E-viri
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Bowers, Fredson Thayer
Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587-1642, 12/2015Book 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
