We've got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you'll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)
(8) Snow Line
The White Devil isn't meant to be a complex Rubik's Cube play—it's meant to be fast moving and intense…yet thoughtful. Nonetheless, for modern readers, it's pretty tough—the same way Shakespeare is. Webster doesn't hesitate to bust out his full range of vocabulary. For instance, the word "limn" (which basically means the same thing as "depict") shows up towards the end (on a related note, not too long ago, one of the New York Times' literary critics was attacked for using "limn" too frequently in her reviews). So, it's not that the basic plot is too hard, or that the characters are incomprehensible: it's just that the vocab and the old-school Jacobean style make it pretty difficult. Also, Webster tosses in lots of allusions to Greek mythology and philosophy, which are much harder to comprehend in the present day than they were when the play was first written.