Related Research Articles
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother.
Shakespearean tragedy is the designation given to most tragedies written by playwright William Shakespeare. Many of his history plays share the qualifiers of a Shakespearean tragedy, but because they are based on real figures throughout the history of England, they were classified as "histories" in the First Folio. The Roman tragedies—Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus—are also based on historical figures, but because their source stories were foreign and ancient they are almost always classified as tragedies rather than histories. Shakespeare's romances were written late in his career and published originally as either tragedy or comedy. They share some elements of tragedy featuring a high status central character but end happily like Shakespearean comedies. Several hundred years after Shakespeare's death, scholar F. S. Boas also coined a fifth category, the "problem play", for plays that do not fit neatly into a single classification because of their subject matter, setting, or ending. The classifications of certain Shakespeare plays are still debated among scholars.
Thomas Kyd was an English playwright, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.
The Ur-Hamlet is a play by an unknown author, thought to be either Thomas Kyd or William Shakespeare. No copy of the play, dated by scholars to the second half of 1587, survives today. The play was staged in London, more specifically at The Burbages' Shoreditch Playhouse as recalled by Elizabethan author Thomas Lodge. It includes a character named Hamlet; the only other known character from the play is a ghost who, according to Thomas Lodge in his 1596 publication Wits Misery and the Worlds Madnesse, cries, "Hamlet, revenge!"
Locrine is an Elizabethan play depicting the legendary Trojan founders of the nation of England and of Troynovant (London). The play presents a cluster of complex and unresolved problems for scholars of English Renaissance theatre.
The revenge tragedy, or revenge play, is a dramatic genre in which the protagonist seeks revenge for an imagined or actual injury. The term, revenge tragedy, was first introduced in 1900 by A. H. Thorndike to label a class of plays written in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras.
Revenge tragedy is a theoretical genre in which the principal theme is revenge and revenge's fatal consequences. Formally established by American educator Ashley H. Thorndike in his 1902 article "The Relations of Hamlet to Contemporary Revenge Plays," a revenge tragedy documents the progress of the protagonist's revenge plot and often leads to the demise of both the murderers and the avenger himself.
The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. The play contains several violent murders and includes as one of its characters a personification of Revenge. The Spanish Tragedy is often considered to be the first mature Elizabethan drama, a claim disputed with Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine, and was parodied by many Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, including Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.
Elizabethan literature refers to bodies of work produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), and is one of the most splendid ages of English literature. In addition to drama and the theatre, it saw a flowering of poetry, with new forms like the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, and dramatic blank verse, as well as prose, including historical chronicles, pamphlets, and the first English novels. Major writers include William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Richard Hooker, Ben Jonson, Philip Sidney and Thomas Kyd.
Senecan tragedy refers to a set of ten ancient Roman tragedies, probably eight of which were written by the Stoic philosopher and politician Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
An induction in a play is an explanatory scene, summary or other text that stands outside or apart from the main play with the intent to comment on it, moralize about it or in the case of dumb show—to summarize the plot or underscore what is afoot. Typically, an induction precedes the main text of a play. Inductions are a common feature of plays written and performed in the Renaissance period, including those of Shakespeare. While Shakespeare plays do not typically have inductions, they are sometimes depicted as part of the device of the play within the play. Examples include the dumb show in Hamlet and the address to the audience by Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Another example, in The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd, is the introduction to that play by the ghost of Andrea who preps the audience by laying out the story to come. Likewise, Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew opens with induction scenes which involve characters watching the play proper.
Antonio's Revenge is a late Elizabethan play written by John Marston and performed by the Children of Paul's. It is a sequel to Marston's comic play Antonio and Mellida, and it chronicles the conflict and violence between Piero Sforza, the Duke of Venice, and Antonio, who is determined to take revenge against Piero for the death of his father and the slander of his fiancée. While it has much in common with other revenge tragedies , it is sometimes read as a hyperbolic parody of the genre.
Lust's Dominion, or The Lascivious Queen is an English Renaissance stage play, a tragedy written perhaps around 1600, probably by Thomas Dekker in collaboration with others and first published in 1657.
