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CHAPTER 7
CONCULSION
Revenge lies within us, deep down the emotional lines of human
nature. All Revenge is an instinctive human characteristic. Revenge is an
emotion and a desire that demands justice, revenge transfigures you. His
freedom lies within his revenge. There was a time when revenge was the basis
for many laws. For two and a half thousand years revenge has proved a
compelling theme in the performing arts. If the simplest element of drama is
conflict, then revenge delivers it with potent clarity. The story of an individual
avenging a wrong presents to the writer a volatile set of building blocks that is a
sympathetic character on a clear mission; heightened and violent
confrontations; moral and philosophical questions to be debated; death, often
multiple. Drama is probably one of the oldest and most interesting forms of
literature. In Ancient Greece, plays were used to be read out before a huge
audience. Revenge tragedy was very popular in the 16th -17th century among a
specific audience under a particular situation but after that the situation
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gradually changed and under a different situation, revenge tragedy lost its
appeal among the new audience.
The genre of tragedy is rooted in the Greek plays of Aeschylus, Euripides,
and Sophocles. One of the earliest works of literary criticism, the Poetics of the
Greek philosopher Aristotle, includes a discussion on tragedy based in part
upon the plays of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. According to Aristotle's
Poetics, tragedy depicts the downfall of a good person through some
personal 'flaw' in his character or misjudgment and it produces suffering and
insight on the part of the protagonist and arousing pity and fear on the part of the
audience. Tragedy regained its lost glory only with the Elizabethans and then
once again it established as a living art form.
The Roman playwright known as Lucius Annaeus Seneca was the first to
establish revenge tragedy. Seneca was a Roman statesman, philosopher, orator,
dramatist and eminent writer of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was very
much influenced by Aristotle's theory of tragedy. Following the theory of
tragedy found in Aristotle's Poetics he tried to write different types of tragedies
and revenge tragedy is one of them. Seneca employed different ideas in his
tragedies and most of them were originally taken from the Greeks. Some of
Seneca's stories originated from the Greek playwrights, like Agamemnon and
Thyestes which dealt with bloody family histories and revenge. Like other
Athenian dramatists in the fifth century, Seneca's tragedies also dealt with
Greek myths.
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Though Seneca invented the genre of revenge tragedy, it was not that
much popular in his lifetime. Every major period of dramatic achievement in
Europe has explored the story of the revenge: the Greek tragedies of Euripides,
Aeschylus and Sophocles, staged 500 years before Christ; the Stoic Seneca,
writing in Nero‘s Rome; the Golden Age of Spanish literature in the 16th and
17th-centuries; the stage of the English Renaissance; in France 50 years later,
the plays of Corneille and Racine; and, in the 18th and 19th-centuries, opera and
popular melodrama. Revenge tragedy reached its Zenith of popularity in
16th-17th century London. The genre of English revenge tragedy started from
the mid-1580s to the early 1640s that is from the Elizabethan to the Caroline
period. Though Seneca wrote several kinds of tragedies, the Elizabethan
playwrights were particularly attracted to his revenge tragedies such as
Thyestes, Medea, and Agamemnon.
Seneca's revenge tragedies dramatized murder, betrayal and blood
revenge on the villain or villains. He showed all of the passions in excess, such
as hate, jealousy, and love. He also used many sensational elements, such as
supernatural phenomena, cruel torture, and bloody violence. Critics say that no
author exercised a wider or deeper influence upon the Elizabethan mind or upon
the Elizabethan form of tragedy than did Seneca.For the dramatists of the
Renaissance Italy, France and England, classical tragedy meant only the ten
Latin plays of Seneca and they do not even count the plays of Great Greek
playwrights like Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles.
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Nearly all of the major playwrights of the time contributed to this class of
drama, including Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare, John Marston, George
Chapman, Cyril Toumeur, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, James Shirley,
and John Ford. According to most literary scholars Kyd initiated the dramatic
archetype of revenge tragedy with his The Spanish Tragedy. Though the exact
date of when the play was written is not known, it is believed to be performed
sometime between the periods 1585 to 1589. With this play Kyd invented the
basic formulas of the genre and his successors added creative new layers of
dramatic tension, characterization, imagery, and ideological representation.
Revenge tragedy was immensely popular among the 16th and 17th century
audience.
Many things work together to make this genre popular.
Once a formula has been locked into its audience's mind, it is easy
to elaborate and manipulate in a number of ways.
But the initial success of the formula and its early fame depends on some
factors. Popularity of a certain type of drama depends on a particular audience
of
a
particular
time
and
place.
The
fact
is
sixteenth
century
was the time of protestant reformation and there was a clash betwee
n Catholicism
and
Protestantism . People
started questioning
the
orthodox Catholic beliefs. Probably for this reason audience liked to watch
something that go against the Catholic belief and this could be one of the
reasons why revenge tragedy became so popular in that particular time.
Moreover, this was the time of English renaissance when people relied more on
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human capability than fate or predestination. Audience liked to see a man taking
revenge by his own hand rather than leaving it on God. Critics have sought to
understand the popularity of revenge tragedies from a cultural and historical
position. They have observed that the revenge tragedy appeared at a particular
time in English history.
