The revenge tragedy , or revenge play, is a dramatic genre in which the protagonist seeks revenge for an imagined or actual injury. [1] 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 (circa 1580s to 1620s). [2]
Most scholars argue that the revenge tragedies of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries stemmed from Roman tragedy, in particular, Seneca's Thyestes. [3] Seneca's tragedies followed three main themes: the inconsistency of fortune ( Troades ), stories of crime and the evils of murder (Thyestes), and plays in which poverty, chastity and simplicity are celebrated ( Hippolytus ). [3]
In Thyestes, Seneca portrayed the evil repercussions of murder. [3] In order to exact revenge on his brother Thyestes for adultery with his wife, Atreus lures him to Argos under the pretext of a shared rule, but instead tricks him into eating the cooked flesh of his own children. [4] Seneca's criminals (in this case Thyestes) are always deserving of their punishment unless they repent, since he believed the will to do evil is entirely in the hands of the individual, who must therefore be appropriately punished. [5] This ethical logic becomes complicated, however, since the revenging murder is also a crime, transforming the revenger into a criminal, and thus prompting retribution on behalf of the punished. [5]
While taken from Greek and Roman source material, many early Elizabethan plays with revenge themes had those themes exacerbated by the English translators. That is to say, the original stories were vengeance focused, but when rewritten and staged in England, they had an even greater focus on gruesome revenge. [6]
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The revenge tragedy was established on the Elizabethan stage with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy in 1587. [1] In this play, Hieronimo's discovery of his son Horatio's dead body leads him into a brief fit of madness, after which he discovers the identity of his son's murderers and plans his revenge through a play-within-a-play. It is during this play that he enacts his revenge, after which he kills himself. [7] With Hieronimo's quest for justice in the face of a seemingly powerless state, Spanish Tragedy introduced the thematic issues of retributive justice that would be explored as the genre gained popularity and developed on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. [8] The distinction and cultural contention between public and private revenge has been considered by some to be the defining theme of not only early modern revenge tragedy but all early modern tragedy. The tension between public and private revenge, then, has also led to disputes between whether the protagonists enacting private revenge are heroes or villains: is Hieronimo, a character who seeks private revenge to gain retribution for the private murder of his son, a villain or a hero?
Believed to have been staged shortly afterwards, Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus is another early piece of the genre in which the dangerous cycle of revenge through private justice is brought to the fore and the typical features of the genre can be found. [2] In this play, Titus' murder of Tamora's eldest son in a ritual of war leads to the rape and mutilation of his daughter Lavinia. As his revenge, Titus murders Tamora's remaining sons, bakes them into pie, and serves them to her at a feast. [9]
One of the great contentions of the revenge tragedy is the issue of private revenge vs. divine revenge or public (i.e. state sanctioned) revenge. [10] In his essay, "Of Revenge," Francis Bacon writes: "the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong, putteth the Law out of Office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his Enemy. But in passing it over, he is Superior: For it is a prince's part to Pardon." [11]
As the genre gained popularity, playwrights explored the issue of private vs. public or state justice through the introduction of a variety of revenge characters. In Antonio's Revenge , John Marston creates a character named Pandulpho who embodies an idea from the Spanish Tragedy of the Senecan stoic. [12] The Senecan stoic is not ruled by emotions but rather follows a balance of cosmic determinism and human freedom to avoid misfortune. [13] In Hamlet , Shakespeare explores the complexities of the very human desire for revenge in the face of stoic philosophy and ethics. Throughout the play, Hamlet struggles to avenge his father's murder (as has been demanded of him by his father's ghost), and only does so in the end by mischance. [14]
Other play writers of the period questioned the conventions of the genre through parody reversals of generic expectations. [15] In The Revenger's Tragedy , currently ascribed to Thomas Middleton but formerly thought to be by Cyril Tourneur, the revenge character Vindice is a spiteful man whose pleasure in the act of revenge is what seems to be his true motivation for its fulfillment. [16] The Atheist's Tragedy by Tourneur followed an anti-revenge plot by having Montferrer's ghost explicitly order his son Charlemont not to seek revenge in order to avoid the villainy of violence. [17]
Scholars have examined the themes of the revenge tragedy in the context of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period as a way to understand its rapid growth in popularity. [18] For some, the fact that plays openly question the morality of revenge and taking justice into one's own hands is evidence that the public was morally opposed to the concept. [19] For others, however, the popularity of the genre is evidence that the plays expressed the frustrations and desires for justice against oppressive governance of the public. [18]
Numerous adaptations have been made of revenge plays. Excluding films based on Hamlet, these include:
For music, Sound Horizon's Märchen is an original work which has revenge tragedies as its central theme.
