John Webster's Borrowing

By R. W. Dent

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1960.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520346147

R. W. Dent

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John Webster’s BORROWING

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

Cambridge University Press

London, England

© 1960 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-10649

Printed in the United States of America

Designed by Ward Ritchie

To E. Q. D. and H. E. H.

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

APPENDIX Dating and Ascription

COMMENTARY

THE WHITE DEVIL

THE DUCHESS OF MALFI

A MONUMENTAL COLUMNE

CHARACTERS

THE DEVIL’S LAW-CASE

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

John Webster’s two tragedies are commonly regarded as the finest to be produced by any Jacobean dramatist other than Shakespeare, and hence among the best to be produced by any English playwright of any age. True, a minority of critics think Webster grossly overrated, and the followers of F. R. Leavis may feel that much in the present study supports them. But most critics, on both valid and invalid grounds, continue to admire The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. For the effectiveness of these tragedies, Webster was heavily indebted to his sources.

In the case of Shakespeare, works concerning his sources both conscious and unconscious have demanded little apology. We are interested in any evidence whatever that will help illuminate either the plays or the man who wrote them. Whole books have been written debating the extent of Montaigne’s influence upon him, though only one passage in all the plays betrays any verbal indebtedness of the kind Webster so frequently shows. Recently, an entire book has been devoted to the possible influence of Palingenius. More broadly, the past few years have produced such studies as J. A. K. Thomson’s Shakespeare and the Classics, Virgil Whitaker’s Shakespeare’s Use of Learning, and Kenneth Muir’s Shakespeare’s Sources, each endeavoring to incorporate and extend the abundant work of earlier scholars. Meanwhile, no comparable study has been given to Webster, the dramatist perhaps second to Shakespeare among writers of English tragedy, certainly second to none in his dependence upon sources.

The present study is not concerned with historical or semi- historical sources for the basic plots of the two tragedies. These have been carefully studied by John Addington Symonds, E. E. Stoll, and F. L. Lucas, and I have nothing significant to add to their discoveries.1 Both tragedies were of course based, however loosely, on actual events of the sixteenth century. For The White Devil we still know of no extensive written account it seems probable Webster used; we must speculate at our peril, therefore, on what changes he made. For The Duchess of Malfi we feel confident that he worked mainly with Painter’s Palace of Pleasure, conceivably supplemented by other accounts.2 Very rarely, however, does Webster betray even the slightest verbal indebtedness to Painter.

He does, on the other hand, betray abundant verbal indebtedness to other works. Webster’s admirers in the late nineteenth century, examining their edition by Dyce or Hazlitt, were occasionally aware of footnotes indicating the dramatist’s indebtedness to some one of his contemporaries, Shakespeare especially. Here and there the editors pointed out what they thought to be an unconscious reminiscence, or an obvious imitation, or a direct verbal borrowing; frequently they were right. The evidence was no more abundant, however, than what appeared in editions of many another Jacobean dramatist. On stylistic grounds, Symonds shrewdly conjectured that Webster used a commonplace book, but only for occasional lines of relatively prosaic sententiousness. Then, in 1906—1907, Charles Crawford published evidence of Webster’s extensive borrowing from Sidney and Montaigne, and in a lesser degree from Donne, Jonson, and Chapman. It became necessary to revise somewhat our bases for admiring Webster’s poetic genius.

In the years between Crawford’s Collectanea and the appearance of Lucas’ standard edition of Webster in 1927, a few further discoveries of sources were made, but only a few, and none of them major.3 Since that time, and especially during the past two decades, we have steadily increased our knowledge of Webster’s sources, so that today we can trace several times as much of Webster to its origins as could Lucas in 1927. More than three-fourths of Webster could be so traced, I suspect, if only we had access to all the works he employed. Our information continues to be frustratingly incomplete, but far less so than it was a few years ago.

Meanwhile, little interest in such source evidence has been reflected in critical studies, perhaps partly because so much of the evidence remains uncollected4 and, except in the vaguest way, unknown to the critics. Clifford Leech’s John Webster (London, X951) ignores the borrowings entirely. Travis Bogard’s The Tragic Satire of John Webster (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1955) dismisses them in a prefatory paragraph, agreeing with Lucas that Webster generally betters what he borrows and that his alchemy is remarkable but clearly regarding them as of little significance to an interpretation of Webster’s plays, or to an evaluation of Webster as a dramatist. Hereward Price’s The Function of Imagery in Webster (PMLA, LXX [September, 1955], 717-739) provides a short paragraph to the same effect, concluding with the confident assurance that whatever he took he worked into the essential substance of the play. Our present knowledge of Webster’s borrowings tells us a good deal more, and a good deal less, than that.