According to these critics three occurrences have worked in the
background for the rise of revenge tragedy; firstly when people were beginning
to question the fundamental relationship between religion and the universe,
secondly when the English nation was imperiled by the threat of the Spanish
Armada, and thirdly when English society endured the uncertainty of
succession between the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. Elizabethan and
Jacobean playwrights used revenge tragedy as a device to show their concerns
about such provocative issues as a repressive religious tradition, political
corruption, and social malaise. People should therefore never think that revenge
was expected by Elizabethan society. Church, State and the regular morals of
people in that age did not accept revenge. Although they loved to see it in plays,
it was considered sinful and it was utterly condemned.
In our own time cinema, displacing theatre‘s cultural impact and reach,
has picked up the baton and run with it, giving us such revenge classics as Death
Wish, Unforgiving, Get Carter, Gladiator, and Kill Bill. Revenge Lies within
Us All Revenge is an instinctive human characteristic. The emotions and
actions associated with revenge are neither preventable nor controllable. But the
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effects of revenge may either be treated freely as an act of nature or be allowed
to take their course, or they may be treated and punished like a crime. Revenge
is an emotion and a desire that demands justice. It is not learned or attained by
outside influences. By examining the biblical story of Cain, who killed his
brother out of envy, it is feasible to say that Cain did not learn the act of revenge
from anybody else. It was believed to be fostered and concocted by his mind.
No one showed it to him nor taught him of it that is in describing his experiences
with revenge.
This shows that revenge is an instinctive characteristic that has the ability
to develop whenever a threatening situation arises. An emotion, discounting
mercy, neat to the taste and born of a separate need to rectify a wrong by
inflicting harm in return for an injury, a slight, or an insult and to exact
satisfaction for that which, at least in the suffer eye, stupid fate not only has
allowed but in a way has cruelly fostered. We may say that in reference to
revenge being a cognitive creation in the sufferer mind. There is no conscious
effort in a human to decide to take revenge. It is an almost automatic reaction
for a person to feel he has the right to return the harm done to him. The sufferer
believes that without his personal intervention the despised will go scot-free.
This, however, does not mean every human will react vengefully. Those that do
are sick and have lost control. Suffer here is an abundance of stories in the Bible
on vengeance and revenge. They range from revenge taken by one man on
another, the revenge taken by the clan or courts on an individual, revenge on an
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individual taken by God, and revenge on an individual by another individual
who was appointed by God to do so. Violence in the Bible, there are a range of
references related to violence.
It is truly believed that the acts of violence are either at the hand of God as
a form of divine retribution against the sins of man or acts of jealousy and
revenge by the mortal cast of character. There are numerous different
definitions for the revenge tragedy genre. Revenge tragedy is a form of drama in
which the dominant motive is revenge for a real or imagined injury and provides
the driving force of the action. Righteous Hamlet's Revenge In the story Hamlet
we have a young man who is seeking revenge for the death of his father. It was
not merely a murder for revenge, but a murder for the land and for the people.
Revenge has caused the downfall of many a person.
Revenge is an emotion easily rationalized one turn deserves another.
Hamlet's desire to right a wrong has forced him to take matters into his own
hands and use revenge to get even. The poison that killed Laertes, Hamlet, and
his mother will now be used for revenge in killing Claudius. All of us are
capable of lying, and justifying the need for lies. In the beginning of the
Odyssey there is an example of how revenge can be used as a way to restore
family honor and win glory: "Orestes took revenge, he killed Aegeisthos who
killed his famous father by cutting him like an ox, a victim in rich lords halls
during a feast. Revenge is a dangerous emotion, which can easily consume a
person's life.
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In English, the word vengeance has a negative denotation, defined as most
furious and unsparing revenge. Synonymous with vengeance, revenge
emphasizes more the personal injury in return for which is inflicted. With these
definitions in mind, it makes sense why revenge is usually associated with
personal retaliation and extreme measures. The Hebrew root for vengeance has
many other meanings and interpretations which do not always directly translate
to revenge or vengeance. In the texts of the Bible, the connotations include the
following: to deliver, to liberate, to restore, to punish or to defeat. Most of these
connotations are seldom negative, as reflected in the verses and stories in the
Bible, and they can also include imply actions such as: to save, to take court, to
contend and to regulate. There is some reasoning behind this choice.
Though there are comparatively more examples in Bible of vengeance
taken by the Lord on an individual, these instances are not always clearly
defined. Despite spanning countries, genres and millennia, most of these
works follow basic principles of tragedy laid down by Aristotle. The drama
starts with a trigger event or incentive moment which sets off a chain of cause
and effect events like the protagonist faces a reversal of fortune or a surprise,
which leads to a moment of self-realization or a change from ignorance to
knowledge; there is a final scene of suffering, destruction or pain, out of which
comes the audience‘s fear and pity for the character and events. But while the
basic shape of the revenge drama may fit with this model, the revenger himself
is different from other tragic heroes in an important respect. In a classic tragedy,
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the protagonist is in some way responsible for his downfall through a flaw or
error of his own doing.
