John Webster was a later contemporary of Shakespeare, and The Duchess of Malfi, Webster’s best known play, is considered among the best of the period. It appears to have been first performed in 1612–13 at the Blackfriars before moving on to the larger and more famous Globe Theatre, and was later published in 1623. The play is loosely based on a real Duchess of Amalfi, a widow who marries beneath her station. On learning of this, her brothers become enraged and vow their revenge. Soon the intrigue, deceit, and murders begin. Marked by the period’s love of spectacular violence, each character exacts his revenge, and in turn suffers vengeance at the hands of others. Coming after Shakespeare’s equally sanguine Hamlet and Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi brings to a close the era of the great Senecan tragedies of blood and revenge. As the Jacobean period progressed, the spectacle became more violent and dark, reflecting the public’s growing dissatisfaction with the corruption of King James’ court.

This introduction locates Webster's plays within the context of the culture from which they sprang. Examining the uncertain political, religious, and economic climate of Jacobean London, the book offers a guide to one of the most distinctive, yet most elu

This is the first of two volumes to appear in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of John Webster, beginning with the plays The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. While both of these plays are available in modernized versions, the Cambridge edition incorporates the most recent editorial scholarship, including valuable information on Webster's biography, new critical methods, and textual theory. The edition also presents previously unpublished material, such as a fragment of an otherwise lost play and a hitherto unknown poem, in addition to a brief biography of Webster, a history of the Webster canon, and each play's reception history. The following volume will include the other plays as well as the poems and prose.

The plays of John Webster are read and seen more widely today than at any time since they were written - provoking much disagreement in the process. The continuing debate about his political, religious and philosophical attitudes, his formal skills and the importance of his plays for understanding the changing culture in which they were written, make Webster the most controversial of all Jacobean dramatists. This volume includes freshly collated, fully annotated and cross-referenced texts of his three best-known plays, together with introductions and a useful critical bibliography.

Here, Webster presents a trinitarian theology of holiness, which is aimed at a wide range of audiences, including ordinands, students of theology and interested laypeople. According to this account, God's holiness is known not in his simple transcendence but in his gracious and free relationship to his creatures. That holiness finds an echo in the holiness of the Christian community, especially in worship and witness, and in the life of the individual disciple. Integrating biblical, dogmatic and practical theology, the book - which is based on the Day-Higginbotham lectures delivered in the University of Toronto in 2002 - offers a succinct account of a central theme in Christian teaching and practice.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1857.