The present study is concerned with these sources for the detail in Webster’s plays—for dialogue, for subordinate episodes, for what Jonson called the furniture. The study has two parts, an introduction and a commentary. The introduction surveys the significance of what we now know concerning Webster’s imitative method of composition; necessarily it is often tentative and conjectural, based as it is on limited information. The commentary, again often conjectural, endeavors to present whatever evidence we have thus far acquired concerning Webster’s borrowing during his literary prime—both that presented by Lucas, that published in the thirty years since his edition (or accidentally omitted by Lucas from earlier studies), and that I have myself discovered but not yet published; it includes not only direct sources but also the abundant evidence of sources as yet undiscovered, many of them perhaps no longer extant. A full index of authors cited indicates in short form the probable extent of Webster’s indebtedness to specific writers.

The focus of the introduction is almost wholly upon Webster’s two tragedies. The commentary covers, though in less detail than for the tragedies, the other works written by Webster alone, without collaborators, during approximately the same period—A Monumental Column, The Devil’s Law-Case, and the 1615 additions to the Overburian characters. It does so mainly because Webster’s procedure in writing the latter often illuminates his methods in writing the tragedies. Undeniably, a careful consideration of Webster’s early and late work in collaboration would also prove of some value; but, except for an occasional reference, such work lies outside the scope of this study.

Composition with the aid of borrowed materials was of course a commonplace practice in the Renaissance, one employed in some degree by every writer in every branch of literary creation. To quote from a typical sixteenth-century preface:

It is the custome of all writers almost, to enterlace other mens doings into their own. … And as Flauius Albinus sayth, this is one kinde of fruit gotten by readinge, that a man may imitate that which he lyketh and alloweth in others: and such speciali poyntes and sayinges as hee is especially delighted & in loue withall, by apt and fitte deriuation maye wrest to serue his owne turne and purpose.5

Today, although we may be both startled and disappointed when we discover that some favorite passage has a source, we know enough to no longer brand its author with plagiarism. We know he was working within a rhetorical tradition that commended a verbal imitation of one’s predecessors.6 We know how much Elizabethans encouraged the use of commonplace books, oftlen for recording the phraseology as well as the ideas of their sources. We know in some measure the degree to which such books, and equivalent devices, were recommended to all: for sermons, courtesy books, works of religious and political controversy, prose fiction, poetry, everything. And we know those published aids to copy so popular around the turn of the century—the collections of Allot, Bodenham, Cawdrey, Meres, Wrednot, and the like— though we know (or at least I know) no major literary figure who employed these plebeian counterparts to the collections of Erasmus. We have become, at least theoretically, more tolerant than were the Elizabethans themselves. Certainly few modern critics share the hesitation of Montaigne:

We others that have little practise with bookes, are troubled with this; that when we meete with any rare or quaint inuention in a new Poet … wee dare not yet commend them, vntill wee have taken instruction of some wise man, whether that part be their owne or another bodies.

[III. viii, ed. 1603, p. 563]

Montaigne was not alone in being thus concerned. For at the same time that the age encouraged verbal imitation, its creative writers reflected an increasingly widespread wish to be original, or at any rate to appear refreshingly new to English readers.

Clearly, there were wide differences in the kind and degree of originality sought. And equally clearly, even among the writers who borrowed most extensively, there was a growing desire to boast, undetected, with Astrophel: I am no pickpurse of another’s wit. Thus many an author, anxious to sound new to his prospective audience or readers, remained nevertheless within the tradition of imitation. Rather than seeking to be wholly original in his expression, he sought fresh purses to pick, fresh sources for wit, often without realizing the degree to which these sources were themselves indebted to more traditional works, especially classical ones. Such a writer, I believe, was John Webster.

