48

CHAPTER 2

A HISTORICAL SURVEY OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

When the great European movement known as the Renaissance reached

England, it found its fullest and most lasting expression in the drama. By a

fortunate group of coincidences this intellectual and artistic impulse affected the

people of England at a moment when the country was undergoing a rapid and,

on the whole, a peaceful expansion that was when the national spirit soared

high, and when the development of the language and the forms of versification

had reached a point which made possible the most triumphant literary

achievement which the country has seen in that era. It is said that Elizabethan

dramatists manipulated such cultural motifs, as the deaths head or human skull

the severed hand, the dance of death, and the commandments of the seven

deadly sins as a means of connecting with an audience that was preoccupied

with mutability and religious devotion.

All of the major playwrights of the time contributed to this class of drama,

including Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare, John Marston, George Chapman,

Cyril Tourneur, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, James Shirley, and John
 49

Ford. Kyd was credited by the most literary scholars initiating the dramatic

archetype with his The Spanish Tragedy (1585-90) and the best work in

Ur-Hamlet, a drama no longer extant but which is believed to have been written

before 1589, and upon which Shakespeare likely based his great tragedy

bringing the genre to its artistic maturity with Hamlet(1600-01). Critics have

maintained that revenge tragedy was a markedly dynamic genre, observing that

while Kyd invented the basic formula, his successors added ingenious new

layers of dramatic suspense, characterization, symbolism, and ideological

representation to the theatrical form.

Revenge tragedy was not in fact identified as a specific literary genre until

the early twentieth century, and since that time, there has been no consensus of

opinion about the validity of the designation. "While most scholars have agreed

that the plays exhibit similar themes and theatrical devices, they have also

pointed out that revenge does not always figure as the central theme of the

individual plays. Further, dramatists utilized different literary sources and wrote

at different skill levels to achieve strikingly different kinds of revenge tragedy.

What is more, according to these critics, the broad chronological period

assigned to English revenge tragedies covers several markedly different

cultural, social, and political periods".1

Through these dramas study the commentators have observed that the

revenge tragedy form appeared at a very conspicuous time in English history,

when people were beginning to question the fundamental relationship between

 50

religion and the universe, when the English nation was threatened of the

Spanish Armada, and when English society experienced the uncertainty of

progression between the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. According to the

study done by most of the critics, Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights

employed the revenge tragedy as the standard vehicle by which to project their

concerns about such provocative issues as an authoritarian religious tradition,

political corruption, and social discontent. The English reformation was not

merely a religious event but it was also a social one. While the spiritual nature

of characters of the middle ages was shattered, a corresponding revolution, no

less complete and no less far-reaching, occurred in the structure of secular life

and the seat of power.

With Queen Elizabethan in power it made a lot of difference. Its legacy is

not plots and intrigue, but the flowering of the arts and the development of a

more flexible approach to religion and conformity to class, religion, and the

state. When we talk about Elizabethan Theatres it was said to be of Two kinds,

outdoor or public and indoor or private , Both were open to anyone who could

pay, but the private theatres cost more and were smaller they had a more

selected audience. In 1576 and 1642 there were nine public playhouses which

came into existence for the same purpose, such as the Globe which was built in

1599 then Fortune in 1600 and Swan were the three most important, which were

all outside the city limits of London.

 51

It is said to be believed by critics who have generally agreed, that Kyd was

the lead innovator of the revenge tragedy and revenge theme they have also

observed that other early revenge tragedies such as George Peele's The Battle of

Alcazar (1590) and Shakespeare‘s Titus Andronicus (1594) tend to reflect this

undisciplined model as well. Nevertheless, these tragedies were crowd-pleasers

and became of prime importance of the London Theater repertories. The

Elizabethan dramatists as were growing more competent with the revenge

tragedy form, they became sophisticated even more in their treatment of the

characters, themes, and motifs. Literary scholars have contended that the drama

that fuses all the traditional elements of revenge drama traditions and its norms

was said to be Marston's Antonio's Revenge (1600) it was believed by the

literature people that in fact it was done so skillfully that it was said to be as a

use of revenge conventions by Marston who intentionally and audaciously

exaggerated the popular genre.

With William Shakespeare‘s Hamlet the genre of revenge reached the

apex of its artistic maturity, it was a drama that has been celebrated for a

brilliant synthesis of plot, characterization, and intellectual introspection on the

subject of revenge. There were some other tragedies as well of this period which

also demonstrate a keen insight into the moral and spiritual consequences of

revenge including: "Tourneur's: The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606), The Atheist's

Tragedy (1610-11), also Chapman's Revenge of Bussy D’Amboise (1610-11).

Many critics have characterized the revenge tragedies of the genre's late period
 52

as grim, disillusioned statements on the moral and spiritual chaos that results

from a society in corrode and moral disintegration. Works from this period

include Webster's The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1614),

Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1630-33) and The Broken Heart (1630-33), and

Shirley‘s The Cardinal (1641) were the most remarkable dramas of revenge".2

Over the course of the sixteenth century, the cultural work done by

English drama began to shift. Mystery plays and morality plays did not die out,

but they were joined, and by the end of the century outnumbered, by plays on

secular themes performed, not as part of a civic ritual, but purely for

entertainment. Plays could tell different kinds of stories, and as drama became

more emancipated from the liturgical calendar, the space for new plays became

much more generous.

Thus, playwrights began to look for new stories to tell and new

ways to tell them, it was only natural that they would look first and most

enduringly to Seneca, the only Roman writer whose works have survived, and

the classical tragedies written and most readily available to sixteenth-century

English authors. His dramatic tricks and, more importantly, his tragic sensibility

had a profound effect on the plays of the English Renaissance and most

especially on the revenge tragedies that are the era's most famous and

controversial theatrical genre-child.

When the great European movement known as the Renaissance reached

England, it found its fullest and most lasting expression in the drama. By a
 53

fortunate group of coincidences this intellectual and artistic impulse affected the

people of England at a moment when the country was undergoing a rapid and,

on the whole, a peaceful expansion that was when the national spirit soared

high, and when the development of the language and the forms of versification

had reached a point which made possible the most triumphant literary

achievement which the country has seen in that era.

