It is natural that tragedy reflected this melancholy in its deepest form.

Gloom deepened and had no light to relieve it, men supped full of horrors--there was no slackening of the tension, no concession to overwrought nerves, no resting-place for the overwrought soul.

It is in the dramatist John Webster that this new spirit has its most powerful exponent.
The influence of Machiavelli, which had given Marlowe tragic figures that were bright and splendid and burning, smouldered in Webster into a duskier and intenser heat.

His fame rests on two tragedies, _The White Devil_ and _The Duchess of Malf_.

Both are stories of lust and crime, full of hate and hideous vengeances, and through each runs a vein of bitter and ironical comment on men and women.