webster’s masterpiece of drama, The White Devil, and includes a study of its literary associations. The play is examined as an intricate texture of motifs and images, expressed through an organic form of «movements», rather than through act and scene structure. In addition, connections of the play with Mary Magdalen, rogue pamphlets, Sir Walter Raleigh’s trial, Thomas Adam’s «White Devil» sermon, and John Donne’s Biathanatos, are newly explored.