Ford John - The Duchess of Malfi, the white devil, the broken heart and Tis pity shes a whore

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Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, Block D, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Gauteng 2193, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England www.penguin.com First published in Great Britain by Penguin Classics 2014 Editorial material copyright Jane Kingsley-Smith, 2014 Cover: Death wearing a cardinals hat and mantilla, hand-painted tarot card (photograph: The Bridgeman Art Library) All rights reserved The moral right of the editor has been asserted ISBN: 978-0-141-39224-0 PENGUIN CLASSICS JOHN WEBSTER was born in about 1578 in the parish of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, London, the eldest son of a prosperous coachmaker. He probably attended Merchant Taylors School, before studying law at the Middle Temple, where he developed the rhetorical skills needed for a life in the theatre. His writing career was mainly collaborative, beginning with a tragedy, Caesars Fall (c. 1602, now lost), in which Anthony Munday, Thomas Middleton and Michael Drayton all had a hand, and ranging across a number of genres, including popular history (Lady Jane I and II, 1602), city comedy (Westward Ho, 1604), tragicomedy (The Devils Law-Case, c. 1618) and civic pageantry (Monuments of Honour, 1624). Yet it was his two solo-authored tragedies, The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1614), which sealed his reputation.

There are no records of theatrical output between 1605 and 1612, though we know that in 1606 he married Sara Peniall, who was seven months pregnant, and they had at least four children. It may be that during this time Webster was labouring over his two greatest plays. He was clearly aggrieved at the negative reaction to The White Devil when it was first performed at the Red Bull Theatre by the Queen Annes Men to an unenthusiastic audience. However, The Duchess of Malfi, performed by the Kings Men at the Blackfriars Theatre two years later, was an instant success. Despite this new fame, Webster continued to collaborate with all the major dramatists of the time and to work in genres other than tragedy until his death in the 1630s. JOHN FORD was born in April 1586 in Ilsington, Devon, the second son of a wealthy landowner.

We know very little about his life. He may have attended Exeter College, Oxford, before studying law at the Middle Temple in London, an association he seems to have continued throughout his life. His first published work was an elegy entitled Fames Memorial (1606) and his early career was wholly concerned with poetry and philosophical works. It was not until the 1620s that he began writing for the stage, collaborating with the more experienced dramatist Thomas Dekker on plays including The Witch of Edmonton (1621) and a masque, The Suns Darling (1624), and developing his connection with the Kings Men by completing John Fletchers The Fair Maid of the Inn (1626) with Webster and Philip Massinger. In the late 1620s Ford began writing alone, producing the eight plays on which his reputation is based. 1628), The Broken Heart (c. 1629) and Beauty in a Trance (c. 1630, now lost), performed by the Kings Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. 1630, now lost), performed by the Kings Men at the Blackfriars Theatre.

Ford then changed his allegiance to the Queen Henriettas Men at the Cockpit Theatre, Drury Lane, for whom he wrote Tis Pity Shes a Whore (c. 1630), Loves Sacrifice (c. 1632), Perkin Warbeck (c. 1633) and The Fancies, Chaste and Noble (c. 1635). What looks like Fords last play, The Ladys Trial (1638), was performed at the Cockpit by Beestons Boys, after which nothing more of him is known.

JANE KINGSLEY-SMITH studied English at Oriel College, Oxford, and completed her PhD at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. She is the author of two monographs: Shakespeares Drama of Exile (Palgrave, 2003) and Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Cambridge, 2010), and is currently editing Loves Labours Lost for the new Norton Shakespeare. She is a Reader at Roehampton University, London, and a regular guest speaker at Shakespeares Globe.

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