The Revenger's Tragedy

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The Revenger's Tragedy is an English language Jacobean revenge tragedy, in the past attributed to Cyril Tourneur but now usually recognized as the work of Thomas Middleton. It was performed in 1606, and published in 1607 by George Eld. A vivid and often violent portrayal of lust and ambition in an Italian court, the play typifies the satiric tone and cynicism of much Jacobean tragedy. The play fell out of favor at some point before the restoration of the theaters in 1660; however, it experienced a revival in the twentieth century among directors and playgoers who appreciate its affinity with the temper of modern times (Wells, 106).

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[edit] Context

The Revenger's Tragedy belongs to the second generation of English revenge plays. It keeps the basic Senecan design brought to English drama by Thomas Kyd: a young man is driven to avenge an elder's death (in this case it's a lover, Gloriana, instead), which was caused by the villainy of a powerful older man; the avenger schemes to effect his revenge, often by morally questionable means; he finally succeeds in a bloodbath that costs him his own life as well. However, the author's tone and treatment are markedly different from the standard Elizabethan treatment in ways that can be traced to both literary and historical causes. Already by 1606, the enthusiasm that accompanied James I's assumption of the English throne had begun to give way to the beginnings of dissatisfaction with the perception of corruption in his court. The new prominence of tragedies that involved courtly intrigues seems to have been partly influenced by this dissatisfaction.

This trend towards court-based tragedy was confluent with a change in dramatic tastes toward the satiric and cynical, beginning before the death of Elizabeth I but becoming ascendant in the first decade of the seventeenth century. The episcopal ban on verse satire in 1599 appears to have impelled some poets to a career in dramaturgy (Campbell, 3); writers such as John Marston and Thomas Middleton brought to the theaters a lively sense of human frailty and hypocrisy. They found congenial ground in the newly revived children's companies, the Blackfriars Children and Pauls Children (Harbage, passim); these indoor venues attracted a more sophisticated crowd than that which frequented the theaters in the suburbs.

While The Revenger's Tragedy was apparently performed by an adult company at the Globe Theatre, its bizarre violence and vicious satire mark it as influenced by the dramaturgy of the private playhouses.

[edit] Characters

  • Vindice, the revenger, frequently disguised as Piato (Both the 1607 and 1608 printings render his name variously as Vendici, Vindici and Vindice, with the latter spelling most frequent)
  • Hippolito, Vindice's brother, sometimes called Carlo
  • Castiza, their sister
  • Gratiana, mother of Vindice, Hippolito, and Castiza
  • The Duke
  • The Duchess, the duke's second wife
  • Lussurioso, the duke's son from an earlier marriage, and his heir
  • Spurio, the duke's second son, a bastard
  • Ambitioso, the duchess's first son
  • Supervacuo, the duchess's middle son
  • Junior Brother, the duchess's third son
  • Antonio, a discontent lord
  • Piero, a discontent lord
  • Nobles, allies of Lussurioso
  • Lords, followers of Antonio
  • The Duke's gentlemen
  • Two Judges
  • Spurio's two Servants
  • Four Officers
  • A Keeper
  • Dondolo, Castiza's servant
  • Nencio and Sordido, Lussurioso's servants
  • Ambitioso's henchman

[edit] Themes

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Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details.(January 2008)

The play portrays a decaying moral and political order and demonstrates a nostalgia for the Elizabethan era. Vindice, the revenging protagonist, explicitly links economic problems with the issue of female chastity in several of his speeches. While the play uses this in part to analyse women themselves - their inherent weakness, which eventually leads to heavenly grace - it is also clearly looking back to Elizabeth, the 'Virgin Queen.' The power structure depicted at the play's outset is corrupt and morally bankrupt. The plot follows Vindice's quest to undo this new order, responsible for the death of his beloved and unfit to rule. The thought of unseating a ruler, deeply troubling to Shakespeare, was seized upon with glee by the anonymous author of The Revenger's Tragedy.

In 1607, the Midland Revolt 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 is 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. Vindice 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 cynical, embittered mind [1], 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.

[edit] Authorship

The play was published anonymously in 1607; the title page of this edition announced that it had been performed "sundry times" by the King's Men (Loughrey and Taylor, xxv). A second edition, also anonymous (actually consisting of the first edition with a new cover glued in place), was published later in 1607. The play was first attributed to Cyril Tourneur by Edward Archer in 1656; the attribution was seconded by Francis Kirkman in lists of 1661 and 1671 (Gibbons, ix). Tourneur was accepted as the author despite Archer's unreliability and the length of time between composition and attribution (Greg, 316). Edmund Kerchever Chambers cast doubt on the attribution in 1923 (Chambers, 4.42), and over the course of the twentieth century a considerable number of scholars argued for attributing the play to Middleton (Gibbons, ix). The critics who supported the Tourneur attribution argued that the tragedy is unlike Middleton's other early dramatic work, and that internal evidence, including some idiosyncrasies of spelling, points to Tourneur (Gibbons, ix).

