“Her ladyship’s foolish”: The servant’s disobedience in John Webster’s The White Devil

Abstract

The White Devil (1612) has attracted considerable critical attention, focusing on, among others, its intervention in the early modern debate on 'the nature of women' and depiction of female sexuality (Luckyj, 'Boy Prince'), its reflection on court life in Jacobean England (Brennan xix), its depiction of the after-effects of the Reformation (Williamson), its engagement with the tradition of revenge tragedy (Purcell 89), its intertextuality with contemporary plays (Weil), and, no less important, its engagement with contemporary debates about race. 1 While these studies have gone a long way to enrich our understanding of