The White Devil is a tragedy by English playwright John Webster. According to Webster's own preface to the 1612 Quarto Edition, “To the Reader”, the play's first performance in that year was a notorious failure; he complained that the play was acted in the dead of winter before an unreceptive audience. data-ved="2ahUKEwi8_t3_o_XpAhVsQUEAHWwiANEQmhMwEXoECBIQAg”>
John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. His life and career overlapped William Shakespeare's.