「悲喜劇」としてのジョン・ウェブスター作『悪魔の訴訟』

The Devil’s Law-Case is, as far as we know, one of the three extant plays written entirely by Webster, and unique in his oeuvre as an uncollaborative tragicomedy. This paper explores the way in which Webster’s choice and use of this genre affected what he called ‘this Poeme’, by comparing its theme, language and plot with those of his more highly-regarded plays, i.e., The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi.
Like Webster’s two great tragedies, The Devil’s Law-Case contains subversive elements that may be taken as vindicating the value of a human individual’s natural passion rather than that of traditional ideas and the status quo. In comparison with them, however, this Romantic aspect of the play has not as much attracted, and much less moved, modern readers and audiences. I argue that one of the reasons stems from the fact that Webster wrote it following the conventions of the genre of tragicomedy, which was very popular at the time. In Webster’s preceding tragedies, on the one hand, there were irreconcilable conflicts between the protagonists’ private natural desire and the demands of the public world which ruthlessly suppresses and sacrifices the former to maintain social order. As a result, modern readers and audiences can find beauty and poetry in their heroically iconoclastic attempts and their eventual ruin. On the other hand, Jacobean tragicomedy in general was notable for the complexity of its plots, and the skill of dramatists was judged by their ability to create a harmonious resolution of complex tensions and difficulties. In the case of The Devil’s Law-Case, too, with the happy denouement, order is restored both by the law which Ariosto embodies and the church which the Capuchin represents. In exchange for this restoration, however, the characters of the drama lose the psychological depth of their personalities. While the Websterian iconoclasm is ever aimed at authoritarianism, in this tragicomedy, it becomes the source of much of the tension-relieving humour, thus ending up with the reader’s or audience’s derisive, but benign laughter.
Another related, more fundamental characteristic of tragicomedy is that in it, theatricality and contrivance co-exist with near-tragic elements. The utmost political effect of the words and acting, even in comedies, may have a capacity to deconstruct the system of social order and the status quo, by their ridiculous, but serious treatment of the dominant power and authority. However, since tragicomedies have the potential to transform even the seriousness of resistance into harmless laughter and happy endings, they prevent the dramatists from maintaining the high pitch of their true heroes and heroines who have emotional and intellectual confidence. Tragicomedies provide neither tragedy nor comedy, and it is this in-between genre that makes it difficult for modern readers and audiences to give wholehearted applause to the subversive elements of The Devil’s Law-Case and to recognize it as another masterpiece of John Webster.