John Webster c.1580-c.1632
John Webster was born in or near London probably around 1580. His father was a carriage maker and a freeman of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, one of the twelve great livery companies. For this reason John may have attended Merchant Taylors’ School but what is certain is that he was admitted to the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court, in 1598. In 1605 he married Sara Peniall by special licence, which was necessary as it was during Lent when marriages were not normally permitted. Sara was seven months pregnant, so haste was essential to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy. They had other children later.
Webster had already established himself as a playwright, having collaborated with Thomas Dekker on a comedy, Westward Ho. Ben Jonson, for whatever reason, retaliated with his own play, Eastward Ho, to which Webster and Dekker responded with Northward Ho in 1605. This type of literary sparring was quite commonplace in this period. Whether Jonson contemplated writing Southward Ho to complete the main points of the compass is not known.
Over the next few years Webster collaborated with several other playwrights such as Rowley, Middleton, Fletcher, Ford, and Massinger on at least eight plays and some non-dramatic verse. Two plays, which are certainly his own are The White Devil (1612) and his most famous, The Duchess of Malfi (1614), a macabre tragedy about the revenge of two brothers on their sister for marrying below her class. These plays were both performed at the Red Bull Theatre in Clerkenwell, north of the river. Although outwardly gruesome, The Duchess of Malfi on a deeper level deals with issues of class division, love and lust, political and religious obligations, immorality and sibling rivalry.
Webster also wrote an elegy on the death of Prince Henry, James I’s eldest son, heir to the throne, who died from typhoid fever aged eighteen, as well as a number of poems, some of which appear in his plays. In 1624 he was responsible for the Lord Mayor’s Show. He died on or before 1633 as by 1634 he was being referred to in the past tense.