The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore

by John Webster, John Webster, Jane Kingsley-Smith (Editor)

These four plays, written during the reigns of James I and Charles I, took revenge tragedy in dark and ambiguous new directions. In The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil, John Webster explores the role of women and the problems of power, sex and corruption in the Italian court, creating two unforgettable anti-heroines. In The Broken Heart, John Ford questions the value of emotional repression as his characters attempt to subdue their desires and hatreds in ancient Greece. Finally, Ford's masterpiece 'Tis Pity She's a Whore explores the taboo theme of incest and forbidden lust in a daring reworking of Romeo and Juliet.

Jane Kingsley-Smith has edited the plays from the earliest quartos and added invaluable editorial material, including explanatory glosses and a new introduction that discusses how the playwrights explored issues around women, sex, power and violence.

JOHN WEBSTER was born in about 1578 in London. He studied law at the Middle Temple before embarking on a career in the theatre, collaborating on many plays with contemporary dramatists. But it was his two solo-authored tragedies, The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1614), which sealed his reputation. He died in the 1630s.

JOHN FORD was born in 1586 in Devon. His early career was wholly concerned with poetry and philosophical works, and it was not until the 1620s that he began collaborating on stage plays. In the late 1620s, he began writing alone, producing the eight plays on which his reputation would be based, including The Broken Heart (1620) and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (c.1630). Nothing more is known of Ford after the performance of his last play in 1638.

JANE KINGSLEY-SMITH completed her PhD at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon and is the author of two Shakespeare's Drama of Exile (2003) and Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (2010). She is a Reader at Roehampton University, London, and a regular guest speaker at Shakespeare's Globe.

Genres: Plays, Classics, Fiction, Drama, 17th Century, Theatre, Renaissance

623 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 7, 2014

About the author

John Webster (c.1580 – c.1634) was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1613), which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chronology
Introduction & Notes
Further Reading
Note on the Texts

John Webster

--The White Devil
--The Duchess of Malfi

John Ford

--The Broken Heart
--'Tis Pity She's a Whore

Textual Variants

[Anima · Rating 4 out of 5]

-four plays, The White Devil (1612), The Duchess of Malfi (1614), The Broken Heart (1620), 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1630)
The Duchess of Malfi
Act I scene 3
" CARD. The marriage night
Is the entrance into some prison.
FERD. And those joys,
Those lustful pleasures, are like heavy sleeps
Which do fore-run man’s mischief.
CARD. Fare you well.
Wisdom begins at the end: remember it."

..
DUCHESS".. Wish me good speed;
For I am going into a wilderness, 84
Where I shall find nor path nor friendly clue
To be my guide. "

"" ANT. Ambition, madam, is a great man’s madness,
That is not kept in chains and close-pent rooms,
But in fair lightsome lodgings, and is girt
With the wild noise of prattling visitants, 168
Which makes it lunatic beyond all cure."
-Superb contouring of Bosola's sinister character -one of the three evil forces that dominate the play ( Bosola was hired by Ferdinand to spy on the Duchess)
"BOS. He and his brother (Cardinal and Ferdinand) are like plum-trees that grow crooked over standing-pools; they are rich and o’erladen with fruit, but none but crows, pies, and caterpillars feed on them. "

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wonder what dating was like during the Renaissance? Most marriages were brokered arrangements between families, but there must have been a few well-to-do young men who wanted to impress that comely lass by taking her out to see a show. If so, the four plays in this collection would have probably been the least likely recommended ways for guys to make their move. Each one has strong female character (maybe not so much in ’Tis a Pity... except for Hippolita) all of them brought low by extreme forms of chauvinism. Not that type of men’s right hasn’t re-emerged from time to time since the 1600’s and now more than ever it covers all sorts of men in positions of power. Perhaps dating would have been next to impossible in Webster’s London, but he took delights in creating confrontational Vittoria and the Duchess that only his friend Ford could overturn with Penthea and Annabella.

[Linda Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the poetic verve of these plays very much, even though footnotes were impossible to access on my Kindle. I was able to watch The Duchess of Malfi on YouTube, so that was a big plus. It is justly famous.