The revenger‘s situation, however, is imposed upon him by others.
Through a wrong done to him or someone close to him, he is compelled to
action, forced to think and behave outside his normal framework of experience
in order to redress the injury. This spur to action is often precipitated by
circumstances in which proper legal or judicial process is absent or inadequate,
or where the perpetrator of the wrong is above the law by virtue of their
position, status or connections. If we carefully examine all these plays, we will
be able to dictate how the genre of revenge tragedy has evolved.
Though it is not possible to show exactly how the genre developed, we can
certainly get a good idea of how things changed. The Spanish Tragedy by
Thomas Kyd is the first revenge tragedy, so from this play we can see what are
the essential features of a revenge tragedy for example in Hamlet Shakespeare
experiments with the features and further elaborates them that is why it is
counted as the best revenge play. In a revenge tragedy, revenge is obviously the
main theme. When looking at the period of drama we may best apprehend that
revenge enjoyed a surprisingly vibrant career on the English stage, well before
the popularization of what is now called revenge tragedy. Before revenge came
to inhabit its own generic space, it functioned as a widely versatile thematic and
dramaturgical element in countless plays, ranging from loud comedies to stately
classical histories. Such plays, to be sure, are distinctly not revenge drama in the
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vein of The Spanish Tragedy: instead, they attest to the capable ability and
prevalence of the theme in the collection of earlier Elizabethan theatre, which
came to exist as an easily identifiable, systematized genre in the final years of
Elizabeth‘s reign.
It has been identification of revenge motifs and themes. Well before the
Kydian revenge play blossomed into a genuine dramatic type, playwrights
variously embraced the theatrical potential of revenge, with equally various
levels of commitment and interest: in some plays, revenge is essential to an
overall thematic and atmospheric agenda, while in others, it is a casually
different, deployed only to punctuate a particular dramatic moment or episode.
In the second case these incidental occurrences are a crucial contour of the early
revenge tradition, and thus included such examples alongside plays that more
thoroughly explore the revenge theme. Revenge takes on a variety of shapes in
these early plays.
Early dramatic revenge, of course, must begin with Seneca. Seneca‘s
influence on the early Elizabethan theatre and on revenge tragedy in particular
is a complex, well-studied topic, importantly for the subsequent history of
dramatic revenge. There were some great plays written as the first great burst of
Elizabethan tragedy. Though these plays show little affinity with the popular
Senecanism of the 1590s, they were self-consciously modeled on Senecan form,
and they accordingly provide ample evidence of revenge themes on the
mid-century Tudor stage. Norton and Sackville‘s Gorboduc in 1561, the first
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English blank verse tragedy, maps a revenge motif onto a family struggle of
royal inheritance that is Ferrex. Similarly, in 1566 George Gascoigne with
Francis Kinwelmersh translated Ludovico Dolce‘s Italian play Giocasta in 1549
which had minor revenge.
It throws a light on the extraordinarily rapid development of the English
drama in those thirty or forty years. It seems a far cry from the broken-backed
lines, bombastic rhetoric, and puppet figures of these Senecan translations to the
perfect harmony of thought and expression, to the ageless and deathless
creations of Shakespeare's plays; but great poets can never be isolated from
their predecessors, and every one of the forces which had been at work in
English literature had its part in the perfecting of the Elizabethan drama. Even
Shakespeare might not have been quite himself as we know him, had it not been
for the work of the obscure translators of Seneca. Since The Spanish Tragedy
was the first revenge tragedy, Kyd had a major task to establish a contradictory
theme of that time. Therefore, he repeatedly tried to connect revenge with
divine justice. In the beginning of the play he showed that revenge has been
sanctioned by the underworld Queen Proserpine. Then again, the avenger
Hieronimo is a Knight Marshal; he decides the punishment of a criminal
according to his crime. Therefore, when this man kills his son's murderers to
perform his duty as a father and a Judge, it is more of a justice rather than
revenge. But, Shakespeare did not worry much about the theme of 'revenge',
because by the time he was writing Hamlet it was already established.
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Therefore, he had a good opportunity to explore with themes other than
revenge. The responsibility to avenge his father's murder is thrust upon Hamlet
by the ghost and he is not very happy to get the task. Apart from the theme of
revenge in revenge tragedy, some other themes are also there. Incest, misogyny
these are used as minor themes. In The Spanish Tragedy, there is no such theme
of incest. Hamlet is probably the first Elizabethan revenge tragedy that use
incest as a theme. The most important character of a revenge tragedy is the
avenger. Much attention is put to create a perfect hero according to the need of
the story. Hieronimo is the very first hero of English revenge tragedy. "He is an
elderly man, father of an eligible son Horatio. He is the Knight Marshal of the
Spanish court, a man of high official. He is very well known as a just judge. His
innocent son is killed and in grief for her son, his wife commits suicide" 1. So,
he is left with nobody in life whom he would wish to live for.
