SOURCE: “Cyril Tourneur on Revenge,” in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. XLVIII, No. 1, January, 1949, pp. 72-87.

[In the following essay, Adams argues that in The Revenger's Tragedy and The Atheist's Tragedy Tourneur uses a common approach to the problem of revenge, as both dramas study the ethics of revenge and finally embrace a Christian solution—that God ultimately wreaks vengeance on the wicked and rewards the virtuous.]

Cyril Tourneur occupies a peculiar position in Jacobean drama. If the sole play to be laid to his credit is The Atheist's Tragedy, [A.T.] he is decidedly second rate. On the other hand, if we can restore to him The Revengers Tragædie, [R.T.] he takes his place as a peer of Middleton, Ford, Webster, Marston, and Massinger. The Revengers Tragædie was published in quarto in 1607 with no author indicated. It was ascribed to Tourneur in 1656 by Archer's list, and in Kirkman's lists of 1661 and 1671.¹ Until the time of Fleay, no one had questioned this ascription. In this century, Professor Oliphant has marshalled an imposing array of metrical and verbal evidence to give the play to Middleton,² but verbal tests must give place to other evidence if it can be found. Oliphant himself admits one weakness to his argument, saying: “In his tragedies Middleton shows no concern whatever with moral problems (though he does in one comedy, ‘The Phoenix’), whereas Tourneur is primarily a missionary moralist.”³ He goes on to say, “To make the case [for Tourneur's authorship] a good one, some development from one play to the other must be shown; but such development never has been shown, and, I venture to say, never can be shown.”⁴ With all due respect to Professor Oliphant, the present writer feels that he can detect such a development from one play to the other, and that together they possess a common approach to the problem of revenge, and that together they present a single mind's ordered view of the universe.

Most critics agree that The Revengers Tragædie (c. 1606) is the earlier play. Under the influence of Marston, Tourneur combines in his protagonist, Vindice, the functions of revenger and malcontent. Vindice's mistress has been murdered by the Duke because she will not submit to his lust. Holding her skull in his hands as a symbol of revenge, Vindice opens the play with a soliloquy which reveals how the entire court has abandoned reason and order in favor of avarice, lechery, and chaos.

Duke: royall letcher; goe, gray hayrde adultery,
And thou his sonne, as impious steept as hee:
And thou his bastard true-begott in euill:
And thou his Dutchesse that will doe with Diuill,
Foure exlent Characters—O that marrow-leffe [sic]
          age,
Would stuffe the hollow Bones with dambd desires,
And stead of heate kindle infernall fires,
Within the spend-thrift veynes of a drye Duke,
A parcht and iuicelesse luxur.
          …
[To the skull of his mistress.]
Thou sallow picture of my poysoned loue,
          …
When life and beauty naturally fild out
These ragged imperfections;
When two-heauen-pointed Diamonds were set
In those vnsightly Rings;—then 'twas a face
So farre beyond the artificiall shine
Of any womans bought complexion
That the vprightest man, (if such there be,
That sinne but seauen times a day) broke custome
And made vp eight with looking after her.
Oh she was able to ha made a Vsurers sonne
Melt all his patrimony in a kisse,
And what his father fiftie yeares told
To haue consumde, and yet his sute beene cold:(5)

Vindice, having in his Marstonian fashion put his finger on the corruption of the court, then appoints himself a Hercules to sweep out this Augean Stable, and incidentally to revenge his murdered mistress. At every turn he is aided and abetted by his younger brother, Hippolito, who is but a weaker Vindice. Once he has clearly established Vindice's motive, Tourneur abandons him to introduce other characters, and we discover to our surprise that nearly all of them seek revenge. No fewer than six other people start plots and inform the audience that vengeance motivates their actions. For convenience the revenge motives are first arranged in a list. Each of these will be considered in detail.

(1) The Duchess, whose “Youngest Son” is on trial for rape, seeks revenge on her husband because he has not caused the boy to be immediately acquitted. He has merely stopped the trial to prevent the sentence of death from being pronounced.