Elizabeth 1 queen of England was born on September 7th 1533 and

died on March 24th 1603, considered one of the greatest British monarchs as

she presided over an immense flourishing of culture and economics. Queen

Elizabeth I's ascension to the throne at the youthful age of twenty-five was the

most prestigious personality of the English Renaissance. England prospered in

the second half of Elizabeth's reign, and many of the great works of English

literature were produced during these years. Art, poetry, drama, and learning in

general flourished as the confidence and nationalism Elizabeth inspired spilled

from the economic sector to cultural achievement. "During her reign literature

flourished, with William Shakespeare perhaps being the most famous writer of

this period. Shakespeare took the lead in advancing the country's literature and

wrote a number of great works during this time In addition, Francis Drake

became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe; Francis Bacon laid

out his philosophical and political views; and English colonization of North

America took place under Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Humphrey Gilbert".3
 54

Many of the writers, thinkers and artists of the day enjoyed the patronage

of members of Elizabeth's court, and their works often involved or referred to

the great Queen; indeed, she was the symbol of the day. The "Elizabethan Age,"

generally considered one of most powerful era in English literature, was thus

appropriately originated as these cultural achievements did not just happen to

be created while Elizabeth was on the throne rather, Elizabeth's specific actions,

her image and the court atmosphere she nurtured significantly influenced even

inspired great works of literature. The era called the Elizabethan England was a

time of many developments and was considered as the Golden Age in English

history.

The great developments and advancements that happened during this time

can be partly attributed to the leadership of the Queen. The Elizabethan era

which Queen Elizabeth I ruled and led for 45 years were the height of the

English Renaissance and the time of the development of English poetry and

literature, Many considered the Queen as a wisest leader and learner as well she

is considered as a great philosopher herself. She was also know to be the

greatest adviser , she always believed in what she wanted and how she shall

achieve it that was the result that her legacy was so fruitful for years and still

cherished as the most powerful literature turner. Experimentations and great

belief lead to the love to artistic development. Additionally, under Elizabeth's

leadership, neighboring countries of Spain and France experienced the effects

of British power.
 55

The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 marked a climax of England's

political power. In 1599, England chartered the East India Company, and

became a contender in international trade. Elizabeth's death in 1603 signified

not only the end of the Tudor line of rulers, but a grand era of English history.

Politics and social environment played a great roll in the renaissance theater and

dramas. Elizabethan England's history saw a number of developments in terms

of the creation of peace. The era was generally called peaceful as the battles

between the Protestants and the Catholics and that between the Parliament and

the Monarchy have subsided. The government of Elizabethan England was

stable as well. The government was centralized, well-organized and very

efficient. The era was also the time of great economic development.

With the development of literature in this era people of this era also grew

in their imagination and thoughts, the knowledge people gained gave them a

kind of strength and a movement took place know as renaissance, were they

were eager to learn, to do, to understand and to express. This movement was

marked as a new birth as people felt that a new life had come to them. The

renaissance had a strong effect on London as it grew in religion and literature.

The Elizabethan era brought the renaissance, new thinking to England. The

Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history. English literature saw its

bloom and glory years during this period.

It was due to the great queen and her personal interest in literature and art

that she herself loved. Elizabeth herself, a product of renaissance humanism,

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produced occasional poems such as On Monsieur‘s Departure. The most

important poets of this era include Edmund Spencer and Sir Philip Sidney. All

of them and many more writers created a mesmerizing effect of emotions

through their strong belief and power of art in there writings and literature epics.

England had a long strong tradition of literature in the English vernacular,

which gradually increased as English use of the printing press became common

by the mid 16th century. The Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th

century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance. The

symbol of Britannia was first used in 1572 and often thereafter to mark the

Elizabethan age as a renaissance that inspired national pride through classical

ideals, international expansion, and naval triumph over the hated Spanish foe. It

was the height of the English Renaissance above all for the flourishing of

English drama, led by great playwrights of that era. It made a significant

contribution to the history of England and indeed to that of the world. Its legacy

in terms of the arts and literature still carries on. The earlier half of Elizabeth's

reign, also, though not lacking in literary effort produced no work of permanent

importance. After the religious convulsions of half a century time was required

for the development of the internal quiet and confidence from which a great

literature could spring.

At length, however, the hour grew ripe and there came the greatest

outburst of creative energy in the whole history of English literature. Under

Elizabeth's wise guidance the prosperity and enthusiasm of the nation had raised
 57

to the highest pitch and London in particular was overflowing with vigorous

life. A special stimulus of the most intense kind came from the struggle with

Spain. After a generation of half-piratical depredations by the English seadogs

against the Spanish treasure fleets and the Spanish settlements in America, King

Philip, exasperated beyond all patience and urged on by a bigot's zeal for the

Catholic Church, began deliberately to prepare the Great Armada, which was to

crush at one blow the insolence, the independence, and the religion of England.

There followed several long years of breathless suspense but in 1588 the

Armada sailed and was utterly overwhelmed in one of the most complete

disasters of the world's history. There upon the released energy of England

broke out exultantly into still more impetuous achievement in almost every line

of activity. The great literary period is taken by common consent to begin with

the publication of Spenser's 'Shepherd's Calendar' in 1579, and to end in some

sense at the death of Elizabeth in 1603, though in the drama, at least, it really

continues many years longer.

The cause was the renaissance period and Queen Elizabeth 1. Literature

was one of the most notable achievements in the Elizabethan Era. The main

distinctiveness for this era‘s literature was its variety in poetry, theater, and

prose fiction aspects and it was presented and expressed. In Elizabeth I era there

were no specially designed or build theatre in England. As Elizabeth came to

the throne laws began to be passed to control wandering beggars and vagrants.

These made criminals of any actors who toured and performed without the
 58

support of a member of the highest ranks of the nobility. Many actors were

driven out of the profession or criminalized, while those who continued were

forced to become officially servants to Lords and Ladies of the realm. Slowly

touring was increasingly discouraged and many of the remaining companies

were encouraged to settle down with permanent bases in

London.

To understand further we need to know about renaissance, the

fundamental thought in the renaissance was that, ―life is something to be

enjoyed‖. In addition, the renaissance ideal was that, ―a balanced life within

oneself and society‖ was to be pursued and maintained. Religiously, salvation

could be accomplished now not after death, and thus the renaissance marked a

huge paradigm shift from a theological to a humanist view of people and the

overriding mechanism of the world and of life. It is this idea of fully educated

and rounded person that is the cornerstone of this class and the reason for its

existence. If we try and understand the simple meaning of renaissance it is

spirit, culture, art, science, and thinking of that particular period. The Italian

Renaissance had placed human beings once more in the center of life's stage and

infused thought and art with humanistic values and principal using the study of

day to day life and being inspired from it. In time the stimulating ideas current

in Italy spread to other areas and combined with native developments to

produce a French Renaissance, an English Renaissance, and so on.

