Critics have long been puzzled by the inner contradictions of major characters in John Webster’s tragedies. In his The Duchess of Malfi, for instance, the Duchess is “good” in demonstrating the obvious tenderness and sincerity of her love for Antonio, but “bad” in ignoring the wishes and welfare of her family and this element of inconsistency as though it were an eccentric feature of Webster’s own tragic vision.
The problem is that, as an Elizabethan playwright, Webster has become a prisoner of our critical presuppositions. We have, in recent years, been dazzled by the way the earlier Renaissance and medieval theater, particularly the morality play, illuminates Elizabethan drama. We now understand how the habit of mind that saw the world the conflict is irreconcilable, and because it is ours as much as that of the characters.
What this question is testing
Topic
The author is defending Webster's tragedies against critics who treat his contradictory characters as a flaw — and arguing that the critics are using the wrong lens.
Framework
Highlight Noteworthy. The author isn't neutral here — they're explicitly arguing the critics have it wrong.
Main Point
Here's the simpler version: Webster wrote tragedies where the characters do contradictory things — the Duchess is loving but reckless, Bosola serves a villain but does some good. Critics call that inconsistent and blame Webster. The author says the critics are using the wrong framework: they're reading Webster through the morality-play tradition, which divides characters into pure good and pure evil. But Webster was shaped more by Italian drama, which is morally messier. His characters look inconsistent only if you insist on simple good-vs-evil. Once you let in conflicting value systems and the duality of human nature, the contradictions make sense — and become part of his tragic power.
P1: The puzzle
Webster's characters mix good and bad behaviors. Critics call that an eccentric flaw. But Aristotle had already said contradictions are basically essential to tragic personalities — the critics are missing that.
P2: Why the critics get it wrong
Modern criticism leans heavily on the morality-play framework, where every character embodies pure good or pure evil. Webster wasn't shaped by that — he was shaped by morally complicated Italian drama. So forcing his characters into good-vs-evil categories misreads him. The author argues that Webster builds his tragedies around conflicting value systems and the duality of human nature: characters we ethically condemn but instinctively like, judgments we accept logically but find disturbing. That's tragic, and it's irreconcilable — and it's ours, not just the characters'.
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