(2) The Duchess convinces Spurio, the bastard son of the Duke, that his bar sinister gives him cause for vengeance against his father.

(3) The “Youngest Son” having been executed by a mistake, Supervacuo and Ambitioso seek revenge on Lussurioso whom they hold responsible.

(4) Lussurioso seeks revenge on his servant, Piato (Vindice in disguise), who had given him erroneous information. In acting on it, Lussurioso nearly lost his life.

(5) Lussurioso thinks that Piato's trick had been motivated by revenge because he (Lussurioso) was “too honest.”

(6) Ambitioso and Supervacuo plan revenge on Spurio because of his adultery with their mother.

(7) Vindice and Hippolito seek revenge for the death of the former's mistress.

(8) Vindice and Hippolito seek revenge on Lussurioso because he has attempted to seduce their sister, Castiza.

(9) Antonio, the husband of the woman raped by the “Youngest Son,” has cause for revenge, but takes no active steps himself.

This list clearly indicates that Tourneur was exploring the entire idea of revenge, attempting to illustrate it in all its aspects. After the long series of revenge plays which had held the stage since Kyd, it remained for Tourneur to experiment with many revengers and to come to grips with the moral aspects of the problem. This list suggests that the title of Tourneur's earlier play may have been incorrectly read for over three hundred years, and that it should be The Revengers' Tragedy instead of The Revenger's Tragedy.⁶ If we are to understand Tourneur's ideas, we must analyze these revenge plots and reach what conclusions we can from their development as a preliminary to reconstructing his ethical position.

(1) The Duchess leaves the trial scene filled with rage at her husband, the Duke, because her “Youngest Son” has been brought so near the scaffold. She congratulates herself for her forbearance in not seeking her husband's death. Instead, “wedlock faith shall be forgot.”⁷ Tourneur answers her view in the Castiza plot where he strongly upholds conventional views of sex morality.

(2) The Duchess has chosen Spurio, the bastard son of her husband, as the man with whom she will simultaneously consummate revenge and adultery, and skillfully convinces him that he should be revenged.

Who would not be reuengd of such a father,
E'en in the worst way? I would thanke that sinne,
That could most injury him, and bee in league with
          it.(8)

Spurio consents, even though he hates her and all her children.

                                        … oh—damnation met
The sinne of feasts, drunken adultery.
I feele it swell me; my reuenge is iust.(9)

That Tourneur rejected the idea of revenge by adultery the Castiza plot and the subsequent fate of these two worthies amply attest.

(3) Ambitioso and Supervacuo, younger brothers to Lussurioso have conspired his death. Their tricks backfire, and the “Youngest Son” meets the death intended for Lussurioso. In senseless rage, they plan “revenge” on the latter who has been so inconsiderate as to escape with his life. This plot runs into the ground, being swallowed up by the schemes of Vindice and his brother, but it is clearly and explicitly stated.¹⁰ This instance presents an illogical revenge, baseless, motivated only by malice and injured pride. Tourneur felt, apparently, no need to pursue it, for the audience would readily see it for what it was, and reject its basic premises together with its would-be perpetrators.

(4) Vindice, in his role as Piato, has told Lussurioso that his stepmother, the Duchess, is at that moment in bed with Spurio. Lussurioso, sword in hand, rushes into the room, only to find the Duke instead of Spurio sharing the Duchess's bed. Lussurioso's disgrace and peril motivate his desire for vengeance on Piato. Vindice abandons his disguise as Piato and takes service under Lussurioso under his own name. His first task is to murder Piato! Lussurioso's constant and bold-faced lying in the scene, and his actions throughout the play sufficiently dispose of him as a revenger worthy of serious consideration. On no ethical problem is he ever on the side of morality.

(5) This requires no comment, serving merely as a variation in a minor key on the main theme.

(6) Ambitioso and Supervacuo's plan of revenge on their stepmother and on Spurio because of their adultery takes its stand on better moral grounds than their previous revenge notion. They seem, however, less concerned about their stepmother's morals than they do about the possible advantages that may accrue to Spurio as a result of his position as royal lover. The conclusion of this plot emphasizes this idea, because the brothers die in a quarrel over the succession.