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The term Renaissance, literally means "rebirth" which is a new life or an

improved entity and is the period in European civilization immediately

following the Middle Ages, conventionally held to have been characterized by

an increase of interest in classical learning and values and then reforming and

recycling . The Renaissance also witnessed the discovery and exploration of

new continents, the decline of the feudal system and the growth of commerce,

and the invention or application of such potentially powerful innovations as

paper, printing, the mariner's compass, and gunpowder. To the scholars and

thinkers of the day, however, it was primarily a time of the revival of classical

learning and wisdom after a long period of cultural decline and stagnation. A

free thought process and the wisdom of knowledge helped it to grow

immensely.

Characteristics of the Renaissance are usually considered to include

intensified classical scholarship, scientific and geographical, a sense of

individual human potentialities, and the assertion of the active and secular over

the religious and contemplative life. The major change it brought through the

collaboration of thoughts and rumination of thinking. It was the cultural in

which revival occurred in Europe from roughly the fourteenth through the

middle of the seventeenth centuries, based on the rediscovery of the literature of

Greece and Rome. During the Renaissance, America was discovered, and the

Reformation began; modern times are often considered to have begun with the

Renaissance. Major figures of the Renaissance include Galileo, William

 60

Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo. Renaissance means

―rebirth‖ or ―reawakening.‖The term renaissance is often used to describe any

revival or rediscovery.

It was as much an intellectual movement as an artistic one. Although we

strongly associate the term Renaissance with High Renaissance greatest artist

who had a very different form of ideas and thinking if that, the period

encompasses a much broader group of artists. Renaissance can be broken into

Early Renaissance, High Renaissance, and Late Renaissance. The Italian

Renaissance was made possible by a recipe of artistic talent, financial

prosperity, and the rise of Humanism. An emphasis n education and the writings

from Classical antiquity led to developments in a range of topics: botany,

geology, geography, optics, medicine, engineering, painting, architecture,

sculpture. Powerful, affluent families, like the de Medici, influenced politics,

religion, civic development, and the world of art. Also, in the 15th century, the

development of the printing press around the middle of the century by

Gutenberg meant that books become more widely available. This changed the

power structure of knowledge and literacy in many form. Key artists associated

with the Renaissance include Brunelleschi, Donatello, Botticelli, Raphael,

Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Titian. The Early Renaissance is characterized by

a growing emphasis on Humanism, a new naturalism in art, and transition from

Gothic art and thus art grew from all over broadening the horizon of art n

literature study.
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The High Renaissance is characterized with monumental

artworks like the Sistine Chapel. The High Renaissance ends with the deaths of

Leonardo da Vinci in 1519 and Raphael and 1520.Late Renaissance coincides

with Mannerism, characterized by exaggerated proportions and sensuality. The

Renaissance was spread to Europe through the use of transportation and the

printing press. The problem was that the Renaissance spread to England was

very slow because England was an island.

Thus it would take time for information to travel to an island. But when it

reached it changed a lot many things in England and basically the study of

literature. The first introduction of the Renaissance to Europe was spread

through the influence of Henry VII who was the king of England and lord of

Ireland who had started in movement toward a more theatrical England. The last

play written was by Paradise Lost by John Milton in 1667. The English

Renaissance‘s high peek had lasted 15 years. This period was in most of the

1590‘sThe entire Renaissance had started at the end by Elizabeth I‘s reign and

went through the reign of James I of England the spread of theatre started

through the traveling actors who moved from one town to the next spreading

acting and this talent they had. With the passion to perform, present their art and

drama, with a message. Keeping steadily in sight the truth that the real quality of

the Renaissance was intellectual, as that it was the emancipation of the reason

for the modern world, like we may inquire how feudalism was related to it. The
 62

mental condition of the middle Ages was one of ignorant prostration before the

idols of the Church that is dogma and authority and scholasticism.

Again, the nations of Europe during these centuries were bound down by

the brute weight of material necessities. Without the power over the outer world

which the physical sciences and useful arts communicate, without the ease of

life which wealth and plenty secure, without the traditions of a civilized past,

emerging slowly from a state of utter rawness, each nation could barely do more

than gain and keep a difficult hold upon existence, of becoming the reason, in a

word, was not awake; the mind of man was ignorant of its own treasures and its

own capacities thus gave a lot of scope to revenge and its motif. Therefore the

first anticipations of the Renaissance were fragmentary and sterile. The force of

the nations who were destined to achieve the coming transformation was

unexhausted; their physical and mental faculties were unimpaired.

An external event determined the direction in which this outburst of the

spirit of freedom should take place. This was the contact of the modern with the

ancient mind, which followed upon what is called the Revival of Learning. The

fall of the Greek empire in 1453, while it signalized the extinction of the old

order, gave an impulse to the now accumulated forces of the new. A belief in the

identity of the human spirit under all manifestations was generated. Men found

that in classical as well as biblical antiquity was there as an ideal of human life,

both moral and intellectual, by which they might profit in the present. The

modern genius felt confidence in its own energies when it learned what the
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ancients had achieved. The guesses of the ancients stimulated the exertions of

the moderns. The whole world's history seemed to be once more to be one.

The great achievements of the Renaissance were the discovery of the

world and the discovery of man. Under these two formulas may be classified all

the phenomena which properly belong to this period. The discovery of the

world divides itself into two branches - the exploration of the globe, and that

systematic exploration of the universe which is in fact what we call science.

When we contrast the ten centuries which preceded these dates with the four

centuries which have ensured that we can estimate the magnitude of that

Renaissance movement by means of which a new hemisphere has been added to

civilization and caused all the changes n developments.

