Biography
John Webster was born around 1578, probably in London, the son of a coachmaker who belonged to the Merchant Taylors' Company; little else is reliably known about his life. As a dramatist he collaborated at times with contemporaries such as Thomas Dekker and John Marston. With the tragedy "The White Devil" (first performed 1612) and above all "The Duchess of Malfi" (c. 1613/14) he created what are considered among the darkest and most uncompromising tragedies of the Jacobean stage after Shakespeare's. T. S. Eliot later described Webster's view of human nature as one that always saw "the skull beneath the skin".
On Stagelog
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