#The White Devil

[anghraine]

dontstandmedown replied to this post:

re:tags could you share the playwright you're talking about? :0

No problem! For others, the tags in question are this:

#thinking about this partly because the softer & gentler versions of fanfic discourse keep crossing my dash #and partly because i've written like 30 pages about a playwright i adore who was just not very good at 'original fiction' as we'd define it #both his major works are ... glorified rpf in our context but splendid tragedies in his #and the idea of categorizing /anything/ in that era by originality of conception rather than comedy/tragedy/etc would be buckwild

I am always delighted to share the good news of John Webster! If you're not familiar with him, he was an early seventeenth-century English playwright known for being a slow, painstaking, but reliable writer. He did various collaborations with other playwrights (and acknowledges a bunch of his peers in an author's note to The White Devil, including Jonson and Shakespeare) and wrote some middling plays in various genres that could be more or less termed "original fiction," but he's remembered for two brilliant, bloody tragedies.

The basic premises/plots of both of these were essentially ripped from the headlines of the previous century, and Webster makes zero attempt to conceal that fact.

I couldn't shut up about my guy so more under a cut!

The White Devil is based on the actual murder of Vittoria Accoramboni in the late sixteenth century and the characters in the play are generally given the same or similar names as the real life people in the story as known at the time, so there's no attempt to conceal the play's origins (the anti-heroine/villain???[debatable] is named Vittoria Corombona in the play, for instance).

The original production of The White Devil largely failed, which Webster blamed mainly on bad weather and an audience who just didn't get his ~vision and what he was trying to do. It would not be unsurprising for a contemporary audience to struggle with it given that it's a complicated play in which, among other things, Vittoria is put on trial and rhetorically shreds the underlying misogyny of the entire legal process.

The Duchess of Malfi, generally considered a still greater achievement, is based directly on the murder of Giovanna d'Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi by her brothers (it was presumed, likely correctly). Lope de Vega also wrote a play about this tragedy not long before Webster did, though the plays are very different and it's unlikely that Webster would have had the time or linguistic knowledge necessary to read Lope's version. Probably part of the reason for the differences between Lope's and Webster's takes is that Lope had to be careful about the reception by the Catholic Church given that one of the murderers was a cardinal, while obviously an English Protestant like Webster could say whatever he wanted about eeeeevil cardinals.

Webster takes a lot of artistic license, a normal approach at the time to adapting previously-established narratives, but the source material is very recognizable. One of the commendatory verses at the beginning of the play (blurbs in poetic form from other playwrights) is like "I'm sure the real duchess was cool but she couldn't be as cool as Webster's heroine, wow <3". (One of the other commendations is by another fave of mine, John Ford.)

Bosola, the historically mysterious minion of the Duchess's murderous brothers (=Bozolo in the historical narrative) gets an elaborate quasi-redemption arc in the play. And the play is extremely critical of various characters' obsession with and attempts to control the Duchess's sexual behavior (a fixation that is often extremely normalized in early modern British drama, but which comes off really badly here).

Ultimately this obsessiveness leads to her brothers, the Cardinal (=the historical Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona) and Ferdinand (=Carlo d'Aragona) orchestrating her torment and murder in which she emerges with her sanity and integrity intact and dies with dignity. Meanwhile, the Cardinal is exposed as a remorseless villain (he proceeds to murder his mistress with a Bible) and Ferdinand's already-shaky sanity snaps under the realization of what he's done.

Webster's Duchess is often considered the first real female tragic hero in British drama—the tragic is especially significant because tragedy was typically considered a higher art form than comedy and the truly great female characters from that era of drama are often restricted to comedies or secondary roles in tragedy (a marked trend in Shakespeare, for instance). The Duchess in the play is virtuous, strong-willed, witty, and fairly unabashedly sexual in the context of the time, a concept that several hundred years of critics have struggled with. (My favorite OTT complaint is from Martin Sampson, an early 20th century critic who lamented the conspicuous absence of a "strong active man, following righteous things" in Webster's work, to which I say l m a o.)

Anyway, among scholars of early modern British drama, Webster is often considered second only to Shakespeare as a tragedian, on the basis of those two plays. And the modern obsession w/ originality and novelty makes this kind of fascinating, given that his "original" work (in our sense—again, the original vs fanfic dichotomy was not a thing in that cultural context) is sort of meh but his work with pre-existing sources turns them into these staggering dramatic achievements.

#dontstandmedown #respuestas #renaissance blogging #john webster #the white devil #the duchess of malfi #anghraine's meta #ivory tower blogging #gender blogging #long post #i love vittoria and the duchess and also how pissy he is about people complaining about his slow writing #'yeah well that's what mediocre rapid content generators said to EURIPIDES and who do people remember now? THINK ABOUT IT' #okay okay i'll stop with My Guy but. he's pretty cool.

[sarangkstars]

Love Between Fairy and Devil

#my homage to my favorite drama #I finally managed to finish #some of my favorite scenes #did the regular 10 #but I think I need to add a lot more #after all this drama is perfect #the white devil #the underwater kiss #wet hair #my girl/my person #dfqc will die #ripping off his clothes #dfqc is happy #lanterns of love #the confession kiss #the sacrifice #unfortunately it loses a lot of quality when i had to reduce the size #sorry for that favorite drama 🤗 #love between fairy and devil #so I add some more #peek a boo #dfqc's bath #wedding proposal #orchid dies #goodbye kiss #dfqc dies

[anteroom-of-death]

*jigsaw voice* hello, fictional spin doctor, you have to keep this broken stressed-out bitch alive. you have forever. just make sure to look extra fuckable in a 40 tog woolley jumper.