Hamlet hesitates and lingers his revenge. And in the course of his
procrastination, Ophelia commits suicide for Hamlet has killed her father. Out
of all the other plays if for example we take the case of The Duchess of Malji,
the protagonist is Bosola- a paid villain. He is the malcontent of the court and a
murderer. He is hired to keep an eye on the Duchess. He does his spying job
extremely well. He arrests her, torments her in prison and also kills her. He is
responsible for all the problems the Duchess faces. And when he does not get
his reward for doing his job, he feels sorry for her and decides to avenge her
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death. Like other revenge tragedies, the actions of this play are not at all
motivated by revenge intrigue.
Since in a revenge tragedy the avenger is always a 'male' character, the
main female character is subsided by that character. Most of the time the
heroine of a revenge tragedy is a flat character; she is either a very innocent and
too submissive character or she is too rough and strong, lacking all the feminine
qualities. The presence of a supernatural element is very a common feature of
revenge tragedy. Most of the time, it is the ghost that of the murdered person
that calls for revenge. Starting from The Spanish Tragedy to all most in all the
early Elizabethan revenge tragedy the ghost plays a very important r
ole. "Although, in The Spanish Tragedy, the ghost of Andrea serves as a chorus
and has no direct contact with the living, its role is significant. In Hamlet, the
ghost asks Hamlet to avenge his murder, and provides him with cru
cial information
about the murder"2. However, as a Renaissance man
Hamlet questions the existence of the ghost.
In the later revenge tragedy, there are natural or supernatural signals as the
replacement of the ghost. Since it is not possible for the protagonists of revenge
tragedy to achieve their desired ends through officially sanctioned means, they
need much time to build a plot against the wrongdoer. Madness is one of the
most important devices by which the avenger can divert the attention of the
wrongdoer from them for a short period. As we have discussed above, we can
see that the changes have been made in the genre of revenge tragedy gradually.
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The early revenge tragedies had to establish many themes for the first
time, so the early playwrights narrow down their themes and explained those
themes they have used thoroughly. Whilst, the later revenge tragedies had the
advantage to elaborate the established themes further and to introduce new
themes. The radical changes were made from Elizabethan time to Jacobean
period. Playwrights of Elizabethan revenge tragedy worked with conventional
revenge tragedy features with or without slightest changes. However, the great
shift was made after the shift from Elizabethan period to Jacobean period. For
example, in the Elizabethan and early Jacobean plays that is, in The Spanish
Tragedy, The Jew of Malta, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Hoffman, The
Revenger's Tragedy, Antonio's Tragedy, etc- the avenger is the protagonist,
but," in the later revenge tragedies there are avengers like Giovani ('Tis Pity
She's a Whore) or Livia (Women beware Women) whose motives are far more
questionable. In one of the late plays The Duke of Milan, the villainous
Francisco turns out to be a seriously wronged character as his sister was seduced
and abandoned by the Duke".3 The most complex is perhaps The Duchess of
Malfi where the avenger is the murderer of the dead.
Nevertheless, not many changes were made from Jacobean period to
Caroline period. In this period, playwrights elaborated the Jacobean themes
further but they did not succeed to make something extremely new. Revenge
was a narrative and thematic element of the utmost importance to early
Elizabethan theatre, much earlier than is usually recognized. Well before it
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found expression in the pen of Kyd, it was flexibly deployed throughout the
period‘s early comedies, romances, histories, and hero-plays. Accordingly,
when considering the larger historical trajectory of revenge tragedy‘s
development, it must not be underestimate the prominence of dramatic revenge
before the advent of The Spanish Tragedy, the genre‘s inaugural offering.
Vengeance enjoyed both rhetorical and narrative prominence on the early
Elizabethan stage, and systematic survey reveals that a flexible discourse of
"revenge may be detected in a remarkably high number of pre-Kydian plays.
From within this diffuse thematic context, Kyd systematized, intensified, and
refined the dramatic use of revenge, and in doing so, gave birth to the genre now
recognized as revenge tragedy"4 The surviving corpus of early Elizabethan
drama reveals that revenge must indeed stand with love and ambition as one of
the most widely invoked themes of the period‘s earlier theatre it did not merely
ride to popular prominence on the back of Kyd‘s success.
The theme of revenge, for example, was a very controversial one in
Elizabethan times. It is difficult to gauge the exact state of the Elizabethan mind
with regards to revenge, because much of what survives on the subject comes
from the preachers who were trying to discourage it. But we have reason to
believe that there was a conflict between the old custom of seeking private
revenge for wrongs done to one's family, inherited largely from the
Anglo-Saxon and Danish influences on English culture, as well as from the
Christian injunction of Vindicta mihi; "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord; I
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will repay". In other words, for the Christian, revenge against wrongdoers is the
responsibility of God, not men. In Elizabethan times, a third factor had entered
into the debate, namely the increasingly centralized and powerful state, which
also discouraged private revenge in favor of revenge under the auspices of the
law. In such circumstances, there was probably a great deal of confusion as to
the moral status of revenge, "though some types of revenge were definitely held
to be worse than others: for example, a hot-blooded revenge committed in a fit
of passion was preferable to a cold-blooded revenge, carefully, methodically
plotted
out
in
a
Machiavellian
manner".5
Though
they
abhorred
Machiavellianism in public, the Elizabethans were fascinated when it was
represented on stage, and most of the interesting avengers of Elizabethan
drama, including Hieronimo, the hero of The Spanish Tragedy, employ
deception and ruse to achieve their ends.