For anime series based on manga, Redo of Healer is a revenge fantasy about Keyaru, who is exploited and sexually abused repeatedly by others due to being a healing hero, a premise as an example of revenge genre due to its numerous depictions of graphic violence and sexual content, including rape, torture, and cannibalism.
For video games, The Last of Us Part II is a revenge story which depicts numerous violent themes throughout the entire plot.
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 sources 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, insofar as they feature a high-status central character, but they end happily like Shakespearean comedies. Almost three centuries after Shakespeare's death, the 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. Scholars continue to disagree on how to categorize some Shakespearean plays.
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.
In Greek mythology, Thyestes was a king of Olympia. Thyestes and his brother, Atreus, were exiled by their father for having murdered their half-brother, Chrysippus, in their desire for the throne of Olympia. They took refuge in Mycenae, where they ascended the throne upon the absence of King Eurystheus, who was fighting the Heracleidae. Eurystheus had meant for their lordship to be temporary; it became permanent because of his death in conflict.
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 Theatre in Shoreditch 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!"
Revenge tragedy is a theatrical 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 Revenger's Tragedy is an English-language Jacobean revenge tragedy which was performed in 1606, and published in 1607 by George Eld. It was long attributed to Cyril Tourneur, but "The consensus candidate for authorship of The Revenger’s Tragedy at present is Thomas Middleton, although this is a knotty issue that is far from settled."
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 personifies Revenge as its own character. 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, eight of which were probably written by the Stoic philosopher and politician Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Senecan tragedy, much like any particular type of tragedy, had specific characteristics to help classify it. The three characteristics of Senecan tragedy were: five separate acts, each with a Chorus; recounting of ‘horrors’ and violent acts, which are usually done off-stage; and some sort of parallel of the violence that occurred. Only the Phoenissae departs from the five act structure. In the English literary canon, Seneca appears as a major influence on later texts about revenge, such as Titus Andronicus and The Crying of Lot 49.
Emma Josephine Smith is an English literary scholar and academic whose research focuses on early modern drama, particularly William Shakespeare, and the history of the book. She has been a Tutorial Fellow in English at Hertford College, Oxford since 1997 and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford since 2015.
Like most playwrights of his period, William Shakespeare did not always write alone. A number of his surviving plays are collaborative, or were revised by others after their original composition, although the exact number is open to debate. Some of the following attributions, such as The Two Noble Kinsmen, have well-attested contemporary documentation; others, such as Titus Andronicus, are dependent on linguistic analysis by modern scholars; recent work on computer analysis of textual style has given reason to believe that parts of some of the plays ascribed to Shakespeare are actually by other writers.
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.
Horestes is a late Tudor morality play by the English dramatist John Pickering. It was first published in 1567 and was most likely performed by Lord Rich's men as part of the Christmas revels at court that year. The play's full title is A new interlude of Vice containing the history of Horestes with the cruel revengement of his father's death upon his one natural mother. It has been proposed that John Pickering is likely to be the same person as lawyer and politician Sir John Puckering.
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.
Fredson Thayer Bowers (1905–1991) was an American bibliographer and scholar of textual editing.
Although traditionally Titus Andronicus has been seen as one of Shakespeare's least respected plays, its fortunes have changed somewhat in the latter half of the twentieth century, with numerous scholars arguing that the play is more significant and effective than has been acknowledged in most criticisms. In particular, scholars have argued that the play is far more thematically complex than has traditionally been thought, and features profound insights into ancient Rome, Elizabethan society, and the human condition. Such scholars tend to argue that these previously unacknowledged insights have only become apparent during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries due to newfound relevance in the play's ultraviolent content. For example, in his 1987 edition of the play for the Contemporary Shakespeare series, A.L. Rowse writes; "in the civilized Victorian age the play could not be performed because it could not be believed. Such is the horror of our own age, with the appalling barbarities of prison camps and resistance movements paralleling the torture and mutilation and feeding on human flesh of the play, that it has ceased to be improbable." Similarly, director Julie Taymor, who staged a production Off-Broadway in 1994 and directed a film version in 1999, says she was drawn to the play because she found it to be the most "relevant of Shakespeare's plays for the modern era." She feels that the play has more relevance for contemporary audiences than it had for the Victorians: "it seems like a play written for today, it reeks of now." Because of these newer appreciations of the play's relevance, previously unrecognized thematic strands have thus come to the forefront.
Thyestes is a first century AD fabula crepidata of approximately 1112 lines of verse by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, which tells the story of Thyestes, who unwittingly ate his own children who were slaughtered and served at a banquet by his brother Atreus. As with most of Seneca's plays, Thyestes is based upon an older Greek version with the same name by Euripides.
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.
Andrea is the Spanish nobleman and lover of Bel-imperia whose ghost returns to look upon the events of The Spanish Tragedy, by Thomas Kyd.
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