Welcome to the dark side of the Renaissance imagination, where destructive passions reign supreme, grim laughter breaks out, and madness and murder are never far away. We look closely at three popular plays (Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and The Changeling by Middleton and Rowley), with their fascinating portrayals of the pitfalls of power, honour, desire – and revenge.
Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, an extremely popular Elizabethan play, laid down a frequently followed template for tragedies of revenge. Its characters seem to be divided into the wrongdoers and the wronged, and justice to be equated with remorseless and honourable revenge for wrongs suffered. Yet even in this early example of the genre, more questions are raised than answered about the nature of honour (male and female), and of justice (human and divine).
The plays on the course by Webster and Middleton both depart in significant ways from the typical revenge plot, while also revisiting some of its central themes. Thus, for example, The Duchess of Malfi tangles the roles of villain and revenger, obscures their motives, and tends to frustrate their designs; while The Changeling leads us to expect a typical revenge plot, only to deliver something rather less profuse in its final bloodletting – but potentially no less disturbing.
All three plays are striking for the degree of autonomy attributed to their main female characters, both in their desires and their decisions; but they differ remarkably in the degree to which that autonomy is seen as heroic, wicked, or something in between. All three plays also explore the power of the passions to sweep us along and even change who we are; and they raise disturbing questions about the passion for revenge in particular, and about the ways it can be rationalised. Finally, all three, at times, walk a fine line between tragedy and dark comedy, thereby raising questions about the nature of the entertainment we seek from them as readers or spectators.
Learning outcomes
- To understand the defining characteristics of revenge tragedy, and to see how these generic resources are exploited in three important plays of the English Renaissance;
- To assess what the set plays have to say about the relationship between revenge, justice, honour, and passion;
- To analyse the plays’ depictions of female and male identity.
