Revenge is a subject dealt with mostly in drama and other fiction rather than in life, because few would throw their lives away in pursuit of it. Thus the best way to explore revenge is sometimes to examine the stories at hand. Revenge tragedies, as dramas, are largely character-driven, and the character's motivations are quite simple: revenge – in the name of love. Bel-imperia sought revenge for her lover Andrea, and her motivation was expressed with the inevitability of tragedy and the inextricable association of revenge and love lost. The most notorious example of revenge as an act caused by love is direct and from the most famous revenge-themed play, when Hamlet is visited by his father's ghost, who is right to the point: "If thou didst every thy dear father love… Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder (1.5.5, (Shakespeare & Wofford, 1994). And yet women are the symbols of love, while the men are the avengers. In The Spanish Tragedy, Bel-imperia has the first revenge motive after the villain kills her lover Andrea: "And thanks to thee and those infernal powers / That will not tolerate a lover's woe" (III.xv Kyd, 1970). Interestingly, Bel-imperia is not the focus of the play – in fact, it was originally titled, Hieronomo's Mad Again. So when she vows for revenge right in the beginning, why does she lose focus as the center of the plot? Why does she have to die – although it seems almost unnecessary at that point? The simple answer to these questions is that these twists happen because she is a female character. Women represent feminine values like love, and subsequently they become accessories to the plot, and to their male counterparts. Because they represent love, and love is fatal in revenge tragedies, the women charact...
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...'t “feel a thing.” (Whedon 2008, Act III). In each of these plays, it is not so great to be a woman/object. As Vittoria says, “O that I were a man, or that I had power / To execute my apprehended wishes” - perhaps she might have survived the last act ((Webster 1612, II.i).
Works Cited
Kyd, T. (1592). The spanish tragedy. W.W. Norton and Company Inc. Retrieved from http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/litphi/faculty/griffin/kyd-thespanishtragedy.pdf
Shakespeare, W., & Wofford, S. L. (1616). Hamlet, complete, authoritative text with biographical and historical contexts, critical history, and essays from five contemporary critical perspectives. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.
Webster, J. (1612). Retrieved from http://www.classic-literature.co.uk/british-authors/16th-century/john-webster/the-white-devil/
Whedon, J. (Writer) (2008). Dr. horrible's sing-along blog[DVD].
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Susanne L. Wofford. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: St. Martin's, 1994.
Mack, Maynard. “The World of Hamlet.” Yale Review. vol. 41 (1952) p. 502-23. Rpt. in Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism. Rev. ed. Ed. Leonard F. Dean. New York: Oxford University P., 1967.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet. ca. 1600-1601. Ed. Edward Hubler. A Signet Classic. New York: Penguin Publishers,1963.
William Shakespeare: Hamlet. Ed. Susanne L. Wofford. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: St. Martin's, 256-282.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet (The New Folger Library Shakespeare). Simon & Schuster; New Folger Edition, 2003.
Shakespeare, William. "Hamlet." The Norton Introduction to Literature. Eds. Alison Booth, and Kelly J. Mays. Tenth. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. 1024-1129. Print.
Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. 11th ed. New York: Norton, 2013.1709-1804. Print.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet. ca. 1600-1601. Ed. Edward Hubler. A Signet Classic. New York: Penguin Publishers,1963.
Boklund, Gunnar. "Hamlet." Essays on Shakespeare. Ed. Gerald Chapman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.
Mack, Maynard. "The World of Hamlet." Yale Review. vol. 41 (1952) p. 502-23. Rpt. in Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism. Rev. ed. Ed. Leonard F. Dean. New York: Oxford University P., 1967.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2nd ed. Vol. C. Ed. Sarah Lawall. New York: Norton, 2005. Print.
Shakespeare, William, Marilyn Eisenstat, and Ken Roy. Hamlet. 2nd ed. Toronto: Harcourt Canada, 2003. Print.
Revenge is a motif we see repeatedly throughout the play. Different characters use revenge differently according to their situation. Revenge leads Hamlet and Laertes to their deaths while it makes Fortinbras gain back the land of Denmark. As you can see, the quote by Phaedrus encompasses the entire concept of revenge in Hamlet. The swordfight at the end of the play allowed the characters to complete their revenge, and probably without this, the different reprisals probably wouldn’t have been carried out. All in all, throughout the play, Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras all had a tragic death of a family member which caused their decision for revenge.
Corum, Richard. Understanding Hamlet: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998. Print.
...World of Hamlet.” Yale Review. vol. 41 (1952) p. 502-23. Rpt. in Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism. Rev. ed. Ed. Leonard F. Dean. New York: Oxford University P., 1967.