In modern Western societies the punishment of crime is the prerogative of
the state; a criminal ‗pays his debts to society‘, not to an individual victim, and
personal vengeance is disallowed. But when the guilty are not punished, when
the law has failed, vengeance offers the promise of justice. The doctrine of
retribution still has currency in our modern society: the idea that there is a real
justice in proportionate punishment, in ―life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,
hand for hand, and foot for foot‖ (Deuteronomy 19, 17-21). It is believed that in
taking justice into his own hands in seeking proportionate punishment for the
wrong done to him the revenger enters morally murky waters. For through his
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actions he becomes like the original aggressor, and at the same time transforms
his enemy into a victim.
This is the dramatic irony of revenge, reinforced in many tragedies by the
additional bloodshed of casual bystanders and people not involved in the
original crime. Not only does Vindice frame at least two innocent men in the
course of The Revenger‘s Tragedy, but he takes delight in their
misfortune."New marrow! No I cannot be expressed! he cries when the Fourth
Lord is wrongly convicted for the mass murders at the masque, and carried off
for execution". 6 When we talk about revenge motif in particular we may see
that the reason of its existence can be that we fear lawlessness in our era just as
much as the Elizabethans did. Elizabethans feared the blood feud or vendetta
because their society lived under a tenuous rule of law.
To be sure, there have been lawless zones in every era, such as the luminal
justice of colonial regimes, or the frontier justice of the Western. But a number
of additional factors globalization, weapons technology, and information
technology have made the present a particularly uneasy time for the rule of law.
When I make reference to ―our era,‖ then, I mean the post-nuclear age
beginning at least with the development of the atomic bomb. Globalization
means that if two nations enter a conflict, no unassailably legitimate
supranational umpire can resolve the conflict. Individuals caught up in such
conflicts may despair of their capacity to get justice from such an umpire and
therefore turn to forms of self help.
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Finally, the rise of information technology amplifies the effects of revenge
cycles. Every news cycle contains a revenge cycle, piped into our computer
monitors, newspapers, televisions, or conversations, whether the reports come
from Iraq, Pakistan, and USA. Yet it would be a mistake to think that the new
information technologies are just a way of describing a revenge cycle, as they
also often self-consciously move in those cycles. What I seek to express more
tentatively is that I think the revenge tragedy itself can be a substitute, albeit a
poor one, for law. Internal to Titus, we see that the breakdown of law is
accompanied by a rise in the use of myths as patterning narratives. Aaron‘s
lawless plot to have Demetrius and Chiron rape Lavinia is patterned on Ovid‘s
Philomela myth; Titus‘s response of baking Demetrius and Chiron into a pie is
based on Seneca‘s Thyestes; and both Saturninus and Titus base Titus‘s murder
of his own daughter on Livy‘s account of the acts of the centurion Virginius.
Even in the case of hamlet which had a series of bloodshed. When there is no
law, literature rises up to become a pattern, precedent, and lively warrant.
Rather than confirming their practice to law, the characters in the play adhere to
literary texts. We can also see the play not just as a representation, but also an
intervention into lawlessness. In the time and place of its original performance,
Titus‘s reference to Astraea having left the earth would have been an
unmistakable reference to Elizabeth I, who was often figured as the goddess of
justice.
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Elizabeth was susceptible to condemnation for her not so masterly
inactivity with respect to the blood feuds that occurred among her nobles. While
it would have been rash for Shakespeare to criticize her directly, the safe
distance of the Roman scene perhaps permitted him to ask for her intercession.
The fact that the play is littered with early modern references suggests that it is
simultaneously supposed to be representing a milieu that is far, but not too far.
Similarly, the contemporary fascination with the revenge genre can be
seen as a kind of check on the real acts of violence to which we might be
tempted. If we subscribe to the theory that theater purges emotions rather than
stoking them, the revenge tragedy will be a substitute rather than a complement
to forms of vigilante justice that might otherwise tempt us. In short, revenge
tragedy is the literary genre that best captures the unease that accompanies a
state that is too weak to contain private vendettas. The genre‘s vitality in the
Renaissance and its rebirth in modernity can be explained in those terms.
Conversely, the novel is the genre of a state that is too strong. The consolation
that literature provides to our immersion in this paradoxical crisis is to supply
the genres that give its component fears expression.
The link between the rise of the regulatory state and the rise of the English
novel, of course, can be contested on several grounds, including that the novel
form long predated the 19th century and also that alternative explanations for
the rise of the novel such as the rise of a culture of individuality and the idea that
every person has their story abound. We can see that it took enough to engage in
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surveillance of its subjects partially contributed to the rise of the English novel.