More recent scholarly studies arguing for attribution to Middleton point to thematic and stylistic similarities to Middleton's other work, to the differences between The Revenger's Tragedy and Tourneur's other known work, The Atheist's Tragedy, and to contextual evidence suggesting Middleton's authorship (Loughrey and Taylor, xxvii). Since the massive and widely acclaimed statistical studies by David Lake (The Canon of Middleton's Plays, Cambridge University Press, 1975) and MacDonald P. Jackson (Middleton and Shakespeare: Studies in Attribution, 1979), Middleton's authorship has not been seriously contested, and no scholar has mounted a new defense of the discredited Tourneur attribution.

The play is attributed to Middleton in Jackson's facsimile edition of the 1607 quarto (1983), in Neil Loughrey and Michael Taylor's edition of Five Middleton Plays (Penguin, 1988), and in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works (Oxford, 2007). Two important editions of the 1960s that attributed the play to Tourneur switched in the 1990s to stating no author (Gibbons, 1967 and 1991) or to crediting "Tourneur/Middleton" (Foakes, 1966 and 1996), both now summarizing old arguments for Tourneur's authorship without endorsing them. A summary of the great variety of evidence for Middleton's authorship is contained in the relevant sections of Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, general editors Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford, 2007).

[edit] Performance history

After its initial run, there is no record of The Revenger's Tragedy in performance by professionals until the twentieth century. It was produced at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre in 1965. The following year, Trevor Nunn produced the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company; Ian Richardson played Vindice. Executed on a shoestring budget (designer Christopher Morley had to use the sets from the previous year's Hamlet), Nunn's production earned largely favorable reviews.[1]

In 1987, Di Trevis revived the play for the RSC at the Swan Theatre; Antony Sher played Vindice. It was also staged by the New York Protean Theatre in 1996. A Brussels theatre company called Atelier Sainte Anne, led by Philippe Van Kessel, also staged the play in 1989. In this production, the actors wore punk costumes and the play took place in a disqueting underground location which resembled both a disused parking lot and a ruined Renaissance building.

A film version set in a post-apocalyptic society directed by Alex Cox and starring Christopher Eccleston as "Vindice", Eddie Izzard as "Lussurioso", Diana Quick as "The Duchess" and Sir Derek Jacobi as "The Duke" was produced by Bard Entertainment Ltd. and released in the United Kingdom on February 14, 2003.

East London theatre company Metra Theatre created a unique production in March 2008, putting their own mark on the classic text over a four night run at London's The Space theatre.

Jonathan Moore directs a new production at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre (28 May - 28 June 2008), starring Stephen Tompkinson as Vindice.

The British National Theatre is currently staging a production in its Olivier Theatre which opened on 27 May 2008 as part of the Travelex-sponsored £10 Tickets season. The production is directed by Melly Still and stars Rory Kinnear as Vindice. The production features music played live by an orchestra and DJs Differentgear.

[edit] References in literature and popular culture

  • The title is also referenced as the final mission title in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Ribner, Irving: Jacobean Tragedy. The Quest For Moral Order. London, 1962, p. 75. Refers to several other authors.
  • Campbell, O.J. Comicall Satyre and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. San Marino, Ca.: Huntington Library Publications, 1938.
  • Chambers, E.K. The Elizabethan Theatre. Four Volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923.
  • Foakes, R.A. Shakespeare; the Dark Comedies to the Last Plays. London: Routledge, 1971.
  • Foakes, R.A., editor. The Revenger's Tragedy. The Revels Plays. London: Methuen, 1966. Revised as Revels Student Edition, Manchester University Press, 1996.
  • Gibbons, Brian, editor. The Revenger's Tragedy. New Mermaids Edition. New York: Norton, 1967. Second edition, 1991.
  • Greg, W.W. "Authorship Attribution in the Early Play-lists, 1656-1671." Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions 2 (1938-1945).
  • Harbage, Alfred. Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1952.
  • Loughrey, Brian and Neil Taylor. Five Plays of Thomas Middleton. New York: Penguin, 1988.
  • Wells, Stanley. "The Revenger's Tragedy Revived." The Elizabethan Theatre 6 (1975).

[edit] External links

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