THE dramatists of the fourth period of revenge tragedy in the last decade of theatrical activity before the Commonwealth were perforce imitators. Almost every source for dramatic invention had been ...exploited; almost every situation had yielded its last combination and every type of character its ultimate modification. There were seemingly no more worlds to conquer, and the huge weight of accumulated dramatic tradition lay heavily on any aspirant to originality. Moreover, the high imagination of the Renaissance which had animated Kyd, Marlowe, and Shakespeare had given way to second thoughts which were invariably cynical. The age, in its literature as
THE SCHOOL OF KYD Bowers, Fredson Thayer
Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587-1642,
12/2015
Book Chapter
FOR some years Kyd’sHamletandThe Spanish Tragedyset the major pattern for tragedies which did not imitate theTamburlaineof Marlowe. Shakespeare almost alone unshackled himself from the form, although ...inTitus Andronicushe experimented with it and in the finalHamletachieved the apotheosis of the revenge play. Such plays as Robert Greene’sAlphonsus, King of Arragon(1587) and the anonymousSelimus(1591-1594) lean heavily on Marlowe but also show that dramatists were learning the lesson Kyd had to teach: that there was no simpler method of motivating a conflict than by the revenge of a personal
THE DISAPPROVAL OF REVENGE Bowers, Fredson Thayer
Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587-1642,
12/2015
Book Chapter
FROM the very first, revenge in Elizabethan tragedy had been associated in some form or other with the tacit disapproval of the audience. This statement at once needs qualifying, but in essence it ...remains accurate. Despite the occasional difference in the ethical judgments made by an audience in a theater as compared with those of real life, Hieronimo’s course of revenge with its bloody conclusion must have alienated the audience to the point where it looked upon him as a villain. The upshot was that the audience accepted his cause as necessary and just, but was temperamentally incapable of wholehearted
THE tragedy of revenge has been classified as a definite, small subdivision of the Elizabethan tragedy of blood; and obviously, plays likeThe Spanish Tragedy, Antonio’s Revenge, andHamletshould be ...set apart as a specific type from Shakespeare’sLear, Marston’sSophonisba, and Nabbes’sUnfortunate Mother. These represent the two extremes of the tragedy of blood: on the one hand a cluster of plays which treat, according to a moderately rigid dramatic formula, blood-revenge for murder as the central tragic fact; on the other, an amorphous group with no such definite characteristic, linked only by a delight in blood and
THE BACKGROUND OF REVENGE Bowers, Fredson Thayer
Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587-1642,
12/2015
Book Chapter
BLOOD-REVENGE as a definite code appears sporadically in contemporary times; but it was universal among primitive peoples and strongly influenced their religion, law, and customs.¹ The modern theory ...of crime presupposes the existence of a State whose laws or regulations are broken, and punishment inflicted by this State for the breach of its rules. But in the earliest times there could be no crime because there was no State. Instead, a simple injury was inflicted by one individual on another or on a group of individuals bound together by the tie of relationship. For redress of this personal injury, in
