The original title page of John Webster's weird tragedy, The White Devil
One image at the heart of this book is one I carried with me from my year at Harrow School. I was in a play, and, as things were at Harrow, the boys played female roles. In this instance, there was a thirteen-year-old boy playing a Queen. This queen had some great speeches where (s)he told off other characters with these long, rhetorical, curse-like speeches. This kid was phenomenal, I watched his performance in awe. His voice was high, feminine, trembling, evil. His face was pale and contorted with anger. He pointed his finger like a Disney wicked witch casting a curse. When his voice broke years later he probably became as butch as George Clooney. But in the meantime, he was an uncanny, androgynous, avenging spirit at the twilight of the sexes and on the cusp of coming-of-age. He—or rather, his performance—became the inspiration for my villain, and for the “rehearsal scene” in Part One.