The White Devil

by John Webster, Lara Bovilsky (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350059948
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/12/2021
Series:	New Mermaids
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.46(d)

About the Author

Lara Bovilsky is Associate Professor of English at the University of Oregon, USA. She is the author of Barbarous Play: Race on the English Renaissance Stage (2008) and of articles published in ELH, Renaissance Drama, and elsewhere that explore early modern English understandings of gender, sexuality, class, nation and race.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Preface
Plot Summary
Analysis
1. Performance Aspects of The White Devil
2. Author
3. Critical Interpretations
4. Dates and Sources
Resources and Annotated Bibliography
A Note on the Text
The Play