(7 and 8) These points must be considered together because they are inter-dependent, although Act Three sees the fruition of the first. In the speech already quoted, Vindice sounds the moral note, and pictures himself as a cleanser of the corrupt court. His Mistress's skull becomes his memento of revenge, replacing the customary ghost, and is made into the instrument of revenge when the Duke dies as a result of kissing its poisoned lips. Vindice never questions the ethics of revenge. He and Hippolito have high moral standards throughout their dealings with their sister, but become machiavellians toward the Duke and Lussurioso. Vindice repeatedly calls on Heaven for vengeance, and then never waits for it to act. He scruples at nothing to attain his vengeance; lies, deceits, poisons, flattery, dissimulation, disguises, and treachery lie ready to his hand. When he kills the Duke, he displays a sadistic joy at the nobleman's suffering. He deteriorates steadily throughout the play. On hearing his first speech, we accept his views, and ally ourselves firmly with his cause. But on hearing his foolish rationalization of his offensive proposals to his own sister, we begin to lose faith in him. The juxtaposition of his pleadings for Heaven's aid with his own diabolic action stands out so clearly that we can only conclude that Tourneur must have meant it to be noted. When they murder the Duke, Vindice and Hippolito definitely turn villains. Hippolito approves his brother's schemes,

Brother I do applaud thy constant vengeance,
The quaintnesse of thy malice aboue thought.(11)

And when the Duke falls into the trap, Vindice exclaims about himself, his brother, and the skull:

Villaines all three!—the very ragged bone
Has beene sufficiently reuengd.(12)

At the end of the play, Vindice and Hippolito accomplish their revenge by the old trick of the mask. Immediately Heaven shows its disapproval of the violence by thundering.¹³ Then the brothers smugly announce their crimes to Antonio, whom they have seated on the throne. He responds with what might be called the official vengeance by the state. It was the duty of the magistrate, who was God's authorized deputy for earthly justice, to punish criminals. Only when rulers or courts were weak or corrupt would God's Providence intervene to insure justice. No such difficulty arises here, however; the brothers openly confess their guilt, and their sentencing is a matter of course. This is clearly no personal revenge; Antonio has reasons for gratitude toward the brothers, but as head of the state must condemn them to death. His comment, “You that would murder him would murder me,”¹⁴ must be read to mean, you who have once committed regicide might do so again. This is the only interpretation that makes sense when taken with the speech of Vindice which follows, and which is completely in the tradition of the “scaffold speech.”

May not we set as well as the Dukes sonne?
Thou hast no conscience, are we not reuengde?
Is there one enemy left aliue amongst those?
Tis time to die, when we are our selues our foes.
When murders shut deeds closse, this curse does seale
          'em,
If none disclose 'em they them selues reueale 'em!
This murder might haue slept in tonglesse brasse,
But for our selues, and the world dyed an asse;
Now I remember too, here was Piato
Brought forth a knauish sentance once—no doubt (said
          he) but time
Will make the murderer bring forth himselfe.
Tis well he died, he was a witch.
And now my Lord, since we are in for euer:
This worke was ours which else might haue beene
          slipt,
And if we list, we could haue Nobles clipt,
And go for lesse then beggers, but we hate
To bleed so cowardly; we haue ynough.
Yfaith, we're well, our Mother turnd, our Sister true,
We die after a nest of Dukes, adue.(15)

Here Vindice plainly calls himself a murderer, and clearly states that Providence will reveal a murderer if all else fails. This theme is repeated by his reference to Piato, himself in disguise, who had iterated the same truth, and whom he calls a witch for his veracity. But Vindice shows his final lack of faith by showing that he could not wait for vengeance, that he would take no chances that the revenge “might haue beene slipt.” The morals are rendered emphatic by the frequent use of rhyme in the speech. Antonio drives the point home in his closing lines, lines which act as epilogue for the play.

