![]() Most of the characters are based on real people, although Webster definitely spiced things up a bit. That's right-the Duchess and Antonio were real people, whose marriage ended up going about as well as it does in Webster's play (which is to say, not well at all). The Duchess of Malfi, which he wrote around 1612, is about an actual historical couple who'd lived about a hundred years before. To be fair to Webster, it's not all his fault: both of his major tragedies are based on real life events. Eliot as the man who "was much possessed by death / And saw the skull beneath the skin" (from Whispers of Immortality, 1-2). If most scholars had to describe John Webster and his work in one word, that word would probably be "bleak." Webster's definitely got a rep, and it's not undeserved: his two most famous works, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, illustrate an unrelentingly black and cynical worldview, so much so that Webster has been immortalized by T.S. ![]() You're gonna want your tissues, pint of chunky monkey, and whatever fluffy animal is handy ready to intervene when it all gets to be too much. ![]()
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