The object of the artist then became to unite devotional feeling and respect

for the sacred legend with the utmost beauty and the utmost fidelity of

delineation, a new world of thought and fancy, divinely charming, wholly

human, was revealed to their astonished eyes. Most remarkable about this age

of scholarship is the enthusiasm which pervaded all classes in Italy for antique

culture. Literature grew and Popes and princes, captains of adventure and

peasants, noble ladies and the leaders became scholars. The modern world was

brought into close contact with the ancient world, and emancipated from the

power of improved traditions. The force to judge and the desire to create were

generated. The immediate result in the sixteenth century was an abrupt

secession of the learned, not merely from monasticism, but also from the true
 64

spirit of Christianity. Thus what the word Renaissance really means is new birth

to liberty the spirit of mankind recovering consciousness and the power of

self-determination, recognizing the beauty of the outer world and of the body

through art, liberating the reason in science and the conscience in religion,

restoring culture to the intelligence, and establishing the principle of political

freedom. All revenge tragedies originally stemmed from the Greeks, who wrote

and performed the first organized plays. After the Greeks, came the Roman

called Seneca, who had a great, influence on all Elizabethan tragedy writers.

Seneca basically laid the foundation for the ideas and the norms for all

Renaissance tragic revenge playwrights, including William Shakespeare.

Thus the Medieval Drama, though it did not reach a very high literary

level, but was one of the most characteristic expressions of the age. It should be

emphasized that to no other form does what we have said of the similarity of

medieval literature throughout Western Europe apply more closely, so that what

we find true of the drama in England would for the most part hold good for the

other countries as well.

The Renaissance drama proper rose from medieval Elizabethan era based

on, by a number of transitional stages ending about 1580. A large number of

comedies, tragedies, and the intermediate types were produced for London

theaters between that year and 1642, when the London theaters were closed by

order of the Puritan Parliament. Like so much non dramatic literature of the

Renaissance, most of these plays were written in an elaborate verse style and
 65

under the influence of classical examples, but the popular taste, to which drama

was especially susceptible, required a flamboyance and sensationalism largely

alien to the spirit o Greek of roman literature.

Creation of Elizabethan theater How Queen Elizabeth introduced the arts

Due to the bubonic plague, many actors where restricted movement and where

forced to have licenses. The licenses where only given out through the queen

and other higher end people what she did to influence and spread. She had made

play-writers more famous so more people could watch their plays She had built

theatres that could hold a very large audience and most of the where located in

one general location Famous theater were The Globe, The Theater, The Rose,

The Globe II. She spread and allowed the spread of propaganda supporting

theaters. She herself loved the art and was quite involved herself.

When the people saw the shows they could relate to it and really enjoyed

in their own ways most people in the 1660-1700 really appreciated plays. They

saw all the plays and the audience always looked forward for a new play. People

started to understand the art and the dramas and plays started attracting them

and their interest started growing. When People saw the shows, People could

relate to the plays, like in Tragedies when the play‘s ending results are bad or

hurting or negative .Shakespeare‘s tragedies where mostly written between

1601- 1608 Events that where occurring around and during the time Queen

Elizabeth I had died in 1603 During her reign of power theater in England had

reached its highpoints with theaters begin built all over England and
 66

play-writers writing hundreds of plays and by doing this creating epics of

modern literature. When people saw the shows Comedy Unlike modern day

societies a comedy in England was one with a happy ending most people

wanted to go to movies to see a happy play with a good ending or if a famous

play-writer wrote the play then people would watch the play.

In Elizabethan theater there were hundreds of different plays that could

interest most of the people in England. The importance of the Elizabethan

theater was that it showed that the country was stable, This was vital because

when Queen Elizabeth took the thrown, there was speculation of how strong

England would grow and how stable it would be Thus after establishing a strong

foundation of political and economic stability, the people where significantly

affected This allowed the people spread and increase importance in the arts,

music, and theater The people knew that with their needs well established they

could start seeing and writing plays. Daily life comparison and foundation

changed drastically and their lives changed in the form of expression they were

free to demonstrate their art for another person‘s life to relax and for

entrainment.

There were these particular writing in literature which changed the face of

English literature, and changed the face of Following earlier Elizabethan

plays such as Gorboduc by Sackville & Norton and The Spanish Tragedy by

Kyd provided much material for Hamlet, William Shakespeare stands out in

this period as a poet and playwright as yet unsurpassed. Influenced by Italian

 67

sonnets, English writers of the period began introducing complicated poetic

structures in both verse and prose.

The sonnets and plays of William Shakespeare became exceptionally

popular in England and eventually across Europe. Shakespeare's plays

abounded in different forms such as comedies, satires, tragedies, and romance.

As a result, theater became a national pastime across social classes in England.

In addition to Shakespeare, playwrights Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson

flourished during this era. Marlowe was known for his magnificent blank verse,

his overreaching protagonists, and his own untimely death. Jonson was a

dramatist, poet and actor, best known for his plays such as Volpone and the

Alchemist. Jonson was a lyric, his influence on Jacobean and Caroline poets, his

theory of humors‘, his contentious personality, and his friendship and rivalry

with Shakespeare were quite famous.

Poets such as Edmund Spenser and John Milton produced works that

demonstrated an increased interest in understanding English Christian beliefs,

such as the allegorical representation of the Tudor Dynasty in "The Faerie

Queen" and the retelling of mankind's fall from paradise in "Paradise Lost."

thus we can say it was the revolution affected in architecture, painting, and

sculpture by the recovery of antique monuments. In literature, philosophy, and

theology there in the Renaissance which was a discovery of manuscripts, that

passion for antiquity, that progress in philology and criticism, which led to a
 68

correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in poetry, to new systems of

thought, to more accurate analysis.

William Shakespeare is considered almost without exception the greatest,

most important playwright in history. His comedies, Tragedies, Histories and

Romances have become an indelible part of literary and mainstream

consciousness. By his language, images characterizations, and dramatic ironies,

William Shakespeare immortalizes the personal quests, searches of love;

familial tensions and crises of state enacted in his plays and portrayed them

beautifully with a lot of human expressions. The incredible volume of work that

William Shakespeare produced throughout his fifty two years has lent itself to

dramatic spectacle, authorial speculation, and a wide variety of insightful

criticism.

Shakespeare was very gifted and incredibly versatile he had these

professional qualities of expressions and ability to perform. Though most

dramas met with great success, it is in his later years as marked by the early

reign of James I that he wrote what have been considered his greatest plays:

Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and

Cleopatra, and The Tempest, a tragicomedy that inscribes within the main

drama a brilliant pageant to the new era. When we see these tremendous

writings we also need to know the origin of theater and drama.