How subtilly was that murder closde! bear vp
Those tragick bodies, tis a heauy season:
Pray heauen their bloud may wash away all treason.(16)

The word “murder” in the first line can hardly refer to any other actions than those of Vindice and Hippolito, coming as it does after the speech previously quoted. Their blood is to wash away their crimes. With the brothers dragged to execution like criminals, Tourneur dismisses their style of vengeance. Their reasons, he tells us, were good, their methods evil.

(9) One revenger's conduct appears to be beyond reproach. Where Vindice had engaged in bloody crimes for the furtherance of his vengeance, Antonio waits for Heaven's intervention. Antonio has only two significant appearances in the play and is often overlooked. He is, however, of the utmost importance. His situation is nearly parallel to Vindice's, for his wife has been raped by the Duchess's “Youngest Son,” and has ended her life with becoming reverence to literary tradition. Thus each man has lost the woman he loves, through the lust of the Duke and his family. The first time he appears, Antonio tells of his wife's ravishment and death. He suggests no action. Hippolito swears vengeance, and Antonio simply accepts it on the condition that it will be done if the courts do not condemn the boy and all else has failed. But Providence clearly takes a hand when the ravisher perishes through a misunderstanding. At the very end of the play, Vindice tells Antonio that his wife's murder has been revenged. Antonio replies, “Iust is the Lawe aboue,”¹⁷ a clear acceptance of divine law's having willed this revenge.

In Antonio, then, is the man who is the first draft of Charlemont in The Atheist's Tragedy. He does nothing for himself. He waits for justice; he does his duty; he does not try to control events; and he is rewarded in the end by the chief position in the state. His immediate and decisive action against Vindice and Hippolito reinforces his moral position.

The Revengers Tragædie can be said to be primarily a study in the whole problem of revenge. Active personal vengeance of any type is rejected, death being the invariable lot of any who take this route, and Tourneur makes it clear that such vengeance is directly opposed to God's law. What, then, is the conclusion taught in the play, and exemplified by Antonio? Simply, it is this, that if established authorities fail, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” and that Heaven will aid the honest man who suffers his wrongs in patience and faith.

II

In The Atheist's Tragedy, or, The Honest Man's Revenge (c. 1610), Tourneur set himself the task of dramatizing the conclusion he had already reached in The Revengers Tragædie. Here a revenger with faith is contrasted with an atheist, and the plots of D'Amville give the dramatic conflict which can no longer be supplied by the revenger's machinations. The atheist, D'Amville, who depends on material gain plus human reason for the attainment of his ends, murders his brother, Montferrers, and falsely reports the death of the latter's son, Charlemont. D'Amville speedily weds his sickly son, Rousard, to Castabella, the affianced of Charlemont. Montferrers's ghost reveals his murder to Charlemont, but bids him

… leaue reuenge vnto the King of kings.(18)

Thus appears a man who is bidden to act as Antonio had done, to take no direct steps, but to wait for Providence to accomplish vengeance for him. After Charlemont's return, Providence begins to move against D'Amville by smiting his sons. D'Amville trumps up murder charges against Charlemont who disdains to defend himself, and is condemned to death. D'Amville claims the privilege of chopping off Charlemont's head, and in lifting the axe for the stroke, knocks out his own brains. With gratifying if surprising stamina, D'Amville delivers a long speech recognizing the power of heavenly justice and its particular aptness in his own case. Triumphantly acquitted, Charlemont receives as his due not only the titles left vacant by the several deaths in the play, but also the hand of the fair Castabella, still chaste by reason of her former husband's impotence.

D'Amville's atheism is a logical development of Vindice's fear that if he failed to act his revenge would never be accomplished. D'Amville goes further than Vindice in his rational expression of his views, rejecting Godhead for Nature, by which he means scientific nature as understood by the limits of man's reason. Along with showing the answer to the revenge problem, the play has the additional purpose of discrediting D'Amville's view. God's Providence early warns him of his error, for thunder and lightning are used as in The Revengers Tragædie to show Heaven's stern disapproval of the murder of Montferrers.¹⁹ D'Amville, recovering from a momentary fear, explains the phenomenon in scientific terms.