The first Webster (TWD) is a kind of wind-up; characters can be surprising, though the adulteress, who is not involved in any bloody deeds at all, is somehow blamed for everything. She at least is sprightly and unbowed. And the Duchess of the later play is certainly one of the most admirable, most pitiable victims of injustice one could imagine.

The first Ford play (TBH) concerns a host of characters male and female itching to kill themselves or one another, who die as if for the camera. This is interspersed with tiresome speeches that slow down the action. It was all very bloody and horrible, with more or less fine poetic expression.

I was not prepared for TPSW. Watch out. Though the scholarly intro does mention a few gruesome details, it somehow does not prepare you. This play is all about incest between a brother and sister, and its dire consequences. This is what we learn about doings in Parma back when: Macho offense is everywhere. It makes you crazy. Being a cuckold is the greatest shame. Murder is commonplace. Murdering someone will not get you in trouble if you’re a man protecting your master. So says the cardinal, the only representative of law and order. The brother, who is crazed with obsession from the first, is criminally insane, and eventually murders his sister. Three of the four women in the play are murdered. If you are a witness to incest, you may get your eyes gouged out and be burned at the stake. To escape such a fate, it seems you can always join a convent.

[♡｡ﾟ. lizzy •ﾟ｡ ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The White Devil: 8.5/10
Not as gory and weird as i would’ve liked.
The Duchess of Malfi: 10/10
Insane!
The Broken Heart: 9.5/10
Not particularly gory nor weird either but i
connected more with the characters.
Tis a Pity She’s a Whore: 9.5/10
It would’ve been more fun if Annabella and
Giovanni had been more openly unlikable, but the
heart scene was crazy! love that.

[Mark Fuller Dillon · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE WHITE DEVIL revisited.

As a Jacobean-mad teenager forty-five years ago, I read John Webster's THE WHITE DEVIL for the first time. I applauded its brilliance, but I also wanted to take a hot, soapy shower to wash away the grease of all that evil.

FRANCISCO:

Brachiano, I am now fit for thy encounter.

Like the wild Irish I'll ne'er think thee dead

Till I can play at football with thy head.

= = = = = = = =

[A man with a set of pistols threatens two women, and he means it]

FLAMINEO:

Look, these are better far at a dead lift

Than all your jewel house.

VITTORIA:

And yet methinks

These stones have no fair lustre, they are ill set.

FLAMINEO:

I'll turn the right side towards you: you shall see

How they will sparkle.

Above all, in the world of THE WHITE DEVIL, power counts for everything, people count for nothing.

FLAMINEO:

He was a kind of statesman, that would sooner have reckon'd how many cannon-bullets he had discharged against a town, to count his expense that way, than how many of his valiant and deserving subjects he lost before it.

= = = = = = = =

[A child, a mere child of murdered parents, has claimed the throne]

GIOVANNI:

Away with them to prison and to torture.

A world of power is a world of horrors.

BRACHIANO:

Look you; six gray rats that have lost their tails,

Crawl up the pillow....

= = = = = = = =

BRACHIANO:

O thou soft natural death, that art joint-twin

To sweetest slumber: no rough-bearded comet

Stares on thy mild departure: the dull owl

Beats not against thy casement: the hoarse wolf

Scents not thy carrion. Pity winds thy corse,

Whilst horror waits on princes.

VITTORIA:

I am lost for ever.

BRACHIANO:

How miserable a thing it is to die

'Mongst women howling!

Yet reading this play again -- for what, the fourth time? The fifth? -- I caught a hint of grey light in its darkness. There is goodness in this world, even if much of it endures in resigned sadness.

FLAMINEO:

I would I were from hence.

CORNELIA:

Do you hear, sir?

I'll give you a saying which my grandmother

Was wont, when she heard the bell toll, to sing o'er

Unto her lute--

FLAMINEO:

Do, and you will, do.

CORNELIA:

'Call for the robin red breast and the wren,

Since o'er shady groves they hover,

And with leaves and flow'rs do cover

The friendless bodies of unburied men.

Call unto his funeral dole

The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole

To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm

And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm,

But keep the wolf far thence that's foe to men,

For with his nails he'll dig them up again.'

