JACOBEAN REVENGE

TRAGEDY
Type of drama, particularly associated with the
Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, in which
revenge is the central motive
tragedy of blood, death, stabbing violent display of
emotions (Senecan influence)
Late Renaissance prototype: Thomas Kyds The
Spanish Tragedy (1585-1589)
Christopher Marlowes The Jew of Malta (1589)
John Marstons Antonios Revenge (1599)
Thomas Middletons The Revengers Tragedy (1606)
William Shakespeares Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
(1601)

1580s and 1590s

revenge tragedy
heroic tragedy (e.g. Christopher Marlowes Tamburlaine & Doctor Faustus)
domestic tragedy

general/specific political & social issues

What happens when the rule of law fails?
What is the relationship between private duties and private
responsibilities, especially when they conflict?
What place does individual ambition have in a political state?
To what extent does power corrupt?
What kinds of political conflict are dangerous to the peace of the
state?

STOCK FEATURES
a Spanish or Italianate setting
symbolically indicates political/social corruption & decadence
enables the playwrights to discuss such issues in a setting that gives
them greater artistic and political freedom
Treacherous act > disturbs balance of the universe > need for revenge,
restoration of balance > exacting of private revenge against acts of dishonour
> yet avenger also dies > expiate for murder
scenes of real/feigned insanity
plays-within-plays
scenes in graveyards, severed limbs, carnage/mutilation scenes of
violence: on the stage (violate decorum)
dark world of corruption, perversion, blood and highly charged
passion
seemingly endless cycle of injury and retaliation

Formal developments
tragedy clear structure:
begins in peace, ends in tempest; violent content; contemporary
relevance; moral closure

intensified interest in the psychology and interior life of

characters trapped by circumstance and the consequences of
their actions
increased use of framing and juxtapositioning of scenes create different viewpoints on the action encourage the
audience to develop their own judgment on events and
characters
increased experimentation in form - incorporation of
subplots
comic elements to disturb audiences expectations
tragicomedy > explicitly redemptive ending

THE JACOBEAN ERA

period of intense disillusion in the national life
decline of landed wealth - pursuit of moneymaking in its place
Queen Elizabeths death - absence of the magic of sovereignty in her
successor
series of conspiracies aimed at the throne - Gunpowder Plot

breakdown of established standards & beliefs - reflected in the drama

younger generation of tragedians

grim & sceptical
aware of inner contradictions
condemnatory and satirical in tone
John Marston
John Webster
Cyril Tourneur
Thomas Middleton
George Chapman

Influences on Jacobean
Tragedy
doctrines of Machiavelli - peculiar fascination
upon the Elizabethans
pragmatic creed
technique for overcoming the vicissitudes of fortune
hazards of the struggle for power
assumption - natural weakness and wickedness of men
character of the Machiavellian intriguer / villain

Theories of tragedy
1. Greek tragedy and theory
2. the medieval mystery & morality plays

1. Greek tragedy and theory

Aristotles account of drama (Poetics) first expounded in the
Renaissance by Scaliger influential but: unaware that effective
drama could transcend the constraints of realism and decorum
because of its fictional status

theory of the unities neo-classic critics: tragedies had

to strictly conform to the unities of time, place, action
Websters address to the reader, appended to the
White Devil
positions himself in the line of the Greek tragedians
(compares himself to Euripides, cites Greek tragic
conventions)
his view of tragedy, his understanding of Aristotelian ideas
on tragedy

If it be objected this is no true dramatic poem, I shall

easily confess it willingly, and not ignorantly, in this
kind have I faulted: For should a man present to such
an auditory, the most sententious tragedy that ever was
written, observing all the critical laws as height of
style, and gravity of person, enrich it with the
sententious Chorus, and, as it were Life and Death, in
the passionate and weighty Nuntius: yet after all this
divine rapture the breath that comes from the
incapable multitude is able to poison it.

his tragedy does not match critics definition of a true

dramatic poem
1. acknowledges the critical generic laws stemming from
Aristotle
2. he flouts those rules, partly bec of his contemporary
audience

His implicit account of tragic theory combines Greek and

Roman tragedy
sententiousness
height of style
gravity of person
presence of a chorus and a messenger, or commentator
(Nuntius)

