[JOHN WEBSTER AND CYRIL TOURNEUR.]
Nothing is known about the lives of John Webster and Cyril Tourneur. We are ignorant when they were born and when they died. We possess only meagre hints of what contemporaries thought of them. One allusion to Tourneur survives, which shows that he was not popular in his lifetime as a dramatist:—
His fame unto that pitch so only raised
As not to be despised nor too much praised.
A superficial critic speaks of "crabbed Webster, the playwright, cart-wright," and proceeds, at some length, to deride his laborious style and obscurity. Commendatory verses by S. Sheppard, Th. Middleton, W. Shirley, and John Ford prove, however, that Webster's tragedies won the suffrage of the best judges. None such are printed with Tourneur's plays.
Webster began to write for the stage as early as 1601. Between that date and 1607 he worked upon Marston's Malcontent, and is supposed to have collaborated with Dekker in the History of Sir Th. Wyatt, Northward Ho, and Westward Ho. Tourneur began his literary career by a satire called Transformed Metamorphosis, in 1600, which was followed in 1609 by a Funeral Poem on the Death of Sir Francis Vere. Both he and Webster published Elegies in 1613 upon the death of Prince Henry.
In this year he was employed upon some business for the Court, as appears from this passage in the Revels Accounts (ed. Cunningham, p. xliii.):
To Cyrill Turner, upon a warraunte signed by the Lord Chamberleyne and Mr. Chauncellor, dated at Whitehall, 23rd December, 1613, for his chardges and paines in carrying l'res for his Mats. service to Brussells.... X li.