Both ascents suggest that some human authority (whether the government or the
author) could read and describe the inner workings of the human mind with a
new degree of confidence. Vindice progressively moves beyond the clean
objective of avenging his fiancée‘s murder, to a broader campaign
of assignation whose target is ostensibly the royal family and its inner
courtiers, but whose victims are sometimes more random. Like Euripides‘
Medea and Shakespeare‘s Titus Andronicus, Vindice comes to enjoy his role as
avenger and to celebrate his own ingenuity. There is a creative brilliance in
what he does that goes beyond good planning and enters into performance, and
he must seek acknowledgement for himself as the author. This is the revenger‘s
lot: where as the murderer tries to cover up his crimes, the revenger‘s impulse is
to reveal. When we talk in general the worst of all suffering is when you suffer
alone, when you are unable to explain or tell how you feel, or what is happening
to you. When someone has gate crashed into your mind without you suspecting
a thing feeling a caution the sense of hurt is further augmented by sense of
defeat, dishonesty and treachery on the part of someone you perhaps trusted.
Thoughts of vengeance come from our inability to forget or forgive, from
feeling helpless. You might like everyone to understand 'how much it hurts', but
no amount of explaining will make those understand who do not, and those who
understand do not need you to explain to them. The world in general will never
understand exactly how one feels, reserve first understanding for oneself, one
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need to get over things and one need to understand first what has happened, and
more importantly what is still happening.
The thoughts of vengeance are self-consuming for the one
who contemplate vengeance, as the hurt would like to do the same to the one
who hurt them, they would like to make everyone know exactly how they feel
and this is where the evil of a hurtful act gets it life, and channels of
propagation. If someone cause you harm in the past and agonizing thoughts of
resentment are still with you as if they are jumping across lengths of time to get
to you then know that the act of harm is still alive and well making your life
miserable, you need to stop it, stop feeding the monster and forget it this is the
only thing that you can do when you come face to face with evil, the one you do
not have time to know, or mind to think about or reason to contend with, it will
try to take over you entirely.
All the time you have is for the purpose of good living, loving and being
loved. They say that living well is the best revenge, this is true most of the time;
the time we reserve to react is the time stolen from us, and the thoughts given to
contemplate vengeance are the thoughts thrown into raging fire - the time that
we could have spent living, and the thoughts we could have thought about the
well-being of fellow human being‘s the sixteenth century the popularity of
Seneca's tragedies was immense.
To English dramatists, struggling to impose form and order on the
shapeless, though vigorous, native drama, Seneca seemed to offer an admirable
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model. His tragedies contained abundance of melodrama to suit the popular
taste, whilst his sententious philosophy and moral maxims appealed to the more
learned, and all was arranged in a clear-cut form, of which the principle of
construction was easy to grasp. The great Greek tragedians were little studied
by the Elizabethans. Greek was still unfamiliar to a large number of students;
and it may be doubted whether in any case Aeschylus or Sophocles would have
been appreciated by the Elizabethan public.
The Senecan drama, crude, and melodramatic as it seems to us, appealed
far more strongly to the robust Englishmen of the sixteenth century, whose
animal instincts were as yet only half subdued by civilization. The importance
of the influence exercised by Senecan tragedy upon the development of the
Elizabethan drama is now generally admitted. It affected both the substance and
the form of the drama. In revenge plays, the option of forgiveness is not taken,
and even if justice is done and the revenger dies to expiate his deeds, revenge
plays close with a sense of futility, waste and loss. The taste for revenge,
whether morsel or dish served cold, is something people, groups and nations,
and even animals desire. Since time immemorial, individuals and communities
have done justice by harming those who have harmed them, despite the costs,
and the avengers immortalized as heroes and villains. While the hurts and
methods for addressing them may differ, blood feuds, the killing of Osama bin
Laden, and revenge porn are all motivated by the need to get even. This
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includes revenge starting with the smallest workplace slights, through family
disputes and lynch mobs, to political violence, war and terrorism.
There was no author who exercised a wider or deeper influence upon the
Elizabethan mind or upon the Elizabethan form of tragedy than did Seneca.
For the dramatists of Renaissance Italy, France and England, classical tragedy
meant only the ten Latin plays of Seneca and not Euripides, Aeschylus and
Sophocles. Hamlet is certainly not much like any play of Seneca‘s one can
name, but Seneca is undoubtedly one of the effective ingredients in the
emotional charge of Hamlet. Hamlet without Seneca is inconceivable. During
the time of Elizabethan theater, plays about tragedy and revenge were very
common and a regular convention seemed to be formed on what aspects
should be put into a typical revenge tragedy.
In all revenge tragedies first and foremost, a crime is committed and for
various reasons laws and justice cannot punish the crime so the individual who
is the main character, goes through with the revenge in spite of everything.
The main character then usually had a period of doubt, where he tries to
decide whether or not to go through with the revenge, which usually involves
tough and complex planning. Other features that were typical were the
appearance of a ghost, to get the revenger to go through with the deed. The
revenger also usually had a very close relationship with the audience through
soliloquies and asides. The original crime that will eventually be avenged is
nearly always sexual or violent or both. The crime has been committed against
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a family member of the revenger. The revenger places himself outside the
normal moral order of things, and often becomes more isolated as the play
progresses-an isolation which at its most extreme becomes madness.