What!
Doest start at thunder? Credit my beliefe,
T'is a meere effect of nature. An
Exhalation hot and dry, inuolu'd
Within a watrie vapour i' the middle
Region of the ayre. Whose coldnesse
Congealing that thicke moysture to a cloud;
The angry exhalation shut within
A prison of contrary qualitie,
Striues to be free; and with the violent
Eruption through the grossenesse of that cloud;
Makes this noyse we heare.(20)

Facing death, D'Amville, convinced of the folly of his ways, renounces his materialistic position, exclaiming to the Judge's cry of “God forbid!”

Forbid? You lie Iudge. He commanded it.
To tell thee that mans wisedome is a foole.
I came to thee for Iudgement; and thou think'st
Thy selfe a wise man. I outreach'd thy wit;
And made thy Iustice Murders instrument,
In Castabella's death and Charlemonts.
To crowne my Murder of Montferrers with
A safe possession of his wealthie state.—
          …
There was the strength of naturall vnderstanding.
But Nature is a foole. There is a power
Aboue her that hath ouerthrowne the pride
Of all my proiects and posteritie;
(For whose suruiuing bloud, I had erected
This proud monument) and strucke 'em dead
Before me. For whose deathes, I call'd to thee
For Iudgement. Thou didst want discretion for
The sentence. But yond' power that strucke me, knew
The Iudgement I deseru'd; and gaue it.(21)

In the last four lines of this speech, D'Amville appears to be developing Antonio's statement, “Iust is the lawe aboue.” Here is a clear contrast of heavenly justice with the imperfect workings of earthly courts. Although the court here is honest, as it is not in R. T., its wisdom is limited, and it requires an act of God's Providence to insure justice.

As Antonio succeeded to the chief position in the state in R. T., so Charlemont succeeds to the titles formerly possessed by D'Amville. Thus in each case, the injured but honest man is rewarded with the estates and positions of the injurers.

Two or three other similarities between the two plays exist which seem to show the same imagination at work. Both the big seduction scenes, the Duke and “The Country Lady” (R. T., iii, v), and D'Amville and Castabella (A. T., iv, iii), have a decided charnel house atmosphere. “The Country Lady,” of course, is the skull of Vindice's mistress, while the Castabella resistance is set in a cemetery just beside the charnel house itself. Again, when D'Amville is attempting to win Castabella (A. T., iv, iii), she invokes Heaven.

O patient Heau'n! Why doest thou not expresse
Thy wrath in thunderbolts; to teare the frame
Of man in pieces? How can earth endure
The burthen of this wickednesse without
An earthquake? Or the angry face of Heau'n
Be not enflam'd with lightning?(22)

Vindice, after winning his mother to the task of helping to get Castiza's acceptance of Lussurioso as a lover, exclaims in soliloquy:

Why do's not heauen turne black, or with a frowne
Vndoo the world—why do's not earth start vp,
And strike the sinnes that tread vppon't?(23)

The poetic imagery of these two speeches is almost identical. For “teare the frame of man in pieces,” we have “with a frowne Vndoo the world.” For “earthquake,” we have “earth start vp” in the other; for the “burthen of this wickednesse,” we find “the sinnes that tread vppon't.” More striking than the existence of these parallels, is the fact that these items are in precisely the same order in the two speeches. Surely such similarity of imagery and thought process argues common authorship.

There is a very similar ring to the two heroines' protests in favor of chastity, but it is not close enough to be more than literary tradition.

III

Why was it that if Tourneur had his idea for the proper revenger as early as 1606 he waited so long before writing The Atheist's Tragedy? Possibly he had left London;²⁴ possibly, and this seems to be the likely reason, he was baffled by the problem of the revenge play with a do-nothing revenger. A dramatic protagonist must act, but Tourneur's moral position called for his hero to be inactive. He may have found his answer in Chapman's The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois (c. 1610), which had solved the problem by throwing the burden of the action on the forces of opposition. Chapman's play was written about the same time as The Atheist's Tragedy, but appears pretty clearly to be the parent play.

