John Webster as a Dark Playwright: a Brief Outline of His Literary Career

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the literary works of John Webster, one of the prominent playwrights of Jacobean era. We tries to discuss why his writings are so ‘dark’ and what are the factors, that made him be a ‘Senecan playwright’. While scholars have disagreed about the direct influence of Seneca on Elizabethan drama, Janis Lull points out that certainly Elizabethan revenge tragedy shares many conventions with the plays of Seneca, including, as ´the revenge theme, the ghosts, the Play-within-the play, the dumb show, the soliloquy, the declaration and bombast, the emphasis on macabre brutalities, insanity and suicide´ (James E. Ruoff).