The Revenger's Tragedy

The Revenger's Tragedy, a play about revenge, murder, filial love, and the overthrow of illegitimate power, was first published, anonymously, in London in 1606. A second edition, also anonymous (actually consisting of the first edition with a new cover glued in place), was published in 1607.

It is part of an English dramatic tradition of revenge dramas which began around 1587 with the first performances of The Spanish Tragedy , by Thomas Kyd, who is also thought to have written an early version of Hamlet. Other sensational revenge tragedies included Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus (1593), and Hamlet (1600), and John Webster's Duchess of Malfi (1613).

The Revenger's Tragedy is a play not from the Tudor, but from the Jacobean, period: Queen Elizabeth was dead, and, under a new regime, playwrights were trying out new themes. Their language is more modern than Shakespeare's, and their concerns seem more contemporary: they know authority is corrupt - the question is, how to unseat it? The thought of unseating a ruler, deeply troubling to Shakespeare, was seized upon with glee by the anonymous author of The Revenger's Tragedy.

Some years later, the play was ascribed to Cyril Tourneur, the author of The Atheist's Tragedy . But that ponderous tragedy has little in common with the frequent violence, hideous caricatures, and raw poetic energy of The Revenger's Tragedy. Most academics now believe the author to have been Thomas Middleton. There are many similarities between The Revenger's Tragedy and Middleton's masterpiece, Women Beware Women (1623). There are also plot and verse elements in common with Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, performed around the same time.

In 1607, the Midlands Insurrection occurred. It was the largest mass revolt since the Northern Rebellion of 1569: thousands rose up in protest against the enclosure of public spaces by wealthy landowners. The rebellions were brutally suppressed; hundreds of people were hanged.

Since The Revenger's Tragedy is the story of how two malcontents destroy a dynasty of noble dukes, earls, and lords, it was perhaps wise of the author to remain anonymous.

It's interesting - in this context of imminent rebellion - to compare The Revenger's Tragedy with Shakespeare's Coriolanus, probably published in 1607. Shakespeare addresses the rebels' grievances (shortages, and the high price of corn) but his hero is Coriolanus, who disdains and suppresses them. Vindici in The Revenger's Tragedy appears, at least to a modern reader, as a social rebel, who declares, delightedly, "Great men were gods - if beggars couldn't kill 'em!"

Ignored for many years, and viewed by some critics as the product of a diseased mind, The Revenger's Tragedy was rediscovered, and often performed as a black comedy, during the 20th century. A film version, Revengers Tragedy, was made in 2002.

External links

• The Revenger's Tragedy online

Wikisource of 'The Revenger's Tragedy'