LIKE one or two other societies we could name, Londoners of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras preferred real-life sex, murder and scandal to the made-up kind. With 'The White Devil,' the playwright John Webster gave them what they wanted. The core of historical truth was this: in 1585 in Italy -- that proverbial sink of sensational depravity -- the Duke of Bracciano had conceived a passion for one Vittoria Accaramboni, who succumbed only after Bracciano had arranged the murders first of his own wife, then of Vittoria's husband. In the black-magic lantern of Webster's imagination, it all made for darkly glittering theater.

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Take Vittoria's first scene. Candor being out of the question, she reveals her passion for Brachiano (Webster spelled the foreign names his own way) by telling him a dream. Brachiano's first duchess, Isabella, and Vittoria's own husband, Camillo, it seems, were both threatening to bury Vittoria alive in the shadow of a yew tree. But the nightmare takes a turn in her favor: When to my rescue there arose methought A whirlwind, which let fall a massy arm From that strong plant, And both were struck dead by that sacred yew In that base shallow grave that was their due.

'Yew' equals 'you' equals Brachiano, the one principal otherwise conspicuously absent from the scene. More readily than Macbeth, he yields to superior female force of will. Advertisement This scene and the play's many more of equally sinister power have been absent from the stage for more seasons than most drama lovers will remember. But on Friday, the Brooklyn Academy of Music begins a new season with the first of eight performances in a critically acclaimed revival at the Howard Gilman Opera House. Originally mounted as the Sydney Theater Company's contribution to last year's Olympics Arts Festival in Sydney, the production was back in rehearsal during Christmas week, with the Australian director Gale Edwards readying her actors for their New York engagement. One morning at 8:30, Ms. Edwards was lamenting that the weather forecasters were calling for a daytime high of 104 degrees Fahrenheit -- suitably hellish conditions for a fable that shows fiends lurking behind virtually every human face.

Eliot, a devotee of the dramatists who languish in Shakespeare's shadow, could write of Webster that 'two of his plays are very well known and from time to time performed.' ' Even now, some remember 'The Duchess of Malfi' (circa 1613), that gory tale of a virtuous widow done to death by her twin brother for the crime of a clandestine second marriage. Declan Donnellan's production for his company Cheek by Jowl, one of several noteworthy contemporary stagings, played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music to loud applause as recently as 1995. Meanwhile, 'The White Devil' (circa 1612) has slipped deeper and deeper into oblivion. The play is extremely obscure,' Ms. Edwards said recently by phone.

'Yet when you hear the title, you think you know what it is. 'The White Devil.' It sounds familiar, somehow. I hope New York audiences will want to see a clear, honest, brave attempt at this obscure but I think very great play.' ' Coincidentally, 'The White Devil' is the first of three Australian projects Ms.

Edwards is doing back to back. Next up is the premiere of a play by an Australian dramatist, David Williamson. Then it is more Theater of Blood, with Stephen Sondheim's 'Sweeney Todd' for Opera Australia. For the last half-decade, the director's work has kept her mostly in London, ranging widely from Schiller's 'Don Carlos' with the Royal Shakespeare Company (critically praised at BAM last spring) to the recent Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Jesus Christ Superstar' (critically slammed).

Edwards calls the present 'White Devil' -- which is exclusive to BAM -- her 'third incarnation' of the play. The first, mounted in the round at the Royal Shakespeare Company's snug Swan Theater in the late 1990's, struck British audiences and critics as a revelation. Its success prompted an invitation by the Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival for the Sydney Theater Company's more grandly scaled proscenium version, with a new Australian design team and an Australian cast. This second incarnation, with its sleeker look and classical though not period-accurate glamour, was, Ms. Edwards says, 'informed' by the first but no replay. Again, 'The White Devil' scored a resounding success, no small thanks to the players. 'The Australian actors have great gusto and great attack,' Ms.

Edwards said. 'They're like American actors that way.' Edwards described her approach to all her projects as 'filmic,' aiming for a seamless flow from moment to moment and scene to scene.

Audiences familiar with the R.S.C. 'Don Carlos' will get the idea, though a brief video of excerpts from 'The White Devil' promises a bolder eye for spectacle, a more operatic ear for music and a hand more lavish in spilling stage blood. As was also the case with 'Don Carlos,' Ms. Edwards has judiciously 'adapted' the script, which is to say she has trimmed it (the text is long) but transposed no scenes and done no rewriting. Occasionally she substitutes a synonym for bookish or antiquated vocabulary that might require a glossary. 'Pimp' for 'pandar.'

Advertisement A synopsis in the Sydney program book suggests that Ms. Edwards has also exorcised the play's mute though restless and by no means retiring ghosts. In Webster's trebly obscure play 'The Devil's Law-Case' (published in 1623), the scoundrel Romelio derides Christian burial, epitaphs and, indeed, formal funeral ceremony. 'What do these,' he asks, 'add to our well-being after death?' ' As brilliantly as Webster plays with superstition for the sake of atmosphere, his character judgments never depend (as in Shakespeare they sometimes do) on supernatural visitation. Earth is inferno aplenty. Of Webster's biography, next to nothing certain is known.