In The Revenge of Bussy, Chapman raised the question already studied by Tourneur of the moral justification of revenge. His leading character, Clermont, is faced with the solemn duty of revenge, but has misgivings about the ethics of his course. This “Senecal man” was one of Chapman's most important contributions to the drama of the time. He is a necessary complement in Chapman's thinking to the slaves of passion, Bussy, Byron, and Tamyra. He conceives that it is the wildest folly to set himself against that which has been ordained by the nature of things. Instead he will submit to and obey “anything the high and general Cause … hath ordain'd.”²⁵ “He is a curious mixture of Christian, Stoic, and Platonic morality.”²⁶ This morality, guided by reason, was a clear departure from that of the customary revenger, and was intellectually incompatable with the basic premise of revenge.

The initial doubts of Clermont on his course of revenge indicate a tendency toward the Christian morality to be the basis for Tourneur's Atheist's Tragedy. Clermont says:

No time occurs to kings, much less to virtue;
Nor can we call it virtue that proceeds
From vicious fury. I repent that ever
(By any instigation in th' appearance
My brother's spirit made, as I imagin'd)
That e'er I yielded to revenge his murther.
All worthy men should ever bring their blood
To bear all ill, not to be wreak'd with good:
Do ill for no ill; never private cause
Should take it on the part of public laws.(27)

It seems quite likely that this speech confirmed Tourneur in his determination to complete his study of revenge. In The Atheist's Tragedy, every time the ghost of Montferrers appears, it warns against action by the revenger. The whole play is based on the idea that Providence will accomplish the ends of divine justice.

Chapman's hero in The Revenge of Bussy is the unmistakable model for Tourneur's Charlemont. The similarity of names cannot be mere coincidence.²⁸ Each man abhors unreasonable action, and each calmly accepts adverse fortune. The incidents which happen to the two are strikingly similar. Each is imprisoned unjustly, and each, with the same Stoicism, accepts his fate. Clermont explains his resignation.

                                                            To love nothing outward,
Or not within our own powers to command;
And so being sure of everything we love,
Who cares to lose the rest? If any man
Would neither live nor die in his free choice,
But as he sees necessity will have it
(Which if he would resist, he strives in vain)
What can come near him, that he doth not [will,]
And if in worst events his will be done,
How can the best be better? All is one.(29)

Under the same circumstances, Charlemont soliloquizes in prison, justifying his calmness.

                                                            We neuer measure our
Conditions but with Men aboue vs in
Estate. So while our Spirits labour to
Be higher then our fortunes th'are more base.
Since all those attributes which make men seeme
Superiour to vs; are Man's Subjects; and
Were made to serue him. The repining Man
Is of a seruile spirit to deiect
The valew of himselfe below their estimation.(30)

and concluding,

                                                            Instead of that, I am
Created King. I'ue lost a Signiorie,
That was confin'd within a piece of earth;
A Wart vpon the body of the world.
But now I am an Emp'rour of a world.
This little world of Man. My passions are
My Subjects; and I can command them laugh;
Whilst thou doest tickle 'em to death with miserie.(31)

Faced with adversity, each of these men explains how he has become master of the microcosm of himself by means of his reason. This idea is, of course, an Elizabethan commonplace, but the absence of such expressions in The Revengers Tragædie, and the close parallel between The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois with The Atheist's Tragedy hint at a closer connection than has heretofore been suspected. To both heroes the power of reason gives the strength and courage to suffer what he must with calmness and deliberation.

On being confronted with a ghost, each explains the phenomenon in the same way, using very similar imagery. Clermont says:

'Twas but your fancy, then, a waking dream:
For as in sleep, which binds both th' outward senses,
And the sense common too, th' imagining power
(Stirr'd up by forms hid in the memory's story,
Or by the vapours of o'erflowing humours
In bodies full and foul, and mix'd with spirits)
Feigns many strange, miraculous images,
In which act it so painfully applies
Itself to those forms that the common sense
It actuates with his motion, and thereby
Those fictions true seem, and have real act:
So, in the strength of our conceits awake,
The cause alike doth [oft] like fictions make.(32)

And Charlemont,

                    Dreames are but the rais'd
Impressions of premeditated things,
By serious apprehension left vpon
Our mindes, or else th' imaginary shapes
Of objects proper to th' complexion, or
The dispositions of our bodyes.(33)

At the end of the play, Clermont is describing his duty to follow in death his friend, the Guise, and his speech includes a lengthy metaphor of a ship which has put out to sea.

