STC 25178, title page
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Copy-specific information
Creator: John Webster
Title: The white diuel, or, The tragedy of Paulo Giordano Vrsini, Duke of Brachiano, with the life and death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian curtizan. Acted by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by Iohn Webster.
Date: London : printed by N[icholas] O[kes] for Thomas Archer, and are to be sold at his shop in Popes head Pallace, neere the Royall Exchange, 1612.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 25178, title page & sigs. A2r-v
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STC 25178, signature A1 verso and A2 recto
Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.
Copy-specific information
Creator: John Webster
Title: The white diuel, or, The tragedy of Paulo Giordano Vrsini, Duke of Brachiano, with the life and death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian curtizan. Acted by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by Iohn Webster.
Date: London : printed by N[icholas] O[kes] for Thomas Archer, and are to be sold at his shop in Popes head Pallace, neere the Royall Exchange, 1612.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 25178, title page & sigs. A2r-v
View online bibliographic record
STC 25178, signature A2 verso and B1 recto
Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.
Copy-specific information
Creator: John Webster
Title: The white diuel, or, The tragedy of Paulo Giordano Vrsini, Duke of Brachiano, with the life and death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian curtizan. Acted by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by Iohn Webster.
Date: London : printed by N[icholas] O[kes] for Thomas Archer, and are to be sold at his shop in Popes head Pallace, neere the Royall Exchange, 1612.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 25178, title page & sigs. A2r-v
View online bibliographic record
Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.
Copy-specific information
Creator: John Webster
Title: The white diuel, or, The tragedy of Paulo Giordano Vrsini, Duke of Brachiano, with the life and death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian curtizan. Acted by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by Iohn Webster.
Date: London : printed by N[icholas] O[kes] for Thomas Archer, and are to be sold at his shop in Popes head Pallace, neere the Royall Exchange, 1612.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 25178, title page & sigs. A2r-v
View online bibliographic record
Folger Shakespeare Library staff, "The White Devil: John Webster refers to Shakespeare by name in his dedication," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/238.
Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 25178. See Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/238.
The playwright John Webster included Shakespeare in the list of dramatists he admired in his preface to The White Devil, printed in 1612 by Nicholas Okes for Thomas Archer.
Webster asserts his support of his contemporaries (image 3: A2v):
Detraction is the sworne friend to ignorance: For mine
owne part I haue euer trule cherisht my good opinion of other
mens worthy Labours, especially of that full and haightned
stile of Maister Champman. The labor’d and vnderstanding
workes of Maister Iohnson. The no less worthy composures
of the both worthily excellent Maister Beamont, & Maister
Fletcher: And lastly (without wrong last to be named) the right
happy and copious industry of M. Shake-speare, M. Decker,
& M. Heywood, wishing what I write may be read by their
light: Protesting, that, in the strength of mine owne iudge-
ment, I know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my
owne worke, yet to most of their I daire (without faltter) fix
that of Martiall.
Webster’s praise attests to Shakespeare’s reputation as a playwright among his peers during his lifetime. As Shakespeare biographer Lois Potter notes, “Shakespeare is keeping company here with two very prolific dramatists who wrote both alone and, like Webster, in collaboration” (388-89).
Written by Folger Shakespeare Library staff
Sources
E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930): 2:218.
Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, eds., Shakespeare Beyond Doubt : Evidence, Argument, Controversy (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2013): 80-1.
F.J. Furnivall, C.M. Ingleby, and L. Toulmin Smith, comps., The Shakspere Allusion-Book: A Collection of Allusions to Shakspere from 1591 to 1700. Edited by John Munro. (London: Oxford University Press, 1932): 1: 116, 233.
Irvin Leigh Matus, Shakespeare, In Fact (New York: Continuum, 1994): 175.
Lois Potter, The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012): 389-389.
Last updated August 11, 2020
