Reading Comprehension

PT7 · S3 · P2 · Q11 John Webster

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Critics have long been puzzled by the inner contradictions of major characters in John Webster’s tragedies.

Topic

Why modern critics misread the contradictions in John Webster's tragic characters, and what reading them properly requires.

Framework

Highlight Noteworthy. The author flags a long-standing critical confusion and argues that modern critics are misapplying a framework — the morality-play model — that doesn't actually fit Webster.

Main Point

Modern critics misread the inner contradictions in Webster's characters because they apply the morality-play framework that fits other Elizabethan dramatists; Webster, more influenced by Italian drama, builds his tragedies on conflicting value systems and the duality of human nature, so his characters can't be analyzed with simple good/evil categories.

P1: The puzzle

Webster's characters (the Duchess, Bosola) seem inconsistent — both "good" and "bad." Critics treat this as eccentric, but Aristotle implied such contradictions are essential to the tragic personality.

P2: Why critics misread Webster

Modern criticism has been so influenced by the morality play (with its allegorical good vs. evil characters) that it applies that framework to all Elizabethan drama. But Webster wasn't shaped by the morality play to the same degree — he was more influenced by morally complicated Italian drama. So his characters can't be evaluated with simple good/evil formulas. Critics then attribute Webster's inconsistencies to his artistic incompetence. Properly understood, the ambiguity in Webster's tragic vision lies in the duality of human nature: he sets up conflicting value systems, presents characters we judge negatively but instinctively approve of, and produces a tragic, irreconcilable conflict that is ours as well as the characters'.

11.

It can be inferred from the passage that modern critics’ interpretations of Webster’s tragedies would be more valid if

the ambiguity inherent in Webster’s
Wrong View
This answer doesn't have anything to do with the Elizabethan morality play vs. complicated Italian drama we're looking for. The duality of human nature is the author's own framework for properly reading Webster, it's what the critics aren't using. Asserting it would support the author's view, not the critics' interpretations.
16% picked this
Webster’s conception of the tragic
Out of Scope
This answer doesn't have anything to do with the Elizabethan morality play vs. complicated Italian drama we're looking for, so we should be deferring from this on a first pass. If we researched Aristotle's part of the passage, it actually sounds more like the morally complicated Italian drama view (having characters that are good and bad create contradictions that are essential to the tragic personality). So Webster's conception of the tragic personality IS similar to Aristotle's. This isn't a counterfactual, which is what we're looking for. We want a counterfactual so that the critics would go from being wrong to being right.
1% picked this
Correct
Webster had been heavily influenced
Why this is right
In P2 we hear that "Webster seems not to have been as heavily influenced by the morality play's model of reality as were his Elizabethan contemporaries", which is why the critics' good-vs-evil interpretation is off. If Webster had been heavily influenced by the morality play, the critics' framework would actually apply to him, and their interpretations would be more valid. We call this style of correct answer "Flip the Fact". It's popular on What's Implied questions like Opinion and Inference. We were told that the critics were wrong because Webster wasn't doing Elizabethan morality plays like his contemporaries were. So, flipping the facts, the critics would be more correct if Webster were doing Elizabethan morality plays like his contemporaries were.
Skill tested: Inference · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
72% picked this
Elizabethan dramatists had been more
Wrong View
This would maintain the critics being wrong. If morality play were influenced by Italian, then morality play would ALSO not have reductive good vs. evil characters. Since the critics are wrong because they're assuming that Webster wanted reductive good vs. evil characters, this answer wouldn't help them be correct. Now, whether you think Webster was doing morality play or Italian drama, you'd have complicated moral characters either way, so in either case it would incorrect to assume Webster wanted reductive good vs. evil characters.
6% picked this
the inner conflicts exhibited by
Out of Scope
This answer doesn't have anything to do with the Elizabethan morality play vs. complicated Italian drama we're looking for. The conflicts of Webster's characters being similar to those of modern audiences is essentially the author's closing claim — that the conflict is "ours as much as that of the characters." That supports the author, not the critics.
4% picked this

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