They would not bury him 'cause he died in a quarrel

But I have an answer for them.

'Let holy church receive him duly

Since he paid the church tithes truly.'

His wealth is summed, and this is all his store:

This poor men get; and great men get no more.

Now the wares are gone, we may shut up shop.

Bless you all good people.

FLAMINEO:

I have a strange thing in me, to the which

I cannot give a name, without it be

Compassion. I pray leave me.

This night I'll know the utmost of my fate:

I'll be resolved what my rich sister means

T'assign me for my service. I have liv'd

Riotously ill, like some that live in court;

And sometimes, when my face was full of smiles

Have felt the maze of conscience in my breast.

Oft gay and honour'd robes those tortures try:

'We think cag'd birds sing, when indeed they cry'.

Yet along with resignation comes defiance, in particular, the courageous defiance of women. This hits a peak during Act 3, Scene 2, with an arraignment of the heroine, Vittoria, whose only crime is that men want her. She will not be cowed by accusations: instead, she argues back, brilliantly, and gains approval from the court's witnesses.

VITTORIA:

Find me but guilty, sever head from body:

We'll part good friends: I scorn to hold my life

At yours or any man's entreaty, sir.

ENGLISH AMBASSADOR:

She hath a brave spirit.

Her defiance, and the defiance of certain women around her, never fades, not even at the end.

VITTORIA:

'Twas a manly blow.

The next thou giv'st, murder some sucking infant

And then thou wilt be famous.

In THE WHITE DEVIL, defiance often snarls with bared fangs, but it remains courage, and as a light against the darkness, admirable.

Darkness obscured the critical consensus on Webster for decades. Even after Shakespeare had been revisited and rehabilitated from his long neglect by British and German Romantics, Webster was hobbled with the reputation of Horror Sensationalist until the end of the 19th Century, when critics like Swinburne and John Addington Symonds came forward to defend him. His rehabilitation continued in the 20th Century, thanks to critics like Rupert Brooke and F. L. Lucas. They pointed out what should have been obvious right from the start: John Webster was not only a great poet, but a great dramatist.

A great poet, a great dramatist. Marlowe was a great poet, but not exactly a good dramatist. Chapman could write beautifully, but dramatically, his plays, especially BUSSY D'AMBOIS, were unconvincing, inconsistent messes. Ford was often fine as a dramatist, and as a poet, often very fine. Above all, however, as dramatist and poet, stood William Shakespeare, and along with him, John Webster.

Webster's poetry differed from Shakespeare's in its precision. Shakespeare seems to have thought in metaphors, and he rarely used one or two when he could use twelve or fifteen; Webster showed more constraint, which enhanced the power of those metaphors he carefully chose. Webster's drama differed from Shakespeare's in its range of people and emotions. While Shakespeare understood all kinds of people, and covered a vast emotional range, Webster focused on angry, bitter people, ignored, passed by, denied promotion and money despite their qualities. It would not be exaggeration to call Webster a Poet Of Resentment.

Yet as THE WHITE DEVIL makes clear, he was also a Poet Of Defiance.

LODOVICO:

Dost laugh?

FLAMINEO:

Wouldst have me die, as I was born, in whining?

GASPARO:

Recommend yourself to heaven.

FLAMINEO:

No, I will carry mine own commendations thither.

For John Webster, defiance represents courage: a daylight strength against a world of brutal midnight power.

==============

John Ford, 'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE (1633).

By critical consensus, the plays of John Ford represent either a last echo of popular Jacobean theatre, or early examples of a Caroline theatre designed not for the crowds, but for private viewings in palaces or in houses of the wealthy. Whatever the label, most critics agree that by this time, the vitality, the broad appeal of Elizabethan-Jacobean tragedy was dead, that Ford was one of the few interesting writers of this period who retained something of Jacobean vigour, and that his most interesting, most lively play, 'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE, remains one of the best from its period.

I would call it a hand grenade, to be handled carefully at the risk of losing several fingers or an eye.

One reason for caution: the play's topic.

GIOVANNI:

Must I not praise

That beauty which, if framed anew, the gods

Would make a god of if they had it there,

And kneel to it, as I do kneel to them?