The first permanent theatres in England were old inns which had been

used as temporary acting areas when the companies had been touring which was
 69

the Cross Keys, the Bull, the Bell Savage and the Bell were all originally built

as inns. "Some of the Inns that became theatres had substantial alterations made

to their structure to allow them to be used as playhouses. A design that may

have influenced the building of later purpose to built theatres such as the

Theatre and the Globe, The Red Lion in Stepney, in particular, had a rough

auditorium with scaffolding galleries built around the stage area giving

influence to the upcoming theater".4 During the middle Ages nobody is known

who could be referred to as a professional English playwright. Pageants and

Church plays were often written by members of the Clergy and the writers of

plays for touring companies were largely anonymous and few of their works

have survived. In the Tudor period, and a little before it, men who earned their

living as writers and poets began to be recognizably connected with plays. The

earliest professional playwright of whom we know may have been Henry

Medwall who wrote a Morality Play and an Interlude, that survive, for

performance in the house of his master, John Morton, Archbishop of

Canterbury. John Heywood, during the reign of Henry VIII, wrote a large

number of Interludes for performance at the Court, but when Elizabeth‘s reign

began most plays were still written by people we would regard as amateurs or

occasional playwrights.

The form which Elizabethan plays took was still developing at the

beginning of Elizabeth‘s reign. Elizabethan Universities studied Greek and

Roman plays in the original language, and the students sometimes performed
 70

them within the University. During Elizabeth‘s reign translations of these Greek

and Roman plays became widely available and began to have a heavy influence

upon English playwrights. Greek and Roman Plays were largely divided into

two genres, Comedy and Tragedy. "The first full length English Comedy was

written in about 1553 which Ralph Roister Doister was written by Nicholas

Udall, former headmaster of the first full length English Tragedy was Gorboduc

written in 1561 by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville. Originally English

Tragedies and Comedies tended to be written in close imitation of Greek and

Roman models and much was made of the Classical rules of writing plays rules

which Renaissance writers took from Aristotle‘s Poetics and expanded upon"5.

These rules included the assumption that Tragedy and Comedy should

never mix and that a play should take place according to the Unities of Time and

Place its meaning that the stage should represent a single place and all of the

play‘s action should take place within a single fictional day at most. Fortunately

English playwrights increasingly rejected the restrictions of slavishly following

Classical models and began to write Tragedies and Comedies in a much looser

and more relaxed style.

Thomas Kyd‘s The Spanish Tragedy, for example, a bloodthirsty tale of

murder and revenge, generally ignored the Classical rules and strongly

influenced many subsequent Elizabethan plays including Shakespeare‘s early

Titus Andronicus and his later Hamlet where revenge motif can be seen easily.

At the same time that the genres of English plays were becoming fixed and
 71

accepted, a particular form of dramatic poetry was discovered to be ideal for

dramatic composition.

As time passed Marlowe, Shakespeare and other dramatists began to use

blank verse in a much more flexible and inventive manner allowing sentences to

run from one line into the next and finish wherever in the line was necessary,

breaking the blank verse rules when it suited them to allow extra syllables in the

line or irregular stresses and pauses. Generally speaking the later a blank verse

play was written the more natural its language sounds. Shakespeare and other

Elizabethan dramatists often used a mixture of blank verse and prose, usually

helping them to write what they wanted to express thus this freedom lead to

some great dramas and plays written in that era.

To understand the popularity of revenge drama we need to understand the

history of that era which had revenge influence in it. Elizabeth began her reign

in a fast changing and dangerous period for the English nation. Elizabeth‘s

father, Henry VIII, had broken off from the Catholic Church and established the

Protestant Church of England. After the death of Henry and his sickly son

Edward the throne had passed on to Elizabeth‘s older sister Mary, a

Catholic who had brought England back into the Church of Rome, and had

married the firmly Catholic King of Spain. When Mary died without children

the Protestant Elizabeth inherited the throne and England became a Protestant

Nation once more.

 72

Each stage in this process involved bloody trials and executions of those

following the wrong religion and Elizabeth had to consider the fact that a large

proportion of her population had been or still was Catholic. While some

Catholics continued their religion secretly and otherwise supported Elizabeth,

others were openly rebellious. In times such as these, plays, which gathered

huge crowds and exposed them to a particular view of the world - which could

be an excellent form of propaganda, were viewed with a great deal of concern.

This is hardly surprising since a single performance at a playhouse could attract

3000 spectators when the population of London was only 200,000. This meant

that one and a half percent of the London population were gathered in one place

and exposed to the same influence at every performance enough people to begin

a riot or even a rebellion. To protect against these threats, the Elizabethan

authorities imposed a range of laws and systems to ensure that they could

control just about every word that was spoken onstage.

The punishments for writers whose works were felt to be seditious or

offensive could be extreme, including imprisonment, torture and mutilation but

in fact the Elizabethan Censors were more lenient than is sometimes suggested

and did not come down heavily on many actors or dramatists during this period.

More typical of the censorship of Elizabethan plays was the suppression of Sir

Thomas More, a play which was written and then amended by a large group of

different playwrights, possibly including Shakespeare who may have written

scenes in his own handwriting in the manuscript. Despite many such alterations
 73

the play was never considered acceptable and so was never granted a license to

be performed or published. We know the play only because the original

manuscript survives.

Influenced by Italian sonnets, English writers of the period began

introducing complicated poetic structures in both verse and prose. The sonnets

and plays of William Shakespeare became exceptionally popular in England

and eventually across Europe. Shakespeare's plays abounded in different forms

such as comedies, satires, tragedies, and romance. As a result, theater became a

national pastime across social classes in England. In literature, philosophy, and

theology there in the Renaissance which was a discovery of manuscripts, that

passion for antiquity, that progress in philology and criticism, which led to a

correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in poetry, to new systems of

thought, to more accurate analysis.

William Shakespeare is considered almost without exception the greatest,

most important playwright in history. His comedies, Tragedies, Histories and

Romances have become an indelible part of literary and mainstream

consciousness. By his language, images characterizations, and dramatic ironies,

William Shakespeare immortalizes the personal quests, searches of love;

familial tensions and crises of state enacted in his plays and portrayed them

beautifully with a lot of human expressions. The incredible volume of work that

William Shakespeare produced throughout his fifty two years has lent itself to

dramatic spectacle, authorial speculation, and a wide variety of insightful

 74

criticism. When Elizabethan playwrights found the public loved gruesome tales

of revenge, they embarked on a new genre. And it became a monster.