It is difficult to know in what measure Webster’s fellow artists would have approved or disapproved his extensive use of borrowings. There were increasing differences within the age as to what constituted legitimate imitation, and judgments would have varied accordingly. A writer could continue to draw upon classical authors without fear of disparagement, unless the borrowings were unduly hackneyed or unduly obtrusive in the resulting work. If he borrowed from Continental authors, he was still safe from all but occasional jibes. But to the degree that without acknowledgment he plundered his own native contemporaries, he enjoyed considerably less impunity. The wit-stealer and the hack plagiarist became more and more the butt of contemptuous sallies from their associates. Unlike such hacks, however, Webster did not passively stitch together long segments from works intended for the same audience as his own. He was obviously no Anthony Nixon—or, to use a somewhat more respectable name, no Robert Greene— hastily turning out salable commodities with a minimum of effort and a maximum of copying. On the contrary, it appears he was a remarkably slow and laborious workman, by his own admission; as he says to the reader of The White Devil, I do not write with a goose-quill, winged with two feathers. …

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that he was a first or second cousin to the Autolgean wits described by Thomas Walkington, those who

… like chap-fallen hackneies feed at others rack and manger: neuer ouer glutting their mindes with the heauenlie Ambrosia of specula- tion[,] whose braines are the very breakers shoppes of al ragged inuentions : or rather their heads bee the blockhouses of all cast and outcast peeces of poetrie: these bee your pickhatch courtesan wits, that merit (as one ieasts vpon them) after their decease to be carted in Charles waine: they bee tearmed not laureat but poets loreat that are worthy to bee iirkt with the lashes of the wittiest Epigrammatists. These are they that like roving dunkirkes or robbing pyrats sally vp and downe i'the printers ocean, wafted too and fro with the inconstant winde of an idle light braine: who (if any new work that is lately come out of presse, as a barke vnder saile fraughted with any rich merchandise ap- peare vnto them) doe play vpon it eft with their siluer peeces, board it incontinently, ransacke it of euery rich sentence, cull out all the witty speeches they can finde appropriating them to their own vse.7

Such a castigation cannot, of course, be justly applied to Webster’s labored and thoughtful procedure. However, it is not without a kind of relevance. For our present evidence suggests that no writer of the age, major or minor, was more indebted to others for euery rich sentence and all the witty speeches.

We already know for certain that the extent of Webster’s borrowings was extraordinary even for the age in which he wrote. Unfortunately, at present we know very little about many of the most famous scenes and passages. The bulk ofi Webster still cannot be traced to specific sources, and for much of that bulk we lack even source-implying parallels. Yet anyone examining the extant evidence must admit that a great deal of source material obviously remains undiscovered. It is difficult to guess how much. I hesitate to believe that we will ever find unmistakable sources for Webster’s most frequently quoted lines in The Duchess of Mal fi, lines depending for their effect almost wholly upon context, and stripped to a bareness free of imagery or of any sententious element: I am Duchess of Malfi still, or Cover her face: Mine eyes dazell: she di’d young. But with a few such exceptions, plus some of the occasional realistic topical satire, I suspect almost everything in Webster has a basic source. Every characteristic of style in the untraced portions suggests they were composed by the selfsame method traceable elsewhere in his work. This stylistic similarity of the untraced portions to the traced ones, joined with the degree of indebtedness already ascertained for parts of his work, makes extremely probable a density of borrowings unrivaled in English literature.

The probability of such density is supported by much of this introduction and by most of the commentary. A pair of illustrations may serve for the present. First, let us take A Monumental Column. This elegy for Prince Henry was written with a haste for which Webster apologizes; here, supposedly, he did write with a winged goosequill. Nevertheless, although he shows signs of laboring at excessive speed, he composed the work bit by bit from sources, a line or two at a time, with commonplace book open. Also open, perhaps, was Matthieu’s recently translated memorial for the assassinated Henry IV of France, the principal source for Webster’s own memorial to a dead Henry. Thanks to Matthieu, we can trace a greater percentage of this work than we can for most of Webster, but the poem is by no means drawn from a single source. Of the first two hundred lines more than half are now traceable to thirty distinct borrowings from twelve different works. Examination of the commentary and of the poem itself will convince anyone that the entire memorial stems directly from such sources. And just as the known sources for the elegy have proved also to be sources for The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, so too the unknown sources probably provided material for the tragedies.

For a second illustration, let us move to the tragedies themselves, and to a part of Vittoria’s famous trial scene (W. D. HI. ii. 145 ff.). Here, a short speech of Monticelso’s is followed by some of what Lamb misleadingly called Vittoria’s innocence-resembling boldness. Below, the source side indicates merely by author and quotation a part of the evidence that Webster is characteristically borrowing, bit by bit; for a fuller discussion, see commentary.

