John Webster (c.1580 – c.1634) was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.
Webster's life is obscure, and the dates of his birth and death are not known. His father, a coach maker also named John Webster, married a blacksmith's daughter named Elizabeth Coates on 4 Novemb...
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John Webster (c.1580 – c.1634) was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.
Webster's life is obscure, and the dates of his birth and death are not known. His father, a coach maker also named John Webster, married a blacksmith's daughter named Elizabeth Coates on 4 November 1577, and it is likely that Webster was born not long after in or near London. On 1 August 1598, "John Webster, lately of the New Inn" was admitted to the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court; in view of the legal interests evident in his dramatic work; this is possibly the playwright. Webster married the 17-year-old Sara Peniall on 18 March 1606, and their first child, John, was baptized at the parish of St Dunstan-in-the-West on 8 May 1606. Bequests in the will of a neighbour who died in 1617 indicate that other children were born to...
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