Elizabethan Theatres was of Two kinds, Outdoor or public and Indoor or

private ,Both were open to anyone who could pay, but the private theatres cost

more, were smaller, and had a more select audience. William Shakespeare's

Hamlet very closely follows the dramatic conventions of revenge in Elizabethan

theater.

Shakespeare's Hamlet is one of many heroes of the Elizabethan and

Jacobean stage who finds himself grievously wronged by a powerful figure,

with no recourse to the law, and with a crime against his family to avenge.

Seneca was among the greatest classical tragedy authors and many educated

Elizabethans had read his works and his biography. There were different

stylistic devices that Elizabethan playwrights, including Shakespeare, learned

and implemented from Seneca's great tragedies. The five-act structure, the

appearance of some kind of ghost, the one line exchanges known as

stichomythia, and Seneca's use of long rhetorical speeches were all later used in

Elizabethan tragedies.

Some of Seneca's ideas were originally taken from the Greeks when the

Romans invaded and conquered the Greeks, and with the new ideas, the

Romans created their own theatrical ideas. Many of Seneca's works, which dealt

with bloody family histories and revenge, captivated the Elizabethans. Seneca's

works weren't written for performance purposes, therefore English playwrights

 75

who wanted to realize Seneca's ideas had to determine a method to make the

story theatrically workable, relevant, and exciting to the demanding Elizabethan

audience. Seneca's influence formed part of a developing tradition of tragedies,

whose plots hinge on political power, forbidden sexuality, family honor, and

private revenge. 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. 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 period of Elizabethan theater, plays about tragedy and revenge

were very common and a regular convention was based upon certain aspects

that were worked 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. Therefore, the main

character pursues his revenge, in spite of everything around him. The main

character then usually experiences a period of doubt, when he tries to decide

whether or not to go through with the revenge, which usually involves complex

planning and much personal debate.

Another typical feature was the appearance of a ghost who urges the lead

character, seeking revenge, to go through with the deed. The revenger, as he is

sometimes called, also usually had a very close relationship with the audience

through soliloquies and asides, which are personal speeches in which the
 76

character evaluates his mind or the current situation. The original crime is

almost always sexual, violent, or both. The main crime is always committed

against a close family member of the "revenger". The main character then

places him outside the normal moral order of things, and often becomes isolated

as the play progresses.

The revenge must be the cause of a major catastrophe and the planning for

revenge must start immediately after the crisis. After the ghost persuades the

revenger to commit his deed, an initial hesitation occurs, then a delay before the

main character kills the original murderer. The revenger or his trusted

accomplices must carry out the revenge, no matter what the cost.

The revenger and his accomplices may also die at the moment of success,

or even during the course of revenge, in order to fulfill the original Senecan

formula. It should not be assumed that revenge plays parallel. 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 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. Revenge

 77

tragedy ranks among the major dramatic forms left us by the English

Renaissance; we know relatively little about its development prior to its

remarkable vogue in the 1580s and ‘90s‘, the Elizabethan revenge play might

first consider the larger ‗trends in religion and politics‘ that marked the

contemporary cultural scene a rich society that gave rise to certain ‗forerunners‘

of the genre, such as the morality plays of the mid-sixteenth-century.

As we may see sensitivity to this larger cultural context of revenge while

the development and maturation of the periods, apart from scattered treatments

of Senecanism, there has been little sustained discussion of how revenge fared

as a theme in English plays before the advent of Thomas Kyd‘s The Spanish

Tragedy and before revenge tragedy became a recognizable dramatic example.

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 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
 78

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.

But perhaps most obviously, Gismond of Salerne unflinchingly Revenge

before Kyd in Early Elizabethan Drama engages the most horrific qualities of

Senecan rhetoric, as a representative passage shows:

The warme entrails were toren out of his brest

wthin their handes trēbling not fully dead:

 79

his veines smoked: his bowelles all to strest

ruthelesse were rent, and throwen amidde the place:

all clottered lay the blood in lompes of gore,

sprent on his corps, and on his palëd face.

His hart panting out from his brest they tore,

and cruelly vpon a swordës point

they fixe the same, in this woful wise

vnto the King this hart do they present,

a sight longed for to fede his irefull eyes. 6

Soon after, in 1567 five authors each contributed an act to Gismond of

Salerne, the first English tragedy to be based on an Italian writing. More

importantly, it is also one of the first Elizabethan plays that can be rightly said to

treat the passion of revenge as a central theme. Unsurprisingly, the play relies

on a variety of Senecan revenge conventions. Though such horrors were

upstaged, it‘s not difficult to see how it was imagery, combined with the

revenge theme, anticipates the concerns of later revenge tragedy.

But revenge in the 1560s was not limited to such tragic contexts it also

appears, in more minor forms, throughout the period‘s comedies and

tragic-comedies. "As in Gascoigne‘s Supposes written in 1566, an adaptation of

Ariosto‘s comedy I Supposition and Similarly, in the friendship tragicomedy

Damon and Pithias in 1565, ‗Jupiter, of all wrongs the revenger‘ is implored to

‗send down hot consuming fire‘ and purge the tyrannical reign of King
 80

Dionysus".7 Finally, revenge is integral to several of the mid-century‘s moral

interludes. Society had a great impact on the dramas of that era, Among these,

the most important is John Pikering‘s A new interlude of vice contemning, the

history of Horestes with the cruell resentment of his father‘s death, vpon his one

natural mother written in 1567 a work that was believed to be called the first

revenge play of the English renaissance. As the title suggests, foregrounds the

revenge motif in the Orestes/Clytemnestra saga, but while doing so, it invests

much of the play‘s dramatic interest in the ambiguous Vice. "The Vice plays

both the roles of ‗Courage‘ with which Orestes has been divinely appointed ‗to

revenge his father‘s death‘ and of amoral ‗Revenge ‗related interest is Preston‘s

transitional morality Cambyses 1561, perhaps best remembered today through

Falstaff‘s lampoon in 1 Henry IV".8

Though it contains only a minor revenge theme, it nonetheless marks

an important movement from the descriptive horrors of early Senecanism to the

bloody stagecraft of revenge tragedy proper: the play stages a cruelty of a

heart-rending, and anticipating the conclusion of The Atheist‘s Tragedy King

Cambyses‘ accidental, self-inflicted sword wound and thus portraying the

emotion of revenge to all extents and intensify its emotion. Due to the entire

social and political environment and its influence the era saw a raw revenge and

revenge motif play.