FRIAR:

Why, foolish madman!

GIOVANNI:

Shall a peevish sound,

A customary form, from man to man,

Of brother and of sister, be a bar

'Twixt my perpetual happiness and me?

Say that we had one father, say one womb

(Curse to my joys!) gave both us life and birth:

Are we not therefore each to other bound

So much the more by nature, by the links

Of blood, of reason (nay, if you will have't,

Even of religion), to be ever one,

One soul, one flesh, one love, one heart, one all?

[Act I, Scene i]

Like many teenagers before and since, Giovanni knows that he knows everything, and that his will, his desires, transcend social norms and accepted customs.

GIOVANNI:

What I have done I'll prove both fit and good.

It is a principle, which you have taught

When I was yet your scholar, that the frame

And composition of the mind doth follow

The frame and composition of the body;

So where the body's furniture is beauty,

The mind's must needs be virtue; which allowed,

Virtue itself is Reason but refined,

And Love the quintessence of that. This proves

My sister's beauty, being rarely fair,

Is rarely virtuous; chiefly in her love,

And chiefly in that love, her love to me.

If hers to me, then so is mine to her,

Since in like causes are effects alike.

[Act II, Scene v]

What Giovanni ignores is the weight of the world's countering opinion.

FRIAR:

O ignorance in knowledge! Long ago

How often have I warned thee this before!

Indeed, if we were sure there were no deity,

Nor heaven nor hell, then to be led alone

By nature's light -- as were philosophers

Of elder times -- might instance some defence;

But 'tis not so. Then, madman, thou wilt find

That nature is in heaven's positions blind.

[Act II, Scene v]

Luckily (or unluckily) for Giovanni, his beloved sister is more than willing to love him back. For Annabella, the long line of suitors eager to win her hand might as well not exist; her one true love is her brother.

ANNABELLA :

This noble creature was in every part

So angel-like, so glorious, that a woman

Who had not been but human as was I,

Would have kneeled to him, and have begged for love.

You -- why you are not worthy once to name

His name without true worship, or indeed,

Unless you kneeled, to hear another name him.

[Act IV, Scene iii]

The first unsettling aspect of this play is the implication that these lovers are indeed sincere. Despite the hardships that eat away at their secret union, they remain devoted and loyal to each other.

The second unsettling detail is the brutal ferocity of the other characters towards Annabella. Like the enemies of the Duchess in John Webster's THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, these men seem to resent her mainly because she openly, honestly, and courteously follows her own path. Circumstances are complicated (perhaps over-complicated) by plotters in disguise, by daily betrayals, by feuds between the suitors, but in all of this, Annabella, despite her incest, comes across as the better human being.

Yet as we know, history is written by the victors. The final judgement of the victors in this play is that Annabella was a despicable whore, which ignores her actions and her personality. Whether this harsh assessment of her character was also John Ford's remains impossible to tell, but much of the lingering bitterness of this play comes from the unfairness, the cruelty of the men.

If Annabella seems more innocent, more pure than the men around her, Giovanni carries the weight of a more complex mind. At the play's end, he becomes a full revenger against those who persecute his sister, yet his own "solution" to the challenge of his love is just as brutal as theirs. The play foreshadows this end in many lines, but it remains horrific. For some readers, this might seem over the top, but in the traditions of Elizabethan-Jacobean tragedy, the spectacle of gore fits right in.

While John Ford shares with Webster and Shakespeare this passion for bloodshed, he lacks their genius for metaphors and imagery. Instead, he offers a smoothly elegant dramatic language that brings pleasures of its own.

ANNABELLA:

Methinks you weep.

GIOVANNI:

I do indeed: these are the funeral tears

Shed on your grave; these furrowed up my cheeks

When first I loved and knew not how to woo.

Fair Annabella, should I here repeat

The story of my life, we might lose time.

Be record all the spirits of the air,

And all things else that are, that day and night,

Early and late, the tribute which my heart

Hath paid to Annabella’s sacred love

Hath been these tears, which are her mourners now.

Never till now did Nature do her best

To show a matchless beauty to the world,

Which in an instant, ere it scarce was seen,

The jealous Destinies required again.

