Mannerist Motifs in John Webster\u27s The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil

John Webster. a Seventeenth Century playwright variously disparaged as inconsistent.\u27\u27 decadent, or outright incompetent, Yet also praised as controlled, graceful\u27 and highly competent. is a writer whose works may be better understood when viewed in light of mannerist art trends. Like mannerist artists painting in Italy in a period just prior to Webster\u27s, this Jacobean playwright composed works of ambiguous interpretation, inconsistent flow, and technical overabundance. Webster has also in common with mannerist artists that: 1) both followed a political period and a complemental art milieu characterized by stability and balance. 2) both composed, however, in a period marked by conflicts in religion, Politics and economy, conflicts so great that Contemporary man questioned all knowledge, all values, and 3) both composed arts with a consequent lack of central focus, an independence of detail, and a portrayal of busy activity ending in failure. This study delineates the style trends in Renaissance art (particularly the mannerist style), points up the specific technical parallels between mannerist and Websterian art, then moves on to study Webster\u27s thematic - philosophical base in light of mannerist principles. Both arts reflect the skepticism and relativism of Montaigne, the sense that reality, even reality of the self is a shifting, subjective, impermanent phenomenon. Both arts are occasionally labelled as haphazard or decadent