The concern of this thesis is John Webster's representation of subjectivity in his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. I argue that where the dominant formations of Renaissance humanism posit the male subject as an autonomous, self-dramatized identity, Webster represents him as desiring and existentially inauthentic. Where this leads to a savage repression of the other, Webster's subjects suffer an ontological crisis whose resolution can only be found in a repudiation of rational consciousness. Webster thus shows authentic being as affirmed through a reunification with the other: it is then that his characters, freed from the solipsism of egocentric subjectivity, recognize the limits of their experience and gain insight into their capacity to love.