revenge tragedy

Relapse (1697) and The Provoked Wife (1697); Farquhar’s The Recruiting
Officer (1706) and The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707). These last two were some-
what less mannered and artificial than their predecessors. See comedy;
restoration period.
Restoration period It is usually taken to apply to the period from 1660 (the
year Charles II was re-established as monarch) to the end of the century. The
outstanding writers in this age were John Aubrey, Dryden, Congreve, Sir
John Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Etheredge, Wycherley, Pepys, George Savile Mar-
quess of Halifax, Otway, Samuel Butler, the Earl of Rochester, and Sir William
Temple. Dryden was the major writer of the period in both verse and prose.
See also restoration comedy.
resumptio See epanalepsis.
revenge tragedy A form of tragic drama in which someone (usually a hero or
a villain) rights a wrong. Perhaps the earliest instance of a kind of revenge
tragedy is the Oresteia of Aeschylus. During the Renaissance period two
main ‘revenge’ traditions are discernible: first, the French–Spanish tradition,
best exemplified in the work of Lope de Vega (1562–1635), Calderón (1600–
81) and Corneille (1606–84). In their treatment of revenge themes the empha-
sis is on the point of honour (see calderonian honour) and the conflict
between love and duty. English revenge tragedy owed much to Senecan
tragedy (q.v.). The Elizabethan dramatists took Seneca as a model and the
Roman stoic’s influence can be seen in a considerable body of drama between
c. 1580 and c. 1630. His plays were sensational, melodramatic and savage, and
emphasized bloodshed and vengeance. One of the earliest English Senecan-
type tragedies was Gorboduc (1561), in which there is a revenge element:
Porrex, one of the sons of King Gorboduc and Queen Videna, kills his
brother Ferrex. The mother avenges the murder by killing Porrex. However,
it was Thomas Kyd who established the genre of revenge tragedy in England
with The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1586). This play contains many of the basic
features of the genre. It begins with the introduction of a ghost and with the
character of Revenge. In the course of the play they function as Chorus (q.v.)
to an elaborate intrigue in which Hieronomo seeks revenge for his murdered
son. Hieronomo pretends to be mad and presents a play in dumb show (q.v.)
at court. The Spanish Tragedy was a sensational play which pleased the
Elizabethan taste for blood, melodrama and rhetoric. It was popular (though
ridiculed by writers of the period) and had a wide influence.
Shakespeare’s first attempt at the genre was Titus Andronicus (1594). This
is similar in construction to The Spanish Tragedy and deeply under its
influence. It is one of the bloodiest and most horrific of all plays. Later,
Shakespeare was to raise the genre to its highest level with Hamlet (1603–4).
He may have been influenced by what is known as the Ur-Hamlet, a play
not extant.
A different kind of revenge tragedy was Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (c.
1592), a kind of chronicle history concerned with the siege of Malta in which

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the central character is Barabas, a revengeful Jew, and a Machiavel (q.v.) type.
John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (1600) carried on the Kyd tradition and
was unmarked by Marlowe’s influence; but Marston’s play The Malcontent
(1604) – a rare example of comedy involving revenge in the tragic tradition
– has a plurality of revenging characters and also a revenger in disguise. In
Hoffman (1602), Henry Chettle had already achieved a further development
by making his hero revenger a villain (q.v.) who has no good cause, who is
morally corrupt and exults in his villainous deeds rather as Iago does in
Othello (1604). Othello is not a revenge tragedy but Iago is the supreme
villain of the period and much of the play is concerned with the way in which
he takes his revenge on the Moor. Cyril Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy
(1607) is the last of the major tragedies in the tradition of Kyd but the villain
revenger is a different kind of person from any of the villains hitherto. From
about this time the villain became more and more prominent. In many plays
the protagonist was a villain and the themes of revenge and motives of
revenge became more and more complex.
In its decadence revenge tragedy became increasingly sensational and
macabre. Ghosts, apparitions, graveyards, charnel houses, incest, insanity,
adultery, rape, murder, infanticide, suicide, arson, poisoning and treachery
were commonplace elements. Moral and political corruption were displayed
in lurid detail. The characters inhabited microcosms of hell in which the plot-
ting villains went about their work with sardonic relish, devising ever more
bizarre methods of destroying people. Death was the main subject on their
syllabus and murder their recreation.
Among other major works which have revenge themes mention should be
made of: George Chapman’s The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois (1607);
Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611); Webster’s The White Devil (1612)
and The Duchess of Malfi (c. 1613–14); and Middleton and Rowley’s The
Changeling (1622).
Of the many minor works in this tradition, some of the more outstanding
are: John Fletcher’s The Bloody Brother (c. 1616); Thomas Drue’s The
Bloody Banquet (1620); Massinger’s The Duke of Milan (1620); James
Shirley’s The Maid’s Revenge (1626); and Henry Glapthorne’s Revenge for
Honour (1640).
This kind of drama did not become wholly extinct. Shelley’s closet drama
(q.v.) The Cenci (1819) is in the revenge tradition. So are Victor Hugo’s
Hernani (1830) and his Ruy Blas (1838). In more recent times Lorca’s Blood
Wedding (1933) continued the form. Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge
(1955) treated of the Sicilian point-of-honour revenge in a modern setting.
David Rudkin’s Afore Night Come (1962) also contained revenge elements.
See tragedy.
reverdie An OF dance form which celebrated the advent of spring. In struc-
ture it is similar to the chanson (q.v.) and has five or six stanzas without a
refrain (q.v.).
reversal See peripeteia.

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