Here we have dramatic conflict built principally from metaphorical sententiae. One fragment is already specifically traceable (that from Matthieu’s portion of a French chronicle). A second, though it sounds proverbial, apparently comes from some one of the many accounts of Richard III based on More, perhaps from More’s own. The remaining two parallels, although by no means commonplace in English, are definitely proverbial. Yet, as the commentary will show, it is becoming increasingly evident that Webster did not employ even the commonest proverbs without the stimulus of some specific work. Hence some immediate source for each of the above proverbs seems probable, and it is equally probable that that source will account for further passages as well (just as More and Matthieu do). Similarly, a few lines later in this same trial scene (lines 171-183), we know that the three elements composing Brachiano’s defiance of Monticelso are paralleled, respectively, in accounts of Henry III of France, Stephen Gardiner, and Robert of Normandy. But for none of these elements do we know a plausible immediate source for Webster. There can be no doubt that he had one, however, and little doubt that again it would account for more than the single parallel.

That a good many such sources will be discovered in the future appears inevitable. Others, undoubtedly, are irrecoverably lost, either because the works are no longer extant or because Webster in part drew upon unpublished materials—hearing and recording parts of conversations, sermons, trials. Whether he did so at all, and if so how frequently, we can never adequately know, though we can be virtually certain that he occasionally used a comparable source—unpublished plays (see below, pp. 46-47). But books, clearly, provided his primary reservoir. The man worked strangely, his creativity receiving some written stimulus at almost every turn. Sometimes he appears strikingly original, occasionally merely commonplace, but almost always—unless our present evidence is very misleading—he worked from sources. Such a fact need not convert Webster into some kind of freak, a creature whose eyes served only to look at the printed page, whose ears listened only to potentially usable materials, and whose other sensory organs operated only vicariously. But in an extraordinary degree he consciously— conscientiously, rather—depended on others for the language, the images, even the ideas out of which he built his plays.

Various characteristics of Webster’s imitative method have been alluded to in the preceding section, while considering the probable extent of his borrowings. Before considering their relevance to interpretation of his tragedies, it is necessary to examine his procedure more specifically, observing his typical processes in composing parts of the plays. I have no desire to reduce Webster to some kind of mechanical man, dully proceeding by some single and simple method. But analysis of a few representative passages can illustrate some of the pervasive characteristics of his technique. In the first such passage (D. M. V. ii. 174-205), Julia is busily courting Bosola (and thereby serving once more as a foil to the Duchess). All the quoted lines are based on parts of Sidney’s Arcadia, which I identify by a parenthetical letter for easy reference, followed by volume and page in the Feuillerat edition. Lucas includes only (a) and (d) in his commentary.

Admittedly, this is not one of the scenes on which Webster’s fame depends. Nevertheless, it is characteristic in many ways of his procedure:

(1) The striking degree to which the whole passage can be traced to specific sources (the lines omitted by an ellipsis include at least one further borrowing). Webster may improve upon his source in vigor, rhythm, or conceit; but his imagination is initially stimulated by some specific passage.

(2) The working in units only a line or two in length. The quoted dialogue gives us a good chance to see Webster stitch them together, with more visible thread than he often employs. Julia’s first speech is preceded by Bosola’s saying this is wondrous strange; from then on he provides the requisite transitions: I am a blunt souldier, And I want complement, and You are very faire. The result is fairly effective and plausible dialogue, although of course too compressed and too conceited to be realistic. Webster’s peculiar density and abruptness, his continuity by loose association rather than gradual and explicit transitions, are in part the consequence of the fragmentary elements with which he worked, however consciously he may have cultivated the resulting dramatic effect. Element after element might be cut without loss of meaning, continuity, or completeness. And although each part is (in the above passage) appropriate, one can see that Webster’s sources are in some measure determining the dialogue.

(3) The presence of an element meaningful in the source but not in Webster. As just noted, the borrowings here are adapted fairly successfully to their new context. But heaven knows what Julia, in the final line, can mean by excuse. Her speech sounds meaningful—sufficiently so that no audience would be distracted, and that critics could debate over possible interpretations— but is it?

