The Works of John Webster

Résumé du livre

This is the third and final volume of the Cambridge edition of the works of John Webster. Volume one contains The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, and Volume two The Devil's Law-Case, A Cure for a Cuckold, and Appius and Virginia. This volume contains the final complete play in the edition, the City comedy Anything for a Quiet Life, as well as Webster's spectacular Lord Mayor's pageant Monuments of Honour and his Induction and additions to John Marston's The Malcontent. Webster's non-dramatic work is also included: the deeply-felt verse elegy to Prince Henry entitled A Monumental Column, his various shorter poems, including verses for the engraving of The Progeny of ... Prince James, and the thirty-two New Characters added to the sixth edition of Sir Thomas Overbury's Characters. His additions to The Malcontent and his verses for The Progeny of ... Prince James have been included. Furthermore, this Cambridge critical edition preserves the original spelling of all the plays, poetry, and prose, and incorporates the most recent editorial scholarship, including valuable information on Webster's share in the collaborative plays, and critical methods and textual theory. In particular, the edition integrates theatrical aspects of the plays with their bibliographical and literary features. The edition presents all Webster's plays as well as the poems and prose (with the exception of those collaborative plays already published in the Cambridge editions of Dekker, and Beaumont and Fletcher under the editorship of Fredson Bowers), and provides a brief biography, illustrations, and a critical, textual, and, for the drama, theatrical history of each work. This final volume includes an important revision of the canon of John Webster that clarifies his collaborations, and also provides a fresh determination on plays, poems, and other works previously claimed as his. The edition will be of interest to scholars and students of drama and English literature, and to theatre practitioners and historians.