Revenge Tragedy
Points to ponder:
The ethics of revenge
Is it possible to talk about a revenger-hero in the revenge tragedies?
Metatheatricality: why do revenge tragedies repeatedly return to ideas of disguise and performance?
The significance of archetypal revenge motifs: the ghost, the memento (skull, bloody handkerchief, etc.), madness,
delay.
Reading:
Gibson, Colin, ed. Six Renaissance Tragedies (London, 1997)
Maus, Katherine Eisaman, ed., Four Revenge Tragedies (Oxford, 1995)
Also look at individual author editions, such as:
Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and other plays ed. D. Bevington (Oxford, 1995)
Webster, The Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays ed. R. Weis (Oxford, 1996)
Important texts include:
 Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
 Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta
 William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Henry VI Parts II and III and Hamlet
 John Marston, Antonio's Revenge and The Malcontent
 Middleton/Tourneur, The Revengers' Tragedy
 John Webster, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi
 George Chapman, Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois
 John Ford, 'Tis Pity She's A Whore
You may want to dip into Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, 6 vols, vols 1-3 (text) ed. Thomas C. Faulkner,
Nicolas K. Kiessling, and Rhonda L. Blair, vols 4-6 (commentary) ed. J.B. Bamborough (Oxford, 1989-)
Also read Francis Bacon’s essay, ‘Of Revenge’.
Bevington, D.M., From Mankind to Marlowe (Harvard, 1962)
Bliss, L., The World’s Perspective: John Webster and the Jacobean Drama (1983)
Bowers, F.T., Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1587-1642 (1959)
Bradbrook, M.C., Themes and Conventions in Elizabethan Tragedy (1935)
Bradon, Gordon, Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition (1985)
Brooke, N., Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy (1935)
Dollimore, Jonathan, Radical Tragedy (London, 1989)
Eagleton, Terry, Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003)
Hallett, Charles A. and Elaine S. Hallett, The Revenger’s Madness (Lincoln, 1980).
Kerrigan, John, Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon (Oxford, 1996)
Lever, J.W., The Tragedy of State (1971)
Michael Neill, Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford, 1997)
Mulryne, J.R., Thomas Middleton (1979)
Rainald, Margaret Loftus, John Webster (1989)
Ribner, Irving, Jacobean Tragedy: The Quest for Moral Order (1962)
Salingar, Leo, ‘Tourneur and the Tragedy of Revenge,’ in The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol.2. ed.,
Boris Ford (Harmondsworth, 1991)
Also search JSTOR and the University Library catalogue for critical texts on individual plays and authors.