CRITICISM

Aggeler, Geoffrey D. “Stoicism and Revenge in Marston.” English Studies 51, No. 6 (December 1970): 507-17.

Argues that Marston's Antonio's Revenge and The Malcontent “can be seen as complementary treatments of the ethical problems of revenge from the classical Stoic point of view.”

Allman, Eileen. Jacobean Revenge Tragedy and the Politics of Virtue. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999, 212 p.

Discusses Jacobean revenge tragedies as plays which represent misogyny but do not necessarily endorse it, maintaining that “[disrespect] for women as autonomous agents of action is identified with the purveyors of tyranny and revenge, while heroic women, unsilent and disobedient, restore the ideal to the world of corrupt practice.”

Ardolino, Frank R. “Corrida of Blood in The Spanish Tragedy: Kyd's Use of Revenge as National Destiny.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 1 (1984): 37-49.

Asserts that Kyd establishes a parallel between Hieronimo's revenge masque and the Spanish national pastime—the bullfight—in order to represent England's defeat of Spain in the late sixteenth century.

———. Apocalypse & Armada in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, Vol. XXIX. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1995, 187 p.

Book-length study of Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, examining the work within the context of the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation, and as a Tudor history play which documents England's defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Boas, Frederick S. “Thomas Kyd and the Revenge Tragedies.” In An Introduction to Tudor Drama, pp. 94-110. 1933. Reprint. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.

Survey of Elizabethan revenge tragedies, particularly focusing on the life and dramatic works of Kyd.

Campbell, Lily B. “Theories of Revenge in Renaissance England.” Modern Philology 28, No. 3 (February 1931): 281-96.

Examines Renaissance attitudes toward revenge in an effort to dispel the notion that Elizabethan revenge tragedies were almost exclusively derived from Senecan tragedy.

Charney, Maurice. “The Persuasiveness of Violence in Elizabethan Plays.” Renaissance Drama, n.s. 2 (1969): 59-70.

Argues that the intensity of the violent scenes in Elizabethan revenge tragedy underscores the classical definition of tragedy in that it engages the audience's “pity and terror with an immediacy not possible in narrations.”

Cole, Douglas. “The Comic Accomplice in Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy.” Renaissance Drama 9 (1966): 125-39.

Examines the role of the comic accomplice in Renaissance revenge tragedies, identifying the early challenges of blending humor into a serious play and discussing the evolution of humor from parody in the early plays to satire in later ones.

Ellis-Fermor, Una. The Jacobean Drama: An Interpretation, fourth revised edition. London: Metheun, 1958, 345 p.

Characterizes Seneca's influence on Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights as that of didacticism combined with grim cynicism rather than that of the sensational blood spectacle.

Geckle, George L. “Antonio's Revenge: ‘Never More Woe in Lesser Plot Was Found’.” Comparative Drama 6, No. 4 (Winter 1972-73): 323-35.

Proposes that Marston borrowed from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus for the “intellectual and moral substance” of Antonio's Revenge.

Golding, M. R. “Variations in the Use of the Masque in English Revenge Tragedy.” Yearbook of English Studies 3 (1973): 44-54.

Examines the role of the masque in revenge tragedies, noting how the theatrical device underscores the principal themes of revenge and seduction.

Heilman, Robert Bechtold. “Movements Between the Poles: The Renaissance.” In Tragedy and Melodrama: Versions of Experience, pp. 163-226. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968.

Discusses revenge tragedy within the context of the evolution of melodrama during the Jacobean period.

Higgins, Michael H. “Chapman's ‘Senecal Man’: A Study in Jacobean Psychology.” Review of English Studies 21 (1945): 183-91.

Asserts that Chapman imitated Stoic psychology and ethics in his plays in an effort to draw an analogy between the Roman period and the political and moral issues of the Jacobean age.

Hunter, G. K. “Seneca and the Elizabethans: A Case Study in Influence.” Shakespeare Survey 20 (1967): 17-26.

Contends that Elizabethan revenge tragedy emerged primarily from the “vernacular acting tradition” of the English Middle Ages rather than from Seneca's tragedies.

Jacobs, Henry E. “The Banquet of Blood and the Masque of Death: Social Ritual and Ideology in English Revenge Tragedy.” Renaissance Papers (1985): 39-50.

Argues that the Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights wrote revenge tragedies to pervert orthodox social rituals in an effort to “illustrate the corrupting and dislocating power of the impulse toward revenge.”

Jenkins, Harold. “The Tragedy of Revenge in Shakespeare and Webster.” Shakespeare Survey 14 (1961): 45-55.

Compares the revenge plot archetype in Shakespeare and Webster, observing that while the pursuit of revenge in Shakespeare often leads to reconciliation, in Webster it merely leads to profound suffering.

Layman, B. J. “Tourneur's Artificial Noon: The Design of The Revenger's Tragedy.” Modern Language Quarterly 34, No. 1 (Autumn 1973): 20-35.

Views Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy as an example of the nullifying absoluteness of death rather than as a moral indictment of his depraved characters.

Lucas, F. L. “Seneca in the Elizabethans.” In Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy, pp. 110-33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922.

Examines the Senecan influence on Elizabethan dramatists, emphasizing their imitation of Seneca's classical style as well as his revenge and “conqueror” themes.

Ornstein, Robert. The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960, 299 p.

Observes that while Jacobean dramatists utilized the “revenge motive” to generate drama, none of the great tragedies addresses “the ethical attitude towards revenge [as] a central moral issue.”

Salingar, L. G. “Tourneur and the Tragedy of Revenge.” In The Age of Shakespeare, edited by Boris Ford, pp. 436-56. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1982.

Compares The Revenger's Tragedy to works by Tourneur's contemporaries, such as Webster and Marston, that deal with the problem of revenge, and sees Tourneur's work as the last and most brilliant attempt at bringing the emotional conflicts of Renaissance society within the framework of moral allegory.

Schoenbaum, Samuel. Middleton's Tragedies: A Critical Study. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955, 275 p.

Comprehensive analysis of Middleton's oeuvre, contending that Middleton was the first playwright to develop fully the themes of savagery and dramatic irony in the revenge tragedy tradition.

Wells, Henry W. “The Tragedy of Evil.” In Elizabethan and Jacobean Playwrights, pp. 14-58. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975.

Examines Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy as drama that evokes “tragedy of evil” and surveys a number of revenge tragedies as examples of this theme.

Wharton, T. F. “Old Marston or New Marston: The Antonio Plays.” Essays in Criticism 25 (1975): 357-69.

Argues that the Antonio plays reveal Marston to be an inferior dramatist who was incapable of developing and sustaining plot and theatrical design.