The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Devil, by John Webster

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Title: The White Devil

Author: John Webster

Release Date: July 16, 2004 [EBook #12915]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE DEVIL ***

Produced by Julie C. Sparks

THE WHITE DEVIL

TO THE READER

In publishing this tragedy, I do but challenge myself that liberty, which
other men have taken before me; not that I affect praise by it, for, nos
haec novimus esse nihil, only since it was acted in so dull a time of
winter, presented in so open and black a theatre, that it wanted (that
which is the only grace and setting-out of a tragedy) a full and
understanding auditory; and that since that time I have noted, most of
the people that come to that playhouse resemble those ignorant asses
(who, visiting stationers' shops, their use is not to inquire for good
books, but new books), I present it to the general view with this
confidence:

Nec rhoncos metues maligniorum,
Nec scombris tunicas dabis molestas.

If it be objected this is no true dramatic poem, I shall easily confess
it, non potes in nugas dicere plura meas, ipse ego quam dixi; willingly,
and not ignorantly, in this kind have I faulted: For should a man present
to such an auditory, the most sententious tragedy that ever was written,
observing all the critical laws as height of style, and gravity of
person, enrich it with the sententious Chorus, and, as it were Life and
Death, in the passionate and weighty Nuntius: yet after all this divine
rapture, O dura messorum ilia, the breath that comes from the incapable
multitude is able to poison it; and, ere it be acted, let the author
resolve to fix to every scene this of Horace:

--Haec hodie porcis comedenda relinques.

To those who report I was a long time in finishing this tragedy, I
confess I do not write with a goose-quill winged with two feathers; and
if they will need make it my fault, I must answer them with that of
Euripides to Alcestides, a tragic writer: Alcestides objecting that
Euripides had only, in three days composed three verses, whereas himself
had written three hund