Webster's life is obscure and the dates of his birth and death are not known. His father, a carriage maker also named John Webster, married a blacksmith's daughter named Elizabeth Coates on 4 November 1577 and it is likely that Webster was born not long after, in or near London. The family lived in St Sepulchre's parish. His father John and uncle Edward were Freemen of the
Merchant Taylors' Company and Webster attended Merchant Taylors' School in Suffolk Lane, London. On 1 August 1598, "John Webster, lately of the New Inn" was admitted to the
Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court; in view of the legal interests evident in his dramatic work, this may be the playwright. Webster married 17-year-old Sara Peniall on 18 March 1605 at
St Mary's Church, Islington. A special licence was needed to permit a wedding in
Lent, as Sara was seven months pregnant. Their first child, John Webster III, was
baptised at the parish of
St Dunstan-in-the-West on 8 March 1606. Bequests in the will of a neighbour who died in 1617, indicate that other children were born to him. Most of what is otherwise known of him relates to his theatrical activities. Webster was still writing plays in the mid-1620s, but
Thomas Heywood's
Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels (licensed 7 November 1634) speaks of him in the past tense, implying he was then dead. There is no known portrait of Webster.
Early collaboration By 1602, Webster was working with teams of playwrights on history plays, most of which were never printed. They included a tragedy, ''Caesar's Fall
(written with Michael Drayton, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton and Anthony Munday), and a collaboration with Dekker, Christmas Comes but Once a Year
(1602). With Dekker he also wrote Sir Thomas Wyatt
, which was printed in 1607 and had probably been first performed in 1602. He worked with Dekker again on two city comedies, Westward Ho
in 1604 and Northward Ho'' in 1605. Also in 1604, he adapted
John Marston's
The Malcontent for staging by the
King's Men.
The major tragedies '', 1623 Despite his ability to write comedy, Webster is best known for two brooding English tragedies based on Italian sources.
The White Devil, a retelling of the intrigues involving
Vittoria Accoramboni, an Italian woman assassinated at the age of 28, was a failure when staged at the
Red Bull Theatre in 1612 (published the same year) being too unusual and intellectual for its audience.
The Duchess of Malfi, first performed by the King's Men about 1614 and published nine years later, was more successful. He also wrote a play called
Guise, based on French history, of which little else is known, as no text has survived.
The White Devil was performed in the Red Bull Theatre, an open-air theatre that is believed to have specialised in providing simple, escapist drama for a largely working-class audience, a factor that might explain why Webster's intellectual and complex play was unpopular with its audience. In contrast,
The Duchess of Malfi was probably performed by
the King's Men in the smaller, indoor
Blackfriars Theatre, where it might have been appreciated by a better educated audience. The two plays would thus have been played very differently:
The White Devil by adult actors, probably in continuous action, with elaborate stage effects a possibility, and
The Duchess of Malfi in a controlled environment, with artificial lighting and musical interludes between acts, which allowed time, perhaps, for the audience to accept the otherwise strange rapidity with which the Duchess could have babies.
Late plays Webster wrote one more play on his own: ''
The Devil's Law Case (c. 1617–1619), a tragicomedy. His later plays were collaborative city comedies: Anything for a Quiet Life () co-written with Thomas Middleton and A Cure for a Cuckold (c. 1624) co-written with William Rowley. In 1624, he also co-wrote a topical play about a recent scandal, Keep the Widow Waking (with John Ford, Rowley and Dekker). The play is lost, but its plot is known from a court case. He is believed to have contributed to the tragicomedy The Fair Maid of the Inn with John Fletcher, Ford and Phillip Massinger. His Appius and Virginia'', probably written with
Thomas Heywood, is of uncertain date. ==Plays==