Yet through the two violent tales for which he is remembered, we come to recognize a singular, quite terrifying mentality. Some have called his patterns of family vengeance Aeschylean. Evil has his complete attention, but he paints in a fury, obsessed with retribution. In language, his hallmark is corrosive metaphor; in dialogue, the clash of wills; in action, the protraction of unconscionable agonies. He writes grand trial scenes (perhaps influenced by a spell as a law student) and cruelly ingenious murders. Download Game Of Thrones Season 2 Episode 1 Free. His dramaturgy makes heavy use of poison, rope and steel. As Eliot put it in the poem 'Whispers of Immortality': 'Webster was much possessed by death/ And saw the skull beneath the skin,/ And breastless creatures underground/ Leaned backward with a lipless grin.'

' The source of all corruption, in Webster's eyes, was the court -- a truth confirmed in the dying words of the Duchess of Malfi's blameless second husband, Antonio, but also in those of the wicked Vittoria. 'And let my sons fly the courts of princes,' Antonio cries. And Vittoria: 'O happy they that never saw the court,/ Nor ever knew great men but by report.' ' At the final threshold, the perspectives of the good and the evil converge. BUT Webster's heart is with those rarest souls no court or fortune could corrupt. 'I am Duchess of Malfi still,' says that lady, unshaken in the face of madness and death.

Though she cannot prevail against her enemies' lust, greed and rage for control, her integrity raises her above the condition of victim. The same is true of Isabella in 'The White Devil.' ' As for Webster's villains, when their turn comes to suffer he allows even the fiercest among them a hint of compassion, but his bar is high. For a booby like Camillo, Vittoria's expendable first husband, he exhibits a cold contempt. But who is the White Devil? Now, there's a riddle. The title page of the play's first edition, typically for the period, is chatty without necessarily telling us what we would most like to know.

It reads: 'The White Divel, or, The Tragedy of Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, with The Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian Curtizan.' ' A proverb has it that the white devil is worse than the black. A hypocritical villain, that is to say, is a greater villain than one whose villainy goes unconcealed. But where is the villain who is not a hypocrite? Some lie strategically for self-preservation; others, for the pleasure of feeding victims the sweet poison of false hope. In fact, the 'The White Devil' is full of white devils. Vittoria is the prime suspect, asserting her innocence (to no avail) before a court assembled to try her for murder and adultery.

'Through darkness diamonds spread their richest light,' Vittoria proclaims, condemned to a house for fallen females, brazenly misapplying to herself a conviction that mirrors the playwright's. Such is the lip service corruption pays virtue.

A second candidate for white devil is Francisco de Medici, Duke of Florence, who goes undercover as a moor in his plot to avenge Isabella, his murdered sister. Then there is the Duke of Brachiano himself, whose tragedy, after all, is proclaimed on the play's title page. Brachiano is another who maintains a facade.

In one of Webster's more medieval strokes, Brachiano hires a magician to let him relish from afar the spectacle of the murders of his and Vittoria's inconvenient spouses. His composure at the death of Isabella, poisoned as she kisses his portrait, especially chills the bones. Mario And Sonic At The London 2012 Olympic Games Wii Iso Ntsc Download more.

Even Zanche, Vittoria's wily confidante, proves an accomplished dissembler. Not that she is any match for Vittoria's flagrantly homicidal brother, Flamineo, who blames his poverty, and the failure of the mighty to reward loyal service, for his crimes -- a morally bankrupt position he belatedly comes to regret. In any case, Flamineo's frank deviltries are decidedly not white.

As for Lodovico -- a banished count in love with the virtuous Isabella and a confederate of Francisco de Medici's in the denouement -- his character is too peripheral to qualify as the title figure. Yet in keeping with the mores of the play, it is in the habit of a Capuchin monk that he gains access to his enemy Brachiano. Advertisement DESPITE family resemblances in language, incident and point of view, 'The Duchess of Malfi' and 'The White Devil' are structurally diametrical opposites. ' 'The Duchess of Malfi' is very linear,' Ms. Edwards said. 'It's the duchess's story.

She's the spine of the piece. With 'The White Devil,' everything is much more complicated. I adore both plays. I don't think one is better than the other.

But with 'The White Devil,' I have to juggle more deftly, to keep more balls in the air. On the page, it's a hard read. In the theater, the challenge is to keep the play alive and clear. I try to bring it to dazzling clarity -- if that's possible. It's much more of an ensemble piece than 'Malfi.'

The audience has to follow all the stories at all times. And that's why I adore it.

It's not one person's play. It has a huge heart at its center.

It's a latticework of intertwining stories that collide brilliantly and dramatically.' It's starting to sound like Chekhov. Over the wire from Sydney comes a brisk reply. 'Very, very charged Chekhov.'