Five Revenge Tragedies: The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, Antonio's Revenge, The Tragedy of Hoffman, The Revenger's Tragedy (Penguin Classics) Read online

  KYD, SHAKESPEARE, MARSTON, CHETTLE, MIDDLETON

  Five Revenge Tragedies

  The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet (1603), Antonio’s Revenge, The Tragedy of Hoffman, The Revenger’s Tragedy

  Edited and with an Introduction by

  EMMA SMITH

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Chronology

  Playwrights

  Introduction

  Further Reading

  Note on the Texts

  FIVE REVENGE TRAGEDIES

  Thomas Kyd,

  The Spanish Tragedy

  William Shakespeare,

  Hamlet (1603)

  John Marston,

  Antonio’s Revenge

  Henry Chettle,

  The Tragedy of Hoffman

  Thomas Middleton,

  The Revenger’s Tragedy

  Appendix: Hamlet (or Hamlets)

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  FIVE REVENGE TRAGEDIES

  EMMA SMITH is Fellow and Tutor in English at Hertford College, Oxford. She has published widely on Shakespeare and on early modern drama, particularly on the plays in print and in performance. She is co-editor of The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England and is working on a book on the Shakespeare First Folio.

  Chronology

  Dates of performance, usually conjectural, are taken from Alfred Harbage’s Annals of English Drama 975–1700, rev. Sylvia Stoler Wagonheim (1989); ‘c.’ indicates an approximate date; ‘?’ indicates conjectural information.

  Revenge tragedies Theatrical background Historical background

  1567 First purpose-built theatre in London

  1572 Attacks on Protestants in St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris

  1581 Publication of Seneca his Ten Tragedies

  1584 First English colony in America, Roanoke, founded by Ralegh

  1587 Execution of Mary Queen of Scots

  1588 Failure of Spanish Armada

  c. 1590 Marlowe’s Dr Faustus (Admiral’s Men)

  1592 Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy performed (Strange’s Men at the Rose)

  1593 Theatres closed due to plague

  Murder of Marlowe

  1594 Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus

  Death of Kyd Chamberlain’s Men founded Tyrone’s rebellion in Ireland began Nine Years’ War

  1596 Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

  (Chamberlain’s Men) Riots against high food prices

  1597 Failure of second Spanish Armada

  1599 Opening of the Globe Theatre by Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men

  Revival of boys’ companies

  Beginning of ‘Wars of the Theatres’, particularly involving Jonson, Marston and Dekker Bishops’ Ban orders satires to be publicly burned

  Earl of Essex mounts (unsuccessful) expedition to quell Irish rebellion

  1600 Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (Children at St Paul’s)

  c. 1600 Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Chamberlain’s Men)

  1601 Jonson paid for additions to The Spanish Tragedy Earl of Essex’s rebellion: he is executed for treason

  1602 Chettle’s Tragedy of Hoffman (Admiral’s Men)

  1602 Publication of The Spanish Tragedy with additions

  1603 Lord Chamberlain’s Men become King’s Men Death of Queen Elizabeth; accession of King James I

  1604 Patent granted for indoor theatre at Blackfriars Peace with Spain

  1605 Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy (King’s Men) Jonson’s first court masque

  Shakespeare’s King Lear (King’s Men) Gunpowder plot to blow up Parliament

  1607 First settlement at Jamestown, Virginia

  1610 Chapman’s The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois (Children of Whitefriars)

  1611 Tourneur, The Atheist’s Tragedy (?King’s Men)

  1612 Death of Prince Henry

  1613 Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (King’s Men) Globe Theatre burns down during performance of Shakespeare’s All is True

  1614 Hope Theatre built on Bankside for plays and bear-baiting

  Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair performed at Hope (Lady Elizabeth’s Men)

  1616 Death of Shakespeare Jonson’s Folio of his plays and poems

  1620 Middleton, Women Beware Women (King’s Men) Pilgrim Fathers set out for America on the Mayflower

  1623 Shakespeare’s collected works published in Folio

  1625 Death of James I; accession of Charles I

  Playwrights

  Thomas Kyd (1558–94), The Spanish Tragedy

  Kyd was the son of a London scrivener and attended Merchant Taylors’ School. There is no record of his having attended university. His only other attested literary composition is a translation of the tragedy Cornelia from the French (published in 1594), although critics have suggested that he wrote the play Soliman and Perseda, sharing its name with Hieronimo’s playlet, and an earlier, lost version of Hamlet, the so-called Ur-Hamlet. He shared lodgings with fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe, and was imprisoned when atheistical papers, which Kyd attributed to Marlowe, were found there.

  The date of composition of The Spanish Tragedy is uncertain – perhaps as early as 1587, since it does not mention the Spanish Armada of the following year – and it is first recorded on stage in February 1592 when Lord Strange’s Men played at the Rose Theatre. A further twenty-eight performances are recorded in theatre proprietor Philip Henslowe’s accounts between 1592 and 1597, making it an unprecedented success; a comic prequel was commissioned called The First Part of Jeronimo (published in 1605), and Ben Jonson was paid to write additional passages to the original play in 1601. The play’s popularity is corroborated by the large number of printed editions (eleven between 1592 