                                                            Now, then, as a ship,
Touching at strange and far-removed shores,
Her men ashore go, for their several ends,
Fresh water, victuals, precious stones, and pearl,
All yet intentive (when the master calls,
The ship to put off ready) to leave all
Their greediest labours, lest they there be left
To thieves or beasts, or be the country's slaves:
So, now my master calls, my ship, my venture,
All in one bottom put, all quite put off,
Gone under sail, and I left negligent,
To all the horrors of the vicious time,
The far-remov'd shores to all virtuous aims,
None favouring goodness, none but he respecting
Piety or manhood—shall I here survive,
Not cast me after him into the sea,
Rather than here live, ready every hour
To feed thieves, beasts, and be the slave of power?
I come, my lord! Clermont, thy creature, comes.(34)

Charlemont, as he expects to die, uses a similar image, this time, to be sure, of a whole navy.

D'Amville! to shew thee with what light respect,
I value Death and thy insulting pride;
Thus like a warlike Nauie on the Sea,
Bound for the conquest of some wealthie land,
Pass'd through the stormie troubles of this life,
And now arriu'd vpon the armed coast;
In expectation of the victorie,
Whose honour lies beyond this exigent;
Through mortall danger with an actiue spirit,
Thus I aspire to vndergoe my death.(35)

The verbal parallels are not as exact as might be desired, but they are of the sort to be expected when a poet pays another the compliment of imitation. Tourneur needed no one to help him cast his poetic language, but he was, apparently, baffled by the dramatic situation necessitated by his concept of the proper revenger. Chapman solved the problem in The Revenge of Bussy by concentrating the action on the characters opposed to Clermont, and Tourneur in imitation synthesized the forces of opposition in D'Amville. Tourneur failed to achieve the subtlety and depth of Chapman's intellectual endeavors, but it seems clear that he found in Chapman a person whom he desired to use as a model for his writing, in Chapman's hero a pattern for his own, and in Chapman's plot the solution to a difficult dramatic tangle. Chapman derived his complex world picture from the dichotomy of sense and intellect, a belief based on his own resolution of Stoicism and Neo-Platonism.³⁶ Tourneur based his ethical world on conventional Christian beliefs of the time, particularly on the commonplace view that there is a direct reaction of Providence to punish the guilty and reward the virtuous; and that men should not undertake the vengeance that is God's. However, Tourneur utilized Chapman's method of employing the static revenger, and built around him a thesis play designed to expose the folly of the atheist, and to solve in Christian terms the problem of revenge.³⁷

IV

It remains for us to consider why the later play is so inferior to the earlier, if, as we have concluded, it contains Tourneur's triumphant answer to the problems of revenge. In the first place, a thesis play per se usually fails to have the dramatic interest of a play primarily concerned with action. Tourneur rides his ideas of Providence too hard, and, while the antagonistic forces are strong, the protagonistic forces are impotent until reinforced by God's direct intervention, so that no one can get very excited about Charlemont's successes or failures. We feel Charlemont to be something of a prig. Where we expect fine speeches in moments of emotional stress, he falls back on religious platitudes, so that his lines seem dull, insipid, and pietistic. However, and this may be taken as further evidence of Tourneur's authorship of both plays, it is difficult to find in The Atheist's Tragedy worse poetry than Vindice's “scaffold speech” already quoted, or than Castiza's encomiums on chastity. So even in The Revengers Tragædie, in moments of moralizing, we may note the same falling off of poetic accomplishment apparent in The Atheist's Tragedy.

