WEBSTER, JOHN (fl. 1602-1624), one of the greatest tragic writers in English literature. Of his life almost nothing is known. It is said that he was the son of a London tailor; and we learn from his own Preface to the pageant called Monuments of Honour that he was a member of the Merchant Taylors' Com pany and "born free" of it. But this does not prove that either he or his father ever actually plied the needle. It might be gath ered from the ambiguous classical knowledge exhibited in his writings that he was educated at some school of repute; but his close association with so good a scholar as Heywood gave him many opportunities of picking up the scraps of Martial and Horace which adorn his pages. Reasons have been given for placing his birth about 158o; and, as we hear nothing of him after 1625, he may have died in that year. These uncertainties are intensified by the fact that several persons of that time are known to have borne his name.
At what date he "commenced playwright" is uncertain. We learn from Henslowe's diary that he collaborated with Drayton and others in Caesar's Fate, 1602, and with Chettle, Dekker and Hey wood in Christmas comes but once a year. Somewhat later his name appears with that of Dekker as part-author of Westward Hoe and Northward Hoe and in 1604 he contributed the induc tion to Marston's Malcontent. In 1607 "Mr. Dickers and Mr. Webster" appear on the title-page of The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat, a play which had no fewer than five authors and at least two titles (it is an abridgment of Lady Jane).
This habit of collaboration perplexes the critic who endeavours to appraise merit or mark progress in style. One collaborator may easily fall into the manner of the other, and it is not impossible that the authors themselves, after a few years, would be unable to name their own portions. Unerringly to trace the hand of Web ster through Elizabethan drama is now impossible, though students still essay the task. Mr. Sykes thinks he had a share in Anything for a Quiet Life, usually ascribed to Middleton, and in the Fair Maid of the Inn, perhaps by Massinger and Ford but printed as Beaumont and Fletcher's. Mr. Sykes may be right, and has the
weighty support of Mr. Lucas ; but it is certain that others have been wrong. Thus in 1661 A Cure for a Cuckold and A Thracian Wonder were ascribed by the publisher Kirkman, probably with out the slightest traditional justification, to Webster and Rowley. The former, as a whole, seems to bear rather the mark of Hey wood than of either of the assigned authors; but there is in it an episode easily detachable from the rest and of some merit, which Gosse and Spring Rice, in 1885, printed separately under the title of Love's Graduate, with the wish rather than the assur ance that it might be "a piece of silver-work by the sculptor whose other groups are all of bronze." As The Guise and The Late Murther of the Sonne upon the Mother (this latter partially by Ford) are alike lost, conjecture may here disport itself without danger either of proof or of confutation.
The case of Appius and Virginia is more important, for on the decision as to its genuineness must rest our idea of the width and range of Webster's genius. Except for a few remarkable passages, this excellent play differs in every way from Webster's certain work. The only external evidence is the statement of an unknown publisher in 1654, repeated by Humphrey Moseley in 1659; but Webster's authorship was never doubted till in 1911 Rupert Brooke submitted the play to a careful analysis and finally, on grounds of style and vocabulary, ascribed it to Heywood. The present writer, after carefully considering Brooke's arguments, and comparing the play with Heywood's undoubted works (espe cially with the Rape of Lucrece) is inclined to believe that Brooke has made out his case. If so, we are, in forming our judgment on Webster's powers, limited to the three undoubtedly genuine works, The White Devil, the Duchess of Malfy, and the Devil's Law Case.