Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/129

 disagreeable plot is inadequately relieved by artistic treatment. It was acted ‘by Queen Anne's servants,’ and therefore before 1619. It was first published in 1623 with the assurance on the title-page that it was ‘The true and perfect copie from the originall. As it was approouedly well acted by her maiesties servants.’ Webster addressed the dedication to Sir Thomas Finch, bart., and a modest appeal for a fair judgment ‘to the judicious reader.’ Dyce asserts that it was written not earlier than 1622, on the strength of a very disputable allusion to the Amboyna massacre in February of that year.

In 1624 Webster turned from play-writing to perform a piece of work for old friends. In that year Middleton, the city poet, was unable to prepare the words for the lord mayor's pageant. John Gore, the new lord mayor, was a member of the Merchant Taylors' Company, to which Webster belonged, and he appropriately undertook to fill Middleton's place. The result was a conventional ‘pageant’ entitled ‘Monuments of Honor, Derived from remarkable antiquity, and celebrated in the Honorable City of London, at the sole munificent charge and expences of the Right Worthy and Worshipfull Fraternity of the Eminent Merchant Taylors. … Invented and written by John Webster, Merchant Taylor,’ printed at London by Nicholas Okes, 1624, 4to. The work is excessively rare. A copy which formerly belonged to Heber is now the property of the Duke of Devonshire.

A year earlier Webster wrote slight commendatory verses for the ‘English Dictionarie’ of ‘his industrious friend Master Henry Cockeram’ (1623), and a year after the production of his mayoral pageant he seems to have died. It is possible, although it is by no means certain, that he was the John Webster, ‘cloth-worker,’ who made his will on 5 Aug. 1625; it was proved on 7 Oct.

Gildon in his ‘Lives of the Poets’ (1698) states that Webster was clerk of the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn. The many references that appear in Webster's plays to tombstones and dirges have been held by Lamb and others to corroborate this theory of the dramatist's occupation. No confirmation has been found in the parochial records, and it is unlikely to be true. Webster has also been wrongly identified with John Webster, author of the ‘Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft,’ who is noticed separately.

Collier stated without authority that Webster resided among the actors in Holywell Street. Collier likewise identified him with one John Webster who married Isabell Sutton at St. Leonard's parish church, Shoreditch, on 25 July 1590, and was father of a daughter Alice (baptised at the same church on 9 May 1606).

Three extant plays were assigned to Webster after his death, but doubts as to his responsibility are justifiable. Kirkman, an enthusiastic reader and collector of plays, published in 1661 two plays—‘The Thracian Wonder’ and ‘A Cure for a Cuckold’—each of which he asserted to be from the joint pens of Webster and William Rowley. ‘The Thracian Wonder’—a very dull piece of work—was based on William Warner's pastoral story of ‘Argentile and Curan,’ and shows few traces of the known style of either of the alleged authors. The fact that one William Webster published in 1617 a new poetic version of Warner's story may account for the association of John Webster's name with ‘The Thracian Wonder.’

The authorship of ‘A Cure for a Cuckold’ seems rightly described by Kirkman. The piece naturally divides itself into two parts. One treats with some extravagance (but with a good deal of poetic feeling and dramatic power) a story in Webster's vein. The central character of this section, the perverse-tempered Clare, who is affianced to Lessingham, dares her lover to murder his best friend, Bonvile, and the ensuing complications give the dramatist an opportunity for character-studies, of which he takes for the most part good advantage. Genest first pointed out that the incident of Lessingham's threat to kill his friend Bonvile had a close parallel in Massinger's ‘Parliament of Love.’ The second part of the play treats with much ribaldry, but with comic effect, the discovery by a rough sea captain that his wife has become a mother during his four years' absence. There is no connection in style between the two parts. The coarse scenes are in prose, and may well be by William Rowley. The love story of Clare is in blank verse, which closely resembles that of Webster's acknowledged work. Mr. Edmund Gosse ingeniously suggested that Webster's alleged contribution to the piece was a self-contained and independent whole. The fantastic tale of Clare and Lessingham was privately printed with the title of ‘Love's Graduate’ under the direction of Mr. Stephen E. Spring-Rice, C.B., at Mr. Daniel's Oxford press in 1885. Mr. Edmund Gosse contributed a prefatory essay.

The third piece posthumously assigned to Webster was a comedy called ‘The Weakest goes to the Wall,’ which was first printed anonymously in 1600, and again in 1618. It was first claimed for Webster (with Dekker) in 1675 by Edward Phillips in his