The revenge must be the cause of a catastrophe and the beginning of the
revenge must start immediately after the crisis. After the ghost persuades the
revenger to commit his deed, a hesitation first occurs and then a delay by the
avenger before killing the murderer and his actual or acted out madness. The
revenge must be taken out by the revenger or his trusted accomplices. The
revenger and his accomplices may also die at the moment of success or even
during the course of revenge. It should not be assumed that revenge plays
parallel the moral expectations of the Elizabethan audience. Church, State and
the regular morals of people in that age did not accept revenge; instead they
thought that revenge would simply not under any circumstances be tolerated
no matter what the original deed was.
It is repulsive on theological grounds, since Christian orthodoxy posits a
world ordered by Divine Providence, in which revenge is a sin and a
blasphemy, endangering the soul of the revenger. The revenger by taking law
into his own hands was in turn completely going against the total political
authority of the state. People should therefore never think that revenge was
expected by Elizabethan society. Although they loved to see it in plays, it was
considered sinful and it was utterly condemned.
The Spanish Tragedy
written by Thomas Kyd was an excellent example of a revenge tragedy. With
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this play, Elizabethan theater received its first great revenge tragedy, and
because of the success of this play, the dramatic form had to be imitated.
The play was performed from 1587 to 1589 and it gave people an
everlasting remembrance of the story of a father who avenges the murder of
his son. In this story, a man named Andrea is killed by Balthazar in the heat of
battle. The death was considered by Elizabethan people as a fair one, therefore
a problem occurred when Andrea‘s ghost appeared to seek vengeance on its
killer. Kyd seemed to have used this to parallel a ghost named Achilles in
Seneca‘s play Troades. Andrea‘s ghost comes and tells his father, Hieronimo
that he must seek revenge. Hieronimo does not know who killed his son but he
goes to find out. During his investigation, he receives a letter saying that
Lorenzo killed his son, but he doubts this so he runs to the king for justice.
Hieronimo importantly secures his legal rights before taking justice into his
own hands. The madness scene comes into effect when Hieronimo‘s wife,
Usable goes mad, and Hieronimo is so stunned that his mind becomes once
again unsettled. Finally Hieronimo decides to go through with the revenge, so
he seeks out to murder Balthazar and Lorenzo, which he successfully does.
Hieronimo becomes a blood thirsty maniac and when the king calls for his
arrest, he commits suicide. As well as the fact that Elizabethan theater had its
rules about how a revenge tragedy had to be, so did Thomas Kyd.
He came up with the Kydian Formula to distinguish revenge tragedies
from other plays. His first point was that the fundamental motive was revenge,
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and the revenge is aided by an accomplice who both commits suicide after the
revenge is achieved. The ghost of the slain watches the revenge on the person
who killed him. The revenger goes through justifiable hesitation before
committing to revenge as a solution. Madness occurs, due to the grieve of a
loss. Intrigue is used against and by the revenger.
There is bloody action and
many deaths that occur throughout the entire play. The accomplices on both
sides are killed. The villain is full of villainous devices. The revenge is
accomplished terribly and fittingly. The final point that Thomas Kyd made
about his play was that minor characters are left to deal with the situation at
the end of the play. The Spanish Tragedy follows these rules made by Kyd
very closely, simply because Kyd developed these rules from the play. The
fundamental motive was revenge because that was the central theme of the
play. The ghost of Andrea sees his father kill the men who murdered Andrea
originally. Hieronimo hesitates first because he goes to the king and then he is
faced with Isabella‘s madness which is caused by Andrea‘s death. The play is
filled with all kinds of bloody action and many people die throughout the
course of the play. The accomplices in the play also all end up dead. Lorenzo,
who is the true villain, is full of all kinds of evil villainous devices. The
revenge works out perfectly, in that both Lorenzo and Balthazar get murdered
in the end by Hieronimo. The minor characters were left to clean up the mess
of all of the deaths that occurred during the play.
The Spanish Tragedy also follows the conventions of Elizabethan theater
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very closely. The murder was committed and Hieronimo had to take justice
into his own hands, because true justice just simply wasn‘t available.
Hieronimo then delays his revenge for many different reasons that occur in the
play. The ghost of Andrea appeared and guided Hieronimo to the direction of
his killer. Also at the end of the play, both Hieronimo and his accomplices die
after they were successful in committing the revenge. In Hamlet, Shakespeare
follows regular convention for a large part of the play. In the beginning,
Shakespeare sets up the scene, having a ghost on a dark night. Everyone is
working and something strange is happening in Denmark.
It is as if Shakespeare is saying that some kind of foul play has been
committed. This set up for the major theme in the play which is of course
revenge. The ghost appears to talk to Hamlet. It is quite obvious that the play
had a gruesome, violent death and the sexual aspect of the play was clearly
introduced when Claudius married Hamlet‘s mother Gertrude. The ghost tells
Hamlet that he has been given the role of the person who will take revenge
upon Claudius. Hamlet must now think of how to take revenge on Claudius,
although he doesn‘t know what to do about it. He ponders his thoughts for a
long period of time, expecting to do the deed immediately, but instead he
drags it on until the end of the play. Although what was important to note was
that all tragic heroes of plays at that time delayed their actual revenge until the
end of the play. In most revenge plays, the revenger was often anonymous and
well disguised, stalking the enemy about to be killed, but Hamlet started a
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battle of wits with Claudius by acting mad and calling it his ―antic
disposition‖,although the whole thing was a ploy to get closer to Claudius to
be able to avenge his father‘s death more easily.