(4) The considerable variation, from close verbal borrowing to imitation made probable only by the context in Webster and Sidney. In (a), of course, to fit the new context of a woman addressing a man, beauty is changed to forme and age to eyes. Some such changes were essential. More significant is the shift in (a) from passive to active verbs, with the resulting greater directness, typical of Webster. This is akin to his preference for concrete rather than abstract nouns, and for concrete detail generally.8

Often, Webster’s minor changes seem inconsequential, or nearly so. Two such changes appear in the adaptation of (g): the substitution of the monosyllable sweete for deare (slightly in creasing the sensual element, while replacing Sidney’s faint alliteration with consonance), and of the bisyllabic pritty for just (slightly altering the sense, while obscuring the metre by a typically Websterian abundance of unstressed syllables).9 In this latter change, it may well be that Webster felt he had removed the inappropriateness of excuse by changing its modifier.

(5) The dominant attraction to imagery, especially when combined with argumentative and sententious elements. Sometimes he retains little but the kernel of a witty image, as in (b), (e), and (f), or of a witty argument, as in (a); sometimes he keeps much of its original phrasing as well, as in (c) and (g); sometimes he repeats almost verbatim a pleasing formulation of what he surely knew was a commonplace or proverbial idea, as in (d). Generally, I suspect, he thought the resulting poetry, especially in its imagery, would sound impressively original to his theater audience, his sources notwithstanding.

(6) The sententiousness. In the present passage the prevalence of metaphor, typically undeveloped, is obvious. Less obvious, perhaps, because the passage quite successfully conveys the impression of being dramatic dialogue, is the heavy sententious element, again typically undeveloped. Passage (d) has its proverbial origin concealed in both Sidney and Webster. Often, however, even when most successfully dramatic, Webster’s inclination is to retain or even increase the sententiousness of his source. Here he converts (b) to a sententia, while increasing the sententiousness of (c) by dropping Sidney’s we, and of (g) by introducing a we of his own.10

(7) The concentration of borrowings from a single work, but from widely separated passages in that work. Such concentration occurs only occasionally, and rarely in this degree, but it is common in Webster’s use of all his principal sources—Sidney, Montaigne, Guazzo, Alexander, Matthieu—and even in a few minor sources. It is especially common in the play where Webster first uses a source. Thus The White Devil concentrates its borrowings from Guazzo and Alexander, whereas the later tragedy does not. When considered in conjunction with (8) below, this is most plausibly explained if we imagine Webster sometimes working at first directly from his source, but more often employing a commonplace book, in one part of which quotations were arranged by author rather than topic.

(8) The appearance of borrowings reused in Webster’s later compositions. Passages (a) and (d), like several others from various sources, are copied more literally in their second appearance, again suggesting the use of a commonplace book, at least at the time of

tists provided Cotgrave with more than a hundred passages or more than twenty from a single play.

Webster’s tragedies contributed more than any but Greville’s; his comedy is rivaled only by Dekker’s much longer work. Cotgrave was obviously interested in wit rather than in what Chapman called elegant and sententious excitation to virtue. In Flammeo, Bosola, Julia, and the like, he found abundant inelegant but sententious excitation to vice. Many of the passages from Webster are of course traceable to sources.

their second use. Probably every repetition in Webster, including those not yet traced, stems from this notebook method.

A second passage will illustrate further characteristics of Webster’s imitative procedure. Unlike the passage just examined, parts of it cannot yet be traced. Sources, or indications of sources, are identified by author only; for further details see the commentary. The scene is that in which Antonio and the Duchess are separated (D. M. III. V. 17-49):

Many of the imitative characteristics already noted recur in this passage. The most noteworthy new aspect is Webster’s use of historical, or professedly historical, materials, as in (a), (e), and (f). In whole or part, episodes are frequently indebted to such materials, probably far more frequently than the commentary shows, and often for elements modern readers regard as melodramatic. Once again, there is no reason to believe that Webster expected his average spectator to recognize the derivation of most such passages, but he did have the support of history for much that may seem incredibly unreal to some of us today. The warrant of history may be no artistic justification, especially if the artist seizes only on its most bizarre elements, but it can at least qualify our judgments. No one, I suppose, would object to the Duchess’ dream; nevertheless, it is somewhat reinforced and illuminated by its parallel from French history of Webster’s own day. Ferdinand’s letter, on the other hand, may well seem in the tradition of the wax-mustached villain. Yet the first of its equivocations, according to Comines, was used successfully by Louis XI, and the second Camden attributes to the traditionally crafty Richard III. Occasionally, Webster bases an episode on fiction (as in D. M. II. ii. 37-49, where Nashe suggests a bit of low comedy), but the soberer elements are commonly suggested by history.