When focusing on Elizabethan revenge tragedy, one should know what

revenge is, and what it represented in Elizabethan England. Revenge is an

 81

action taken in return for an injury or offence. Historically, it was the first of a

clear consciousness of justice, the only way the wrong done could be righted. It

was assumed to be a duty of an injured man to avenge himself upon the one who

wronged him or any member of his family. By the time Elizabeth I came to the

throne the concept of justice had changed. Fredson Bowers, in his book

Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy (1940), describes the evolution in detail."Starting

with the system of wergild, which was the earliest English law, Bowers leads us

through the history of the concept of justice. According to the system of wergild

the injured family had the responsibility of collecting payment. From those who

wronged them. Modern ―justice‖ arrives with Henry VII, who introduced

―indictment‖, by which the accused person is ―to be tried at once merely on the

presentation of information to the authorities"9.

From the time of Elizabethan, justice was a privilege of the state and

private blood revenge had no legal place in England. All kinds of murder,

including that of revenge killing, fell into the same category in law, and

punishment for the revenge was as heavy as for a murder. Revenge murder in

Elizabethan times was considered to be the worst of all crimes, because as the

Bible says: ―‗Vengeance is mine, I will repay,‘ says the Lord‖ (bible). On the

other hand, there was a deeply rooted tradition and sacred duty to take revenge

for murdered ancestor, which was still very much alive in the minds of many

Elizabethans.
 82

The dilemma is reflected in revenge tragedies that "depict revenge as

neither unquestionably desirable nor easy to accomplish, and, once achieved, it

brings destruction upon the revengers as well as their victims"10.The analysis of

Renaissance society and its attitudes towards any of the current questions of the

time should, most importantly, take into account the issue of religion. It has

been noted that actually Elizabethan period was a time of profound and far

reaching religious change both socially and culturally.

This is not surprising when we realize what had happened with the change

in throne in thirty years, with four different monarchs starting with Henry VIII

who in 1532 declared himself Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy and

cemented the way for Protestantism in England. The statement of William

Allen, an English cardinal and unapologetic Catholic, can give a true picture of

the religious situation so much influential in shaping the beliefs of ordinary

people: "In one man‘s memory… we have had to our prince, a man, who

abolished the pope‘s authority by his laws and yet in other points kept the faith

of his father‘s; we have had a child, who by his like laws abolished together

with the papacy the whole ancient religion; we have had a woman who restored

both again and sharply punished protestants; and lastly her majesty that now is,

who by the like laws hath long since abolished both again and now severely

punished Catholics as the other did protestants; and all these strange differences

within the compass of about thirty years". 11

 83

It is difficult to imagine that people‘s faith and beliefs could be eradicated

and exchanged for new ones whenever the new monarch decided so. Their

views of the world were still influenced by deeply rooted beliefs and

superstitions intermixed with the remaining religious rites and rituals which

they had to follow. One of the things that this religious choice touched upon was

the issue of Death and with it the related existence of revenge. Only human

beings suffer with evil emotions and thoughts and their sense of what they

suffer is, to a very large degree, imposed by the culture to which they belong

and by which they are surrounded. To understand why Renaissance England

was so much haunted by the image of Death, we have to take into consideration

the religious background of the time.

As we have discussed the historical survey of Elizabethan drama we see

that Elizabethans world was an intense and ever present reality of revenge and

its impact on general public. Because there was nothing worse than a thought

that revenge is the ultimate end of everything. Revenge is harmful because it is

an extreme form of defacement, a stripping away of the constituent forms of

social identity that amounts to nothing less than an absolute undoing of the

selfishness or self desire. Nevertheless, there was a dispute about the nature of

the revenge Catholic Church believed in consisting of heaven, hell, and

purgatory. The thought of good as well as evil was very much present and an

attitude towards pride and unnecessary display of courage and bravery was

present. It helped Elizabethans to confirm their hopes in immortality. The

 84

prayers for the dead were a means of communication related to a sense of family

and solidarity. With such strong Christian beliefs in the particular era whatever

its shape, it makes one wonder why this culture was so awfully dismayed by the

thought of revenge.

We can make out that for Elizabethans were believers in immortality and

the good and evil, there was nothing worse than the image of the inevitable

passage towards one‘s grave, knowing that once you cross the order, there is no

way back, just a hollow nothingness. English Renaissance tragedy was very

much concerned with revenge because it catered for a culture that was in the

throes of a peculiar crisis in the accommodation of revenge itself. Thus, it is not

surprising to find out that the extant drama produced between 1560 and 1610 in

the Elizabethan era were plays included revenge motif it is not something that

can be imagined once and for all, but an idea that has to be constantly remained

across cultures and through time.

It is not that difficult to see where the popularity of revenge tragedies in

the Elizabethan period lies. Revenge tragedies are not only life stories of

English society, they were like a mirror of difficulties of life‘s decision that

people have to make every day. They are to be seen not only as presented but as

the spiritual biography of the age. Any approach to revenge tragedies has to take

into account the time the individual plays were written in, and the culture and

people they were written for. The fact that people believed in good and evil that

is revenge taken for either of the cause by one‘s self conciseness, that the
 85

revenge was an inseparable part of the world of the living, and the deep anxiety

about one‘s fate belief and satisfaction after attaining to it, is important for

understanding of the perception of revenge in Elizabethan revenge tragedy.

Over the course of the sixteenth century, the cultural work done by

English drama began to shift. Mystery plays and morality plays did not die out,

but they were joined, and by the end of the century outnumbered, by plays on

secular themes performed, not as part of a civic ritual, but purely for

entertainment. Plays could tell different kinds of stories, and as drama became

more emancipated from the liturgical calendar, the space for new plays became

much more generous and the demand for such plays and drama grew each day.

Thus, playwrights began to look for new stories to tell and new ways to

tell them; it was only natural that they would look first and most enduringly to

Seneca, the only Roman tragedies whose works have survived, and the classical

tragedies most readily available to sixteenth-century English authors and

literature writers. His dramatic tricks and, more importantly, his tragic

sensibility had a profound effect on the plays of the English Renaissance and

most especially on the revenge tragedies that are the era's most famous and

controversial theatrical genre-child. Before examining the manifestation of

Seneca in Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, I wish to make the boundaries of my

argument clear. Renaissance revenge tragedy is heavily influenced by Seneca,

but it is decidedly a genre to itself. It applies Seneca to its own generic and
 86

cultural needs, so that while the line of descent is very clear, so are the ways in

which it is self-invented.

