The Revenger's Tragedy: Difference between revisions

'''''The Revenger's Tragedy''''' is an English-language [[English literature#Jacobean period (1603–1625)|Jacobean]] [[revenge tragedy]] nowwhich attributedwas toperformed in 1606, and published in 1607 by [[ThomasGeorge MiddletonEld]],. afterIt was long being attributed to [[Cyril Tourneur]]., Itbut was"The performedconsensus incandidate 1606,for andauthorship publishedof in''The 1607Revenger’s byTragedy'' at present is [[GeorgeThomas EldMiddleton]], although this is a knotty issue that is far from settled."<ref>Walsh, Brian. ''The Revenger’s Tragedy: A Critical Reader''. Bloomsbury, 2016, p. 4.</ref>

*Vindice, the revenger, frequently disguised as Piato (both the 1607 and 1608 printings render his name variously as Vendici, Vindic, and Vindice, with the latter spelling most frequent; in later literature Vendice<ref>{{cite book |last=Stewart |first=Mary |author-link=Mary Stewart (novelist) |title=Nine Coaches Waiting |date=1916–2014 |publisher=HarperCollins Publishers, First HarperTorch paperback printing, December 2001|isbn=0380820765 | chapter=Chapter I | page=7.}}</ref>).

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 1500–1900|volume = 36.| issue=2 |page pages=397–416 397.| JSTORdoi=10.2307/450955 Print.| 22 Novemberjstor=450955 2015}}</ref>

While the play does not quite imply sexual intercourse with a corpse, some critics have found a strong connection to desire that can be found in the instances where the skull is used. According to Karin S. Coddon, there is a sense of macabre eroticism that pervades the work. She notes that "Gloriana's skull is a prop endowed with remarkable spectacular and material efficacy."<ref name=":0">{{Cite bookjournal|title = "For Show or Useless Property": Necrophilia and the Revenger's Tragedy|last = Coddon|first = Karin S.| journal=ELH |publisher = Johns Hopkins University Press|year = 1994| volume=61 |pages = 7171–88| doi=10.1353/elh.1994.0001 | s2cid=170881312 |issn = 1080-6547}}</ref> Vindice has kept the skull long after his beloved's death and has used it to attract the duke to his death, a kiss of death was bestowed. Considering the description of the skull it should be impossible to discern its gender yet throughout in each section it is mentioned with the gender of a woman attributed to a woman. Vindice's use of the skull to kill the duke borders on a form of prostitution which also implies the sexual nature surrounding the partial corpse. Vindice, in act 3, scene 5 enters "with the skull of his love dressed up in tires"; in Coddon's view, the skull's gendering is clearly a contrivance.<ref name=":0" />

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 (playing company)|King's Men]] (Loughrey and Taylor, xxv). A second edition, also anonymous (actually consisting of the first edition with a revised title-page), 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.<ref name=Gibbons>Gibbons, ix</ref> 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 [[Thomas Middleton]].<ref name=Gibbons/> There are indications that this play was submitted by Middleton to Robert Keysar of The Queen's Revels company under the name of ''The Viper and Her Brood.''<ref>{{Cite bookjournal|title = Bastardy, Counterfeiting, and Misogyny in The Revenger's Tragedy|last = Neill|first = Michael| journal= SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900|publisher = Rice University|year = 1996| volume=36 | issue=2 |pages = 397–398| doi=10.2307/450955 | jstor=450955 |issn = 0039-3657}}</ref> 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.<ref name=Gibbons/> More recent scholarly studies speciously 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 workplay, ''[[The Atheist's Tragedy]]'', and to contextual evidence suggesting Middleton's authorship (Loughrey and Taylor, xxvii). In ''Shakespeare's Borrowed Feathers'', Darren Freebury-Jones provides overwhelming computational evidence in favour of Middleton rather than Tourneur's authorship, showing that the play's language closely approximates Middleton's style but is far removed from Tourneur's.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Freebury-Jones |first=Darren |title=Shakespeare's Borrowed Feathers: How Early Modern Playwrights Shaped the World's Greatest Writer |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=2024 |isbn=978-1-5261-7732-2 |location=Manchester}}</ref>

The play is attributed to Middleton in Jackson's facsimile edition of the 1607 quarto (1983), in Bryan Loughrey and Neil 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 summarising old arguments for Tourneur's authorship without endorsing them.

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 1500–1900|volume=24.2|issue=2|pages=275–291| doi=10.2307/450528 |jstor=450528}}</ref>

In 2018, a stage adaptation was directed by [[Cheek by Jowl]]'s [[Declan Donnellan]] at the [[Piccolo Teatro (Milan)|Piccolo Teatro]]. The production toured in Italy in early 2019 and in Europe in early 2020.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2020/event/cheek-by-jowlpiccolo-teatro-milano-the-revengers-tragedy|title=The Revenger's Tragedy (La tragedia del vendicatore)|date=4 March 2020 |publisher=Barbican Centre}}</ref>