Websters address to the reader: recognition of certain

aspects of Greek tragedy
1. decorum & content: he could have observed laws about the
height of style and gravity of persons
2. structural function of the chorus transposes into his own
plays onto characters like Bosola comment upon the action
and motives of the great
3. he could have lifen death with the characterisation of a
messenger figure, bringing news of tragic deaths however
implies that such not fit for the audience for whom he is
writing: the tragic mode has to adapt to the circumstances of
dramatic performance and production in his own time

But: 3 key areas shared by Aristotle and Webster:

1. centrality of plot & its structural arrangement in
tragedy
2. characterisation through action
3. the messenger who would lifen death by narrating on
stage the off-stage tragic denouement is brought
literally onto the stage by Webster and his
contemporaries: the passion & weight he attributes to
the messengers narration becomes part of the action
observed and felt directly by the audience

Websters invocation of the Roman tradition

Seneca tragedian most studied during Elizabethan
and Jacobean periods
strict formal pattern: focus on protagonists revenge for an
act of dishonour against himself or his family, usually ending
in everyones death
stated aim of such tragedies: to learn political and personal
stoicism: fortune can throw endless disasters at us, but
acquiescence, detachment and submission to ones fate
produces a wiser man
sententiae (succinct proverbial phrases)
sententious tragedy (Websters phrase)

Stoic philosophy
emphasis - dying well, dignity
plays of Seneca - Thyestes, Agamemnon, Medea
a guide to conduct in misfortune

taste for realistic descriptions of bloody actions and

physical torture
sententious moralizing
calamity - regarded as inseparable from the human
condition
defiant courage of the hero, which enables him to preserve
his integrity

Webster self-consciously placed his own work within

this tradition

2. The medieval mystery &

morality plays
practice of tragedy within the Christian Morality and
Mystery tradition through interpretative narratives
about Biblical events
within this framework: tragedy = the story of the Fall
by analogy: any temptation, which could eventually be
redeemed through repentance and rebirth
the English Morality Plays performed didactic, allegorised
tales about the temptations of the devil (Vice) on Mankind,
embroilment in corruption, eventual punishment of Vice, &
reward for a virtuous Mankind

tragedy: defended as a moral mode - Websters

tragedies within this morality context


All these conceptions - vital part in the
tragedy of the period

++ obsessive preoccupation with death

always likely to provide the climax of a tragedy
but to the Elizabethans and Jacobeans = play's very
raison dtre,
end of human achievement
embodiment of the final and the terrible
emblems and disguises of death, memento mori the skull, the
worm, the grave

John Webster (1578-1632)

first mention of his dramatic career - dated 1602 collaboration

play Caesar's Fall

Lady Jane

Christmas Comes But Once A Year (1602)

Westward Ho (1604) and Northward Ho (1605)

The Devil's Law-Case (1610)

The White Devil, 1612

The Duchess of Malfi 1613

1615 - Characters

THE DUCHESS OF MALFI

"integrity of life"
published in 1623
court life of the Italian Renaissance
fierce quest of pleasure
recklessness of crime
worldliness of the great leaders of the Church
inherent corruption and despair of humanity
good and evil = inverted
only motivation for any character is self-interest

tragedy of blood and revenge

T. S. Eliot - Webster was much possessed by death and
saw the skull beneath the skin

Duchess ordeal
compromises her integrity ?
web of deceit and subterfuge conceals her offence
tragic figure - in the process of suffering develops in
stature
dignity and refusal to succumb to influence
overthrows patriarchal authority
follows her own moral compass
ignores social and political pressures
remains the epitome of virtue even in the most horrific
circumstances
virtue < dignity in the face of death
theme - woman's passion pursued in defiance of the social code

Oppressive atmosphere
terrors of madness, witchcraft, and the
supernatural
sombre half-world, poised between death
and life
nightmarish rhythm of the duchess'
persecution
acts with stoic resignation

Plot
based on historical events
Bandello's novels adapted into French by Belleforest translated into English by William Painter Palace of
Pleasure (1566) - cautionary tale
Webster, however - tale of suffering / tragedy
ordeal - his heroine confined to violence and death
Webster's moral scheme
Duchess murder avenged
Bosola's gradual awakening to the iniquity of his
service

duchess' ordeal - horrifying - lack of an explicit motive

??? innocent victim of her brothers' jealousy, suspicion,
and greed
action moves on the psychological plane to the frontiers of
madness
a limbo of suffering - purgatory
time and place - suspended
deprived - cherishes mosthusband, children, position, very
identity
loses all desire to live - passes beyond - state of defiant selfassertion ( "I am Duchess of Malfi still")