In spite of Chapman's example of the method of employing a static hero, it cannot be said that Tourneur's dramatic use of it was brilliant. It is the most difficult problem in dramatic construction to build effective action with only one side acting, and the other unresponsive. Critics have wished that Hamlet were a little more active so that the play could have a little more excitement, but Hamlet is a demon of activity in comparison to Charlemont. Thus Tourneur's failure to make an interesting play out of The Atheist's Tragedy results from his failure to achieve the blend of action and idea which must exist to make a thesis play effective, and his failure to make the action gripping arises from his inability to cope with a static hero.

Tourneur's two plays, then, present a study of revenge in its entirety. He carefully considers the elements concerned with the ethics of revenge, and rejects all except the Christian view that God will revenge, if not through His authorized agents, then by direct intervention, and that the injured man must not usurp this function for himself. In The Revengers Tragædie he shows the evil of all conventional revengers. In a minor character, Antonio, Tourneur illustrates his view of the correct action, which is not action, but forbearance; not haste, but patience. The dramatic problem of the static revenger Chapman seemed to have solved for him in The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, a means Tourneur seized upon in The Atheist's Tragedy to bring his criticism of revenge to its logical, if undramatic, conclusion.

Notes

1. E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (London, 1923) iv, 42.

2. E. H. C. Oliphant, “The Authorship of the Revenger's Tragedy,” Stud. Phil., xxiii (1926).

3. E. H. C. Oliphant, “Tourneur and Mr. T. S. Eliot,” Stud. Phil., xxxii (1935), 594.

4. Ibid., p. 550.

5. Cyril Tourneur, The Revengers Tragædie, (ed. by Allardyce Nicoll, London, 1929), i, i, 1-69.

6. Although little weight can be placed on Elizabethan punctuation, it is interesting to note that in the only two contemporary versions of R. T., the apostrophe is omitted, the Stationers' Register entry of 1607 reading. “Twoo plaies: thone called the reuengers tragedie,” and the t.p. of the only Q. (1607) “The Revengers Tragædie.” The three surviving versions of the title of A. T. all definitely indicate its singularity. S. R., “The tragedie of the Atheist.” Q1. (1611) “The Atheist's Tragedie.” Q2. (1612) “The Atheist's Tragedy.”

7. R. T., i, ii, 122.

8. Ibid., i, ii, 176-178.

9. Ibid., i, ii, 209-211.

10. Ibid., iii, vi, 120.

11. Ibid., iii, v, 111-112.

12. Ibid., iii, v, 162-163.

13. Ibid., v, iii, 56.

14. Ibid., v, iii, 148.

15. Ibid., v, iii, 151-169. For a discussion of the “scaffold speech” convention, see my English Domestic, or Homiletic Tragedy, 1575-1642 (New York, 1943), pp. 17-18, 185 ff.

16. Ibid., v, iii, 170-172.

17. Ibid., v, iii, 132.

18. Cyril Tourneur, The Atheist's Tragedy, (ed. by Allardyce Nicoll, London, 1929), ii, vi, 27.

19. Ibid., ii, iv, 161.

20. Ibid., ii, iv, 162-173.

21. Ibid., v, ii, 270-291.

22. Ibid., iv, iii, 177-182.

23. R. T., ii, i, 275-277.

24. See Nicoll's introduction to his edition of Tourneur, pp. 22-24.

25. George Chapman, The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois (ed. by T. M. Parrott, London, 1910), iv, i, 133 ff.

26. Roy W. Battenhouse, “Chapman and the Nature of Man,” ELH, xii, 97.

27. R. B. D., iii, ii, 107-116.

28. Even the name D'Amville seems to be a reflection of D'Ambois.

29. R. B. D., iv, v, 4-13.

30. A. T., iii, iii, 17-25.

31. Ibid., iii, iii, 42-49.

32. R. B. D., v, i, 41-53.

33. A. T., ii, vi, 29-34.

34. R. B. D., v, v, 175-193.

35. A. T., v, ii, 135-144.

36. Cf. Battenhouse, op. cit., pp. 87-107.

37. It is a defensible thesis that both figures go back to Kent in King Lear, but there are no such close parallels between the two figures here discussed and Kent as there are between Clermont and Charlemont. In addition, Kent never faces the problem of revenge.