The White Devil

New kid on the block

Shakespeare you always expect to see on A Level exam syllabuses.
Marlowe’s Dr Faustus continues to pull in the gothic crowd.
Now Webster’s dark revenge tragedy, The White Devil, is under examination.

Full of dark deeds and tortured imaginings, this complex plot hinges on a variety of characters and motifs typical of the revenge genre.

Rather than a hero, the play has a range of anti-heroes, each trying to outwit the other, until most of them are killed, by a variety of grisly means.

Often the female roles in plays of the era are used as receptacles of virtue – think Portia in The Merchant of Venice, or Isabella in Measure for Measure – to counterpoint male machinations. But Webster eschews this approach. Although one woman does provide a positive moral balance in the drama, there are two other feisty and amoral female roles, one of which is the ‘white devil’ of the title.

Moral ambiguity

But no-one is wholly good or bad, even though Webster tries to shape his contemporaries’ response to certain roles by overlaying them with a traditional Christian or evil iconography.

Modern audiences and students do not find that these visual or verbal references register so immediately, which is why the new Crossref-it.info guide aims to make everything clear, from what is happening in each scene, to the sophisticated allusions with which Webster peppers the text.

Don’t take our word for it

A senior British academic wrote of our White Devil Guide:

‘This guide introduces students to some of the contexts that will help them understand how The White Devil fits into the wider culture of Jacobean England. Its scene-by-scene glosses and questions are very well designed to support individual study, while the discussion of critical approaches and its suggestions for further reading, provide valuable pointers… . A thorough, very useful, learning
resource.’

Dr Pascale Aebischer (D.Phil., Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Studies, Dept. of English, University of
Exeter)

The influence of the KJB on culture

Not only were Webster and his contemporaries inspired by some of the ideas and stories
from the Bible – the world of music was shaped by it for centuries too.

Until 28th November, try and catch a performance of the Concert trio In Voice and Verse,
who tell the story of Genesis to Revelation using the words of the King James Bible
interspersed with the famous pieces of music which those words inspired.

The music will include excerpts from:

• Haydn's Creation
• Handel's Messiah
• Mendelssohn’s Oh for the Wings of a Dove
• Several modern compositions.

To discover performance venues and dates, click here.