Secondly, the passage reflects Webster’s infrequent borrowing of a mere phrase while radically changing its context. In such instances, of course, direct indebtedness may sometimes be to another source. Here he appears to have taken the wilde benefites of nature (which recurs in Anything for a Quiet Life IV. i. 81-82) from (b). Similar are such expressions as tumultuary opinion (W. D. I. ii. 161, from Matthieu), Under the Eaves of night (D. M. I- i- 353, from Dekker or Adams), state of floods (D. M. III. v. 153, from Shakespeare?), and, with less contextual alteration, more willinglie & more gloriouslie chast (W. D. I. ii. 91-92, from Montaigne). But most borrowings of this kind, including some of those just cited, are not merely verbal; they involve some degree of metaphor. Thus they resemble the blanch mischiefe drawn from (c) and merely reemphasize Webster’s attraction to unusual imagery.11

In the light of the foregoing, we may consider the relevance of such evidence to interpretation and evaluation of the tragedies. Let us take first the usefulness of knowing specific borrowings in Webster, and then the significance of knowing his general method.

Not surprisingly, in plays so extensively built out of borrowings, one service performed by a knowledge of sources is the clarification they provide for individual passages. Because of Webster’s heavily condensed style, often too cryptic to be readily intelligible, such clarification is frequently desirable, and sources can give us an advantage over the most attentive audience or most careful reader in recognizing Webster’s intended meaning. Thus Guazzo, for example, removes Lucas’ difficulty with D. M. I. i. 195-198; Dallington largely refutes his interpretation of D. M. III. iii. 61-62; de Serres clarifies for me the obscure metaphor of W. D. III. ii. 171-172.¹¹ 12 13 Similarly, where Lucas is understandably puzzled by some seemingly Ovidian allusions in D. M. III. ii. 31-39, Whetstone accounts for their presence, though he does not answer Lucas’ objections. Many further examples might be offered (the commentary on the first scene of The White Devil offers several), and one major purpose of the commentary is to provide illumination of this kind. In no instance, perhaps, is the interpretation of either tragedy as a whole seriously affected by such evidence. But if Webster’s tragedies are as great as many critics believe, they deserve to be understood in detail.

So too, even when we are not certain of the direct source, our present evidence helps clarify the effect of individual passages upon the learned and unlearned members of a Jacobean audience, by revealing what in thought and expression would appear most new, what commonplace, what laden with traditional associations. Several examples have been given in the preceding pages, and one may turn to the commentary for more. There is no need to burden the reader here.

However, a passage with traditional associations may serve to illustrate a more limited kind of utility. In W. D. I. ii. 307-308, Cornelia protests to her son Flammeo:

What? because we are poore, Shall we be vitious?

Webster’s implied answer is obvious, and must have been so to his audience. It is reinforced, nevertheless, by the Stoic commonplace underlying Cornelia’s rhetorical question: Fortune may bring thee to pouertie, to a lowe estate, it maye afflict thee; but it can neuer force thee to become vicious. The source supports the answer; it does not determine it. If The White Devil implied that poverty excuses villainy (just as some critics feel that Vittoria’s initial situation partly excuses her evil), no source evidence could alter that implication. The controlling guide to interpretation must be the play itself, occasionally supplemented by evidence within Webster’s other compositions.

We cannot, then, assume a correspondence between the ideas expressed in a source and Webster’s own attitude to those ideas as expressed by his characters. In D. M. I. i. 95-106, Castruchio disapproves of princes who lead their soldiers in the field. Ferdinand ridicules this idea, as contrary to the demands of honor. Now Castruchio’s opinion, although a very unconventional one in the Renaissance, is emphatically approved in Webster’s source. Since Ferdinand’s perverted notions of honor help motivate his subsequent villainy, one may infer that Webster agreed with the source and employed the passage to reveal a fault in Ferdinand. Yet that inference is certainly debatable, and not merely because Castruchio is later treated as a fool. If one can trust the evidence of W. D. II. i. 112-129, A Monumental Column, and the Over- burian additions, Webster appears to have agreed with Ferdinand.

Resolution of such difficulties, and there are many, can never be determined by a knowledge of sources—unless on