#personal #malcolm tucker #send help and high doses of Lexapro #E Coraline piangeCoraline ha l'ansia #yeup #the white devil #ugh #ttoi #in the loop #saw trap #going my way

[ghostoftheyear]

The White Devil and Malraux prints came in and I'm so heckin happy with how they came out. They're 5x7" on lustre paper and they're absolutely gorgeous. I can't wait to frame mine.

Four Three prints of each are available for $15 each with free shipping in the US/Canada/Mexico. Hit me up if interested!

#my art #uta no prince sama #utapri #pirates of the frontier #malraux #the white devil #kurosaki ranmaru #camus #prints #art prints

[lifewithaview]

Andreas Pietschmann and Lisa Vicari in Dark (2017) Der weiße Teufel/The White Devil

S2E7

Martha meets the Stranger and learns his true identity. Claudia tries to prevent Egon's death in 1987. Hannah travels to 1954 to see Ulrich.

*Adam: People are peculiar creatures. All their actions are driven by desire, their characters forged by pain. As much as they might try to suppress the pain, to repress desire they cannot liberate themselves from eternal servitude to their feelings. As long as the storm rages within them, they cant find peace, Not in life not in death. And so, day after day they will do all that must be done. Pain is their ship. Desire, their compass.

#Dark #Dark tv series #2017 #Der weiße Teufel #The white devil #Andreas Pietschmann #Lisa Vicari #Martha #The Stranger #Jonas #truth #Hannah #1954 #travel in time #crime #drama #mystery #scifi #thriller #iust watched #tv series

[insilverrolled]

from The White Devil

By John Webster [x]

Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole, To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm And, when gay tombs are robb'd, sustain no harm; But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men, For with his nails he'll dig them up again.

#john webster #the white devil #drama #funerals #grief

[msclaritea]

Essence Magazine, owned by Liberian, Richelieu Dennis, attempting to come to the rescue of David Oyelowo. I have no reason to trust a man who just appeared out of nowhere, with a boatload of money, bought an American black magazine, hooked up with Wall Street mag, Forbes and sold a business to a British company. Quite the coincidence, given Oyelowo being British.

"It has always seemed curious that Brighton, a town with so many resident thespians, should produce so little theatre. Drawing on the talents of local actors, many with national reputations, new company InService aims to change that. They will have to do better than they manage here with John Webster's charnel house tale, directed by David Oyelowo, an excellent actor who in only his second production as a director sets himself a mammoth task.

This is not an easy play, even if the characters of this flamboyant 17th-century tragedy of wild justice would be entirely recognisable to us today from kiss and tell tabloid stories. Lust and murder intermingle as Vittoria and the Duke Branchiano, aided by Vittoria's ambitious brother Flamineo, blatantly indulge their licentious passion and soon find themselves falling foul of convention. The play's great scene is Vittoria's arraignment as a harlot in court, and although Sophie Hunter's Vittoria lacks passion, Oyelowo handles it well, turning on the house lights so that the audience are implicated in a scenario where justice must be seen to be done..."

#Essence Magazine Foreign Owned By Liberian With British Ties #Nice Try #David Oyelowo #Bass Reeves #Paramount Global #Shari Redstone #The White Devil #Play #Brighton #David Otelowo Directing #Sophie Hunter cast

[aftanith]

Dark S2E7&E8, "The White Devil/Der weiße Teufel" & "Endings and Beginnings/Enden und Anfänge"

Welcome back to Curious Combinations, a podcast in which I explore new-to-me fictional stories across television, film, books, and even other podcasts! I'm starting with the German Netflix series DARK.

This week, I'm covering Dark Season 2 Episodes 7 and 8.

Coming soon will be coverage of Archive 81 (TV), Marianne, and Vampire Knight.

Support the show on Patreon!

#aftanith #curious combinations #podcast #dark #german #netflix #s2e7 #s2e8 #the white devil #endings and beginnings #Der weiße Teufel #Enden und Anfänge

[bad-moodboard]

The Sorrows of Satan (1926)

#film #films #black and white #movie #movies #bat #bats #vampire #vampires #devil #devils #1920s #horror

[lazui-l]

#playwright #will wood #john webster #the white devil #asking the important questions #polls

[zegalba]

Belladonna of Sadness (1973) dir. Eiichi Yamamoto

#Belladonna of Sadnes #Eiichi Yamamoto #film #anime #japan #devil #black and white #gothic #1973

[chillybuilt]

a charming white man

#the layers #the white devil #wow

[the-watcher-in-the-sky]

Whose mask are you wearing?

Gordiart

#horror #horror illustration #dark illustration #illustration #macabre art #creepy art #horror art #art #scary #creepy #macabre #eerie #spooky #terrifying #horror blog #black and white blog #dark #darkness #mask #devil #demon #goth #shadows

[anteroom-of-death]

Me and Malcolm would have beautiful cringefail screaming fests.

#personal #lol #malcolm tucker #peter capaldi #i can give him sentences hell never hear ever or before in his life #my husband fr #the white devil #oooo yea baby #scream at me and ill yell right back

[ghostoftheyear]

Shuji Kikuchi as the White Devil in Pirates of the Frontier.

While I struggled with geting Malraux's face right, here my challenge was all the lace and embroider, not to mention making the spyglass look remotely metallic. I think it came out all right in the end, though. I really like his eyepatch most, I think. (you know the drill, csp, artemus)

If you're interested in a print, let me know!

#my art #complete #uta no prince sama #utapri #camus #kikuchi shuji #the white devil #gekidan shining #pirates of the frontier

[tianhai03]

silly funny thing i drew a few days ago but kept forgetting to post here

og pic is a single blurry frame from this video my bf sent me that makes me laugh a lot

#my bf regularly uses an emoji version of white man jumpscare dante in our discord server #and hes hilarious even when hes tiny im so glad i drew that #devil may cry #dante(dmc) #allyart