SOURCE: "Tragedy," in Women and Gender in Renaissance Tragedy: A Study of King Lear, Othello, The Duchess of Malfi, and The White Devil, Humanities Press International, Inc., 1989, pp. 49-73.

In the excerpt below, Callaghan contends that traditional "masculinist" criticism has erroneously focused on the dramatist's "defective dramaturgy" rather than "regarding Webster's play as a demonstration of certain flaws in the critical construction of tragedy," particularly those associated with the roles for women.

The critical preoccupations surrounding Webster's plays have been those of structural coherence, and moral vision (or lack of it). John Russell Brown writes in a critical commentary on The White Devil [in his 1979 edition of Webster's work]: 'By borrowing some structural devices from chronicle plays, Webster was bound to lose something of the concentration which is often considered a hallmark of tragedy; but apparently this was not considered a fault in his eyes, for these devices...