Rich and Darkly Ornate
Webster isn't afraid to throw around some advanced SAT prep words—also, he's not too concerned if his audience doesn't know Latin, or what "limn" means, or what some specific reference to Greek mythology is all about. He writes in the elaborate style popular in the Jacobean and Elizabethan era—playwrights like Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson (and Webster if you read his preface to The White Devil) clearly prided themselves on their ability to pack a lot into one or two lines, and cite allusions from classical mythology and literature, along with the occasional quote in Latin. The first part of Flamineo's death speech is Webster at his stylistic best:
Flam. Then cast anchor.
Prosperity doth bewitch men, seeming clear;
But seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near.
We cease to grieve, cease to be fortune's slaves,
Nay, cease to die by dying. Art thou gone?
And thou so near the bottom? false report,
Which says that women vie with the nine Muses,
For nine tough durable lives! I do not look
Who went before, nor who shall follow me;
No, at my self I will begin the end.
While we look up to heaven, we confound
Knowledge with knowledge. Oh, I am in a mist! (5.6)
This has everything—a rhyming couplet, an example of pathetic fallacy that is also a metaphor for the destruction of human happiness ("seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near"), pessimistic musings on fortune and death, Greek mythology (the nine Muses), and confusing philosophical statements ("we confound / Knowledge with knowledge.") Again, we can look at Monticelso's speech, attacking Lodovico while secretly supporting him, for another example:
Mont. Miserable creature!
If thou persist in this, 'tis damnable.
Dost thou imagine, thou canst slide on blood,
And not be tainted with a shameful fall?
Or, like the black and melancholic yew-tree,
Dost think to root thyself in dead men's graves,
And yet to prosper? Instruction to thee
Comes like sweet showers to o'er-harden'd ground;
They wet, but pierce not deep. And so I leave thee,
With all the furies hanging 'bout thy neck,
Till by thy penitence thou remove this evil,
In conjuring from thy breast that cruel devil.
This has another rhyming couplet, a nice simile ("like sweet showers to o'er hardened ground"), a heaping of darkness ("slide on blood," etc.), and a reference to classical mythology (the furies). So, the picture's pretty clear: Webster loves density, he loves piling on images and metaphors and allusions and clever turns of phrase until he gets an effect—and he's usually shooting for a pretty dark one.