Content deleted Content added
Philip Cross (talk | contribs) →Performance history: internal link, other minor fixes |
m task, replaced: Studies in English Literature, 1500-190 → SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 (2), SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–19000 → SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 (2) |
||
Line 1:
{{about|the play|the film|Revengers Tragedy}}▼
{{EngvarB|date=September 2013}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2013}}
▲{{about|the play|the film|Revengers Tragedy}}
{{Italic title}}
[[Image:The Revengers Tragedy.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Title page]] of ''The Revenger's Tragedy'']]
Line 68:
The Duchess, Castiza, and Gratiana are the only three female characters found in the play. Gratiana ("grace"), Vindice's mother, exemplifies female frailty. This is such a stereotyped role that it discourages looking at her circumstance in the play, but because she is a widow it could be assumed to include financial insecurity, which could help explain her susceptibility to bribery. Her daughter also has an exemplary name, Castiza ("chastity"), as if to fall in line with the conventions of the [[Morality play|Morality drama]], rather than the more individualized characterization seen in their counterparts in ''[[Hamlet]]'', Gertrude and Ophelia. Due to the ironic and witty matter in which ''The Revenger's Tragedy'' handles received conventions, however, it is an open question as to how far the presentation of gender in the play is meant to be accepted as conventional, or instead as parody. The play is in accordance with the medieval tradition of Christian Complaint, and Elizabethan satire, in presenting sexuality mainly as symptomatic of general corruption. Even though Gratiana is the mother of a decent, strong-minded daughter, she finds herself acting as a bawd. This personality-split is then repeated, in an episode exactly reversing the pattern, by her ironic, intelligent daughter.<ref>Gibbons, B. (2008). ''The Revenger's Tragedy'' (3rd ed., pp. Xxiii-xxiv). London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.</ref>
Michael Neill notes that the name "Spurio" derives from the Latin term "spurius" which does not mean just any illegitimate offspring, but "one born from a noble but spouseless mother to an unknown or plebeian father." These children, who could not take the paternal name, were called "spurius" because they sprang in effect from the mother alone—the word itself deriving from "spurium," an ancient term for the female genitalia. As Thomas Laqueur puts it, "while the legitimate child is from the froth of the father, the illegitimate child is from the seed of the mother's genitals, as if the father did not exist." The idea of Spurio and his character provides the function of "bastardy in the misogynist gender politics of the play."<ref>{{Cite journal|title = Bastardy, counterfeiting, and misogyny in 'The Revenger's Tragedy.'|last = Neill|first = Michael|date = 1996|journal = SEL: Studies in English Literature
====Necrophilia====
Line 88:
The play also adapts Senecan attributes with the character Vindice. At the end of the play he is a satisfied revenger, which is typically Senecan. However, he is punished for his revenge, unlike the characters in Seneca's [[Medea]] and [[Thyestes]].<ref>Ayres, Phillip J. "Marston's Antonio's Revenge: The Morality of the Revenging Hero." Studies in English Literature: 1500–1900 12.2, p. 374</ref> In another adaptation of Seneca, there is a strong element of meta-theatricality as the play makes references to itself as a tragedy. For example, in Act 4, scene 2, "''Vindice: Is there no thunder left, or is't kept up /'' ''In stock for heavier vengeance [Thunder] There it goes!"''
Along with influences from Seneca, this play is said to be very relevant to, or even about, Shakespeare's ''[[Hamlet]].'' The differences between the two, however, stem from the topic of "moral disorientation" found in ''The Revenger's Tragedy'' which is unlike anything found in a Shakespeare play. This idea is discussed in a scholarly article written by Scott McMillin, who addresses Howard Felperin's views of the two plays. McMillin goes on to disagree with the idea of a "moral disorientation," and finds ''The Revenger's Tragedy'' to be perfectly clear morally. McMillin asserts ''The Revenger's Tragedy'' is truly about theater, and self-abandonment within theatrics and the play itself. It is also noted that the most common adverb in ''The Revenger's Tragedy'' is the word "now" which emphasizes the compression of time and obliteration of the past. In ''Hamlet'' time is discussed in wider ranges, which is especially apparent when Hamlet himself thinks of death. This is also very different from Vindice's dialogue, as well as dialogue altogether in ''The Revenger's Tragedy''.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=McMillin|first=Scott|date=1984|title=Acting and Violence: The Revenger's Tragedy and Its Departures from Hamlet|journal=SEL: Studies in English Literature
The medieval qualities in the play are described by Lawrence J. Ross as, "the contrasts of eternity and time, the fusion of satirically realistic detail with moral abstraction, the emphatic condemnation of luxury, avarice and superfluity, and the lashing of judges, lawyers, usurers and women."<ref>Tourneur, Cyril. ''The Revenger's Tragedy.'' Lawrence J. Ross, ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966, p. xxii</ref> To personify Revenge is seen as a Medieval characteristic.<ref>Baker, p. 29</ref> Although ''The Revenger's Tragedy'' does not personify this trait with a character, it is mentioned in the opening monologue with a capital, thereby giving it more weight than a regular noun.
| |||