From its premiere at the turn of the 17th century, Hamlet has remained Shakespeare's best-known, most-imitated, and most-analyzed play. The character of Hamlet played a critical role in Sigmund Freud's explanation of the Oedipus complex. Even within the narrower field of literature, the play's influence has been strong. As Foakes writes, "No other character's name in Shakespeare's plays, and few in literature, have come to embody an attitude to life ... and been converted into a noun in this way."
The sources of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, a tragedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601, trace back as far as pre-13th century. The generic "hero-as-fool" story is so old and is expressed in the literature of so many cultures that scholars have hypothesized that it may be Indo-European in origin. A Scandinavian version of the story of Hamlet was put into writing around 1200 AD by Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus in his work Gesta Danorum. It is this work Shakespeare borrowed from to create Hamlet. Similar accounts are found in the Icelandic Saga of Hrolf Kraki and the Roman legend of Lucius Junius Brutus, both of which feature heroes who pretend to be insane in order to get revenge. A reasonably accurate version of Saxo's story was translated into French in 1570 by François de Belleforest in his Histoires Tragiques. Belleforest embellished Saxo's text substantially, almost doubling its length, and introduced the hero's melancholy.
The True Tragedy of Richard III is an anonymous Elizabethan history play on the subject of Richard III of England. It has attracted the attention of scholars of English Renaissance drama principally for the question of its relationship with William Shakespeare's Richard III.
The Fatal Contract: A French Tragedy is a Caroline era stage play, written by William Heminges. The play has been regarded as one of the most extreme of the revenge tragedies or "tragedies of blood," like The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus, that constitute a distinctive subgenre of English Renaissance theatre. In this "most graphic Caroline revenge tragedy...Heminges tops his predecessors' grotesque art by creating a female character, Chrotilda, who disguises herself as a black Moorish eunuch" and "instigates most of the play's murder and mayhem."
Hieronimo is one of the principal characters in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. He is the knight marshal of Spain and the father of Horatio. In the onset of the play he is a dedicated servant to the King of Spain. However, the difference in social status becomes apparent when his son is wrongfully murdered by Balthazar, the son of the viceroy of Portugal, and Lorenzo, the son of the Duke of Spain, which eventually causes tragic events to unfold. In order to revenge the death of his son, Hieronimo takes on additional roles, a playwright and an actor. He uses his position in the King's court to write and perform a play within a play. This performance mirrors the actual events surrounding Horatio's death, and within this show Hieronimo commits his own acts of revenge against the perpetrators. Many critics see Hieronimo as a dynamic character that by the end of the tragedy has become obsessed with taking revenge against the murderers of his son. Literature of 16th century England was greatly concerned with plots of deceit, confusion and madness as its central theme. The Spanish Tragedy is no different.
Bel-imperia is a character in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. She is the daughter of the Duke of Castile, the sister of Lorenzo, and the lover of the dead Don Andrea. Throughout the play, Bel-imperia attempts to avenge the death of Don Andrea. She begins by feigning a relationship with Horatio to "spite the prince that wrought his end", then joins forces with Hieronimo to eventually murder Balthazar and complete her revenge mission. However, critics view Bel-imperia in various roles based on her actions throughout the play.
Lorenzo is a fictional character in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. He is the son of the Duke of Castile and brother to Bel-imperia. Lorenzo plays the role of a Machiavellian villain.
References
- ↑ Shakespeare, William (2004) [1992]. The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark . Mowat, Barbara A., Werstine, Paul., Folger Shakespeare Library. New York: Washington Square Press. ISBN 0743482786. OCLC 56593972.
- ↑ Hammersmith, James P. (1985). "The Death of Castile in "The Spanish Tragedy"". Renaissance Drama. 16: 1–16. JSTOR 41920154.
- ↑ Kyd, Thomas (2009). The Spanish tragedy. Gurr, Andrew., Mulryne, J. R. (Pbk. ed., [rev. ed.] ed.). London: Methuen Drama. ISBN 9781408114216. OCLC 359890791.
- ↑ Crosbie, Christopher (2008-01-01). "Oeconomia and the Vegetative Soul: Rethinking Revenge in The Spanish Tragedy". English Literary Renaissance. 38 (1): 3–33. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6757.2008.00115.x. ISSN 0013-8312.