The author implies that Webster's conception of tragedy was

Shiyi-Zhang January 23, 2019

Could someone explain this question to me? Thank you!

Jacob-R January 23, 2019

I’m happy to help. We are looking for what the author implies that Webster’s conception of tragedy was.

We learn at the very beginning of the passage that Critics have been puzzled by Webster’s tragedies. By lines 31-33, we learn that even though he was an Elizabethan playwright, Webster “seems not to have been as heavily influenced by the morality play’s model of reality” as his contemporaries. And then we get a flag word: “Consequently” on line 35. Notice that flag! Consequently, Webster’s characters cannot be evaluated according to reductive formulas of good and evil. Ah ha, so we now learn why the Critics were puzzled.

And now we have our answer! Answer D restates what we just worked through: that Webster’s conception of tragedy was somewhat different from the conventional Elizabethan conception. That is why D is correct.

E is incorrect because we did not learn from the passage that Webster was “uninfluenced” — instead, we just learned that his conception was different. Further, we did not learn what the “classical conception” was — instead, we learned about the conventional Elizabethan conception. Precision of terms matters immensely on the LSAT!

I hope this helps. Let us know if you have further questions.