One thing which sets Renaissance tragedy apart from classical tragedy is

the later period's love of structural complexity and the vast change of cultural

and politics. Seneca's plays, like those of his Greek models, follow a very

simple narrative arc: one action, one plot, one catastrophe. The English

playwrights of the early modern period have a passion for numbers the stories

they tell are far more complicated and involve far more characters. This

complicated era illuminates another way in which the narrative drive toward

destruction as the genre moves from Rome to London. When looking at Seneca,

as in the Greek tragedies, we get one downfall: that is one kind of isolated

destruction. In the English Renaissance, plays often interweave two or more

tragic plots as, for example, The Revengers Tragedy does. Even in plays in

which the plots do not proliferate, the number of characters is larger and more of

them end up dead.

Renaissance tragedy no longer often goes to the extravagant extremes of

hubris and apocalypse found in Seneca although there are certainly individual

exceptions but it casts its nets more widely and dynamically. Revenge tragedies

also employ more complicated storytelling devices. The revenge tragedies and

drama involved the play-within-the-play, which tended to erode the boundaries

between the stage and the audience and the ghost, which merges the past into

the present, and the personal into the public. Category violation is again the
 87

crucial mechanism of the drama. Aside from providing spectacle,

plays-within-plays are places where the line between fiction and reality gets

smudged and redrawn, places where the audience's certainties can be ambushed

and upset.

We are, after all, watching ourselves in microcosm. Both interior plays

and ghosts operate to erode distinctions between categories whose stability

underlie and reinforce the stability of the society from which the plays emerge

and the reason they got such growing space. The erosion problem of

ideally-distinct categories is strikingly visible in the sine of revenge tragedy: the

revenger. Revenge tragedy is obsessed by the problem of the heroism of its

protagonist. The Spanish Tragedy, like the revenge tragedies which follow it,

deploys a deliberate ambiguity around the figure of its revenger protagonist, a

figure who is sometimes a hero, sometimes a villain, and most often both at

once. Other characteristic and one not drawn from Seneca is the use of

spectacle.

In Renaissance Theater, the horrifying becomes as strongly based in the

visual as in the verbal. When the messenger in Thyestes describes the grove at

the center of Atreus's palace, the horror is generated by what he says; when

Marcus in Titus Andronicus describes his raped and mutilated niece, the horror

is generated by the juxtaposition of his words with the physical, visible presence

of Lavinia on the stage. Another example would be the ceremonial procession

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of ghosts at the end of Richard III, where the play's obsession with ritual carries

over into the spirit world.

During the period of Elizabethan theater, plays about tragedy and revenge

were very common and a regular convention was based upon certain aspects

that were worked 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. Therefore, the main character pursues his revenge, in

spite of everything around him. The main character then usually experiences a

period of doubt, when he tries to decide whether or not to go through with the

revenge, which usually involves complex planning and much personal debate.

Another typical feature was the appearance of a ghost who urges the lead

character, seeking revenge, to go through with the deed. The revenger, as he is

sometimes called, also usually had a very close relationship with the audience

through soliloquies and asides, which are personal speeches in which the

character evaluates his mind or the current situation.

The original crime is almost always sexual, violent, or both. The main

crime is always committed against a close family member of the revenger. The

main character then places him outside the normal moral order of things, and

often becomes isolated as the play progresses. The revenge must be the cause of

a major catastrophe and the planning for revenge must start immediately after

the crisis. After the ghost persuades the revenger to commit his deed, an initial
 89

hesitation occurs, then a delay before the main character kills the original

murderer.

The revenger or his trusted accomplices must carry out the revenge, no

matter what the cost. The revenger and his accomplices may also die at the

moment of success, or even during the course of revenge, in order to fulfill the

original Seneca formula. It should not be assumed that revenge plays parallel.

When Elizabethan playwrights found the public loved gruesome tales of

revenge, they embarked on a new genre. And it became a monster.

To sum up, the Age of Elizabeth was a time of intellectual liberty, of

growing intelligence and comfort among all classes, of unbounded patriotism,

and of peace at home and abroad. a parallel of the Age of Pericles in Athens, or

of Augustus in Rome, or go forward a little to the magnificent court of Louis

XIV, when Corneille, Racine, and Molière brought the drama in France to the

point where Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson had left it in England half a

century earlier. Such an age of great thought and great action, appealing to the

eyes as well as to the imagination and intellect, finds but one adequate literary

expression; neither poetry nor the story can express the whole man, his thought,

feeling, action, and the resulting character; hence in the Age of Elizabeth

literature turned instinctively to the drama and brought it rapidly to the highest

stage of its development.

 90

WORKS CITED
1. Bowers Charles A. Hallett and Elaine S. Hallet Elizabethan Revenge
Tragedy, 1980 Lincoln London. p267.
2. Charles A. Hallett and Elaine S The Revenger’s Madness: A Study of
Revenge Tragedy Motifs 1980 Lincoln London, p-89.
3. Douglas Bruster Shakespeare and the Question of Culture: Early
Modern Literature and the Cultural Turn, 2003 New York chapter 5.
4. Alfred Harbage Annals of English Drama 1989 Third Edition London
Psychology press, vol 2 p-90.
5. Journal by Jessica Winston 2001: Classical and Modern Literature Seneca
in Early Elizabethan England p-63.
6. J.W Culiffe Gismond of salerne, Early Classical Tragedies, Ed. By
oxford 1912 Clarendon press.p-78.
7. E.K Chambers The Elizabethan Stage oxford: Clarendon press, 2006 4
and 3vol.
8. Potter, Robert A. The English Morality Play: Origins, History, and
Influence of a Dramatic Tradition.1975 London: Rout ledge p-57.
9. Fredson Bowers: Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy London press vol1
1940 p- 98.
10. Griswold, Wendy 2000: Renaissance Revivals City Comedy and
Revenge Tragedy in the London Theatre p-223.
11. Article: Rist, Thomas 2003: Religion, Politics, Revenge: The Dead in
Renaissance Drama.‖ Early Modern Literary Studies 9.