Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/127

 he undertook the additions to ‘The Malcontent’ at the request of the theatrical manager rather than of the writer of the play. With Thomas Heywood he was in closer personal intercourse, though they did not write together for the stage after 1602. In 1612 Webster joined Heywood and Cyril Tourneur in compiling the volume entitled ‘Three Elegies to the Memory of Prince Henry.’ Webster was author of the second poem which was entitled ‘A Monumental Column,’ and was dedicated to Robert Carr, viscount Rochester; there is a rare separate issue in the British Museum. It was a formal elegy, but it includes a fine compliment to the poet and dramatist George Chapman, whom Webster calls the prince's ‘sweet Homer and my friend.’ Webster also wrote prefatory verses for Heywood's ‘Apology for Actors’ (1612), and there addressed Heywood as ‘his beloved friend.’

It was only with Dekker that Webster formed, as a dramatist, any enduring literary alliance. With Dekker he wrote verses for the splendidly illustrated volume—Stephen Harrison's ‘Arches of Triumph’—which celebrated James I's formal entry into the city of London in 1604. But the most important fruits of Webster's alliance with Dekker are the two bustling and unrefined domestic comedies in prose, ‘Westward Hoe’ and ‘Northward Hoe.’ There seems reason for believing that the first piece was begun by Webster in the summer of 1603, and that after he had completed the first three acts, the remaining two were added at the end of the next year by Dekker, with some aid from Webster. The piece was acted by the children of St. Paul's just before Christmas 1604. Webster was also the larger contributor to ‘Northward Hoe,’ which was first produced, again by the children of St. Paul's, about February 1605. An allusion in act ii. sc. ii. to the fact that four years had passed since the Islands' Voyage of 1597 has been held to point to 1601 as the date of the first draft of the play (Notes and Queries, 4th ser. xi. 318), but the dates are stated loosely. Both ‘Westward Hoe’ and ‘Northward Hoe’ were published in separate quartos in 1607.

Webster's genius did not find full expression until he wholly freed himself from the trammels of partnership with men of powers inferior to his own. At an unascertained date between 1607 and 1612 he for the first time wrote a play singlehanded, and there evinced such command of tragic art and intensity as Shakespeare alone among Englishmen has surpassed. The new piece was first published in 1612, under the title of ‘The White Divel, or the Tragedy of Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, with the Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona, the famous Venetian Curtizan. Acted by the Queene's Maiesties Servants,’ London, 1612, 4to. In an address ‘to the reader’ Webster declared that the piece ‘was acted in so dull a time of winter, presented in so open and black a theatre that it wanted a full and understanding auditory.’ It was produced by the queen's company, possibly at the Curtain, in the cold winter of 1607–8, with the great actor Burbage in the part of Brachiano. ‘The White Devil’ was subsequently (after 1625) performed by Queen Henrietta's servants at the Phœnix Theatre in Drury Lane, and the fact was noted on the title-page of a new edition in 1631. The ‘White Devil’ resembles in many points the ‘Revenger's Tragedie’ of Cyril Tourneur [q. v.], which was published in 1607, and was doubtless written first. The plot, drawn from an Italian source, is compounded of a series of revolting crimes, but the piece holds the reader spellbound by the stirring intensity with which the dramatist develops the story. Rarely in tragedy has pity been more poignantly excited than by the sorrows of the high-spirited heroine Vittoria (cf., Renaissance, i. 381 seq.; , Chroniques et Nouvelles, Paris, 1855). It is doubtful if the piece were justly valued in Webster's own day. Only one panegyric has been met with. In 1651 Samuel Sheppard declared in his ‘Epigrams’ that the chief characters in the ‘White Devil’ should be ‘gazed at as comets by posteritie.’ There were later editions, in 1665 and 1672 respectively. The piece was revived by Betterton at the Theatre Royal in 1682, and Nahum Tate published in 1707 an adaptation under the title of ‘Injured Love,’ but this was not acted.

Webster followed up his success in the ‘White Devil’ with ‘Appius and Virginia: a Tragedy,’ a less notable piece, although it possessed substantial merit. The story, which belongs to Roman history, was drawn by Webster from Paynter's ‘Palace of Pleasure,’ whither it found its way from Ser Giovanni's ‘Il Pecorone.’ The dramatist invested the romance with much simple pathos, and the lucidity of the plot favourably contrasts with the obscurity that characterised Webster's more ambitious work in tragedy. Mr. Fleay doubtfully detects an allusion at the end of ‘Appius’ to Heywood's play of ‘Lucreece,’ which was published in 1608. This is the only ground suggested for assigning the composition to 1609. But it seems to have been acted by Queen Anne's