The tactic was a disadvantage in that it drew all attention upon himself.
More importantly though it was an advantage that his ―antic disposition‖,
isolated him from the rest of the court because of the people not paying
attention to what he thought or did because of his craziness. One important
part of all revenge plays is that after the revenge is finally decided upon, the
tragic hero delays the actual revenge until the end of the play. Hamlet‘s delay
of killing Claudius takes on three distinct stages. Firstly he had to prove that
the ghost was actually telling the truth, and he did this by staging the play
―The Mousetrap‖ at court. When Claudius stormed out in rage, Hamlet knew
that he was guilty. The second stage was when Hamlet could have killed
Claudius while he was confessing to god. If Hamlet had done it here then
Claudius would have gone to heaven because he confessed while Hamlet‘s
father was in purgatory because he did not get the opportunity to confess.
So Hamlet therefore decided not to murder Claudius at this point in the
play. The third delay was the fact that he got side tracked. He accidentally
killed Polonius which created a whole new problem with the fact that Laertes
now wanted Hamlet dead. After he commits this murder he was also sent off
and unable to see the king for another few weeks until he could finally do the
job. What makes Hamlet stand out from many other revenge plays of the
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period is not that it rejects the conventions of its genre but that it both enacts
and analyses them. It can be easily understood that Hamlet very closely
follows the regular conventions for all Elizabethan tragedies.
First Hamlet is faced with the fact that he has to avenge the murder of his
father and since there is no fair justice available, he must take the law into his
own hands. The ghost of his father appears to guide Hamlet to Claudius and
inform Hamlet of the evil that Claudius has committed. Then Hamlet
constantly delays his revenge and always finds a way to put it off until he
finally does it in Act V, Scene 2. Hamlet at the same time continues to keep a
close relationship with the audience with his seven main soliloquies including
the famous, ―To be, or not to be...‖ (Act 3 Scenes 1). The play also consists of
a mad scene where Ophelia has gone mad because her father Polonius had
been killed and because Hamlet was sent off to England. The sexual aspect of
the play was brought in when Claudius married Gertrude after he had
dreadfully killed Old Hamlet and taken his throne. Hamlet also follows almost
every aspect of Thomas Kyd‘s formula for a revenge tragedy.
The only point that can be argued is that the accomplices on both sides
were not killed because at the end of the play, Horatio was the only one to
survive, although if it wasn‘t for Hamlet, Horatio would have commit suicide
when he said, ―I am more an antique Roman than a Dane. Here‘s some liquor
left.‖(Act V Scene 2). If Horatio had killed himself, then Hamlet would have
followed the Kydian formula as well as the regular conventions for
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Elizabethan revenge tragedy. Hamlet is definitely a great example of a typical
revenge tragedy of the Elizabethan theater era. It followed every convention
required to classify it as a revenge play quite perfectly. Hamlet is definitely
one of the greatest revenge stories ever written and it was all influenced first
by Sophocles, Euripides and other Greeks, and then more importantly by
Seneca. Hamlet as well as The Spanish Tragedy tackled and conquered all
areas that were required for the consummation of a great revenge tragedy.
Revenge although thought to be unlawful and against the Church was
absolutely adored by all Elizabethan people. The Elizabethan audience always
insisted on seeing eventual justice, and one who stained his hands with blood
had to pay the penalty. That no revenger, no matter how just, ever wholly
escapes the penalty for shedding blood, even in error. This was also a very
important point that was also dealt with brilliantly by Shakespeare in finding a
way to kill Hamlet justly even though he was required to kill Claudius. Hamlet
was written with the mighty pen of Shakespeare who once again shows people
that he can conjure up any play and make it one of the greatest of all time.
Hamlet was one of the greatest of all time. Hamlet is a play written by William
Shakespeare that very closely follows the dramatic conventions of revenge in
Elizabethan theate.
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WORK CITED
1. Kyd, Thomas: The Spanish Tragedy. Ed. J. R. Mulryne.1990 London: A & C
Black (Publishers) Limited,
2. Ed. Philip Edwards: William, Shakespeare. Hamlet New Delhi: 2000
Cambridge University Press p-467.
3. Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello,
King
Lear, Macbeth. 2"d ed.1950 London: Macmillan
4. Lucas, F.L: Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy. 1922 London: Cambridge
University Press p-473.
5. Ronald Broude Three English Forerunners of the Elizabethan Revenge
Play
quotes
1973: Vindicta Filia Temporis, JEGP 72 489. Subsequent
from
Broude are also on 489.
6. Bowers, Fredson: Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy United States of
America: 1971 Princeton University Press.p-399.