The Revenger's Tragedy

The Revenger's Tragedy

What type of tragedy is this?

A tragedy, by definition, is a 'disastrous, distressing and very sad

event'. The Revenger's Tragedy, however, does not display all of these

characteristics. It is macabre and grotesque and delights in gory

descriptions of blood, violence, death and murder, but it is not a sad

story. It is more likely to evoke feelings of disbelief and

incredulity at the plot than to cause its audience to feel any kind of

sadness. In all, there are thirteen revenge actions, five without

motivation, and it seems that the tragedian's aim was to use revenge

as a dramatic device to arouse revulsion rather than sadness at the

wasted lives.

Middleton takes the original revenge tragedy form of the period, but

creates a very different mood in the Revenger's Tragedy to his

contempories. The Spanish Tragedy, written in 1581, set the pattern

that other tragedians followed, but by 1590 and into the 1600s, a new

breed of tragedy was developing. The Revenger's Tragedy, written in

about 1605, is an example of how authors had to change the tonality of

their works to suit the audience of the time.

Middleton chose to present his English audience with a play set in a

foreign European location. The Jacobean English believed the Italians

and Spanish especially, to be corrupt and untrustworthy. He then chose

a range of heavily allegorical names, derived from Medieval morality

plays. He used names such as Ambitioso and Lussurioso to ensure that

the audience would understand exactly what type of person they were

listening to, and to mask his simple and basic character development.

The focal character, Vindic...

... middle of paper ...

... with irony that its

audience could never identify with any of the emotions or incidents on

stage. For example, Lussurioso is imprisoned after trying to preserve

the Duke's reputation; Ambitioso and Supervacuo get the wrong brother

beheaded by the prison officer, and eventually harmony is restored

when they kill each other. The images that are most frequently used by

Middleton are those of burning, death, and corruption. There is also

the heavily symbolic figure of the skull, which is a metaphor for the

play itself.

This play is purely a horrific exploration of the human condition of

revenge. Vindice shows us how a person can trigger off a set of forces

that will eventually destroy him, and though Middleton neither

condemns nor commends taking revenge against each other, he makes the

consequences perfectly clear.