Pray, Annabella, pray. Since we must part,

Go thou white in thy soul to fill a throne

Of innocence and sanctity in heaven.

Pray, pray, my sister.

ANNABELLA:

Then I see your drift.

Ye blessed angels, guard me!

GIOVANNI:

So say I.

Kiss me. [They kiss] If ever after-times should hear

Of our fast-knit affections, though perhaps

The laws of conscience and of civil use

May justly blame us, yet when they but know

Our loves, that love will wipe away that rigour

Which would in other incests be abhorred.

Give me your hand. How sweetly life doth run

In these well-coloured veins! How constantly

These palms do promise health! But I could chide

With Nature for this cunning flattery.

Kiss me again. Forgive me.

ANNABELLA:

With my heart. [They kiss]

[Act V, Scene v]

What we have, then, is a play of elegant poetry, undeniable power, and an overwhelming bitterness. Readers will respond as they will; for my part, I admire the play even as I wince at the sting of its venom.

[Hugolane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have long wanted to read John Webster, and specifically The White Devil thanks to the name check at the beginning of Echo and the Bunnymen's song "My White Devil." Is John Webster one of the greats? After reading I'm not sure. I found the misogynistic innuendo early in the play disconcerting. We are really given opportunity to see the world through her eyes unencumbered from the notion that she is a conniving whore. Apparently we are to be impressed with her stoical embrace of her fate at the end as some kind of redemption, but this middle-aged reader, whose life straddles the twentieth and twenty-first centuries really isn't that interested in stoicism. By contrast, the Duchess of Malfi seemed to hold up better. The word play was less jarring, but impressive, and the story worked, even as it drifted into the bloody end of a conventional revenge tragedy. Indeed, of the four plays in this volume, it is the only one I can imagine reading again. Neither of John Ford's plays spoke to me. That said, having long entertained the notion that Shakespeare's greatness was as much about the quantity of his great works as it was about any special quality in his works, reading these plays has given me a much greater appreciation about how much greater Shakespeare's talents were in comparison to his contemporaries.

[WombleWho · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Duchess of Malfi - 5
The White Devil - 4
The Broken Heart - 3
'Tis a Pity She's a Whore - 4

[Dominic H · Rating 4 out of 5]

I complain a lot about the utter lack of care most publishers take with eBooks. Only fair then to call out Penguin Modern Classics for another first rate edition, this time of some of the most important plays of Early Modern Drama. Pairing Webster with Ford like this makes so much sense in editorial terms and Jane Kingsley-Smith has prepared a scrupulous edition, with clear introductions and just the right balance of textual notes. The whole works really well on a Kindle Scribe. It's currently selling for £2.99 at Amazon, an astonishing bargain.

[Knut EB · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 4 star rating is for the Duchess of Malfi, arguably my favourite in this edition.
The stars also encompass the collection as a whole - reading the plays back to back gave me better appreciation of the genre. Footnotes were generally helpful, albeit slightly over-used.

An unintended consequence of reading these is appreciating how great Shakespeare was - Hanlet has more compelling dialogue than any of the plays in this collection.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sensationalist dramas by younger contemporaries of Shakespeare. Ford’s language is a little more accessible to modern readers.

[Aman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beauty that clothes the outside of our face, is cursed if it not be clothed with grace.

[Valerie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Just not as good as Shakespeare and Marlowe. Ford is the better of these two, despite him being weird about twins (twins don't sleep with each other! Stop it!).

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting window on a society and its entertainments

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would not start with Malfi, which was a bit hard to get through. The others, though, were great, and Malfi was great too. Just a bit hard to get through.

[Nora · Rating 4 out of 5]

duchess of malfi topppp
white devil … i see the vision
wym she’s a whore ??? love affair with her brother??? got her dead??? the way i would be soooo pissed

[Samantha Ulrich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved loved these plays. Tis pity puts Romeo and Juliet to shame

[Isabella Milian · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

'Tis pity she was a whore indeed. These plays were very, ummmmm, how can I say it? too close to home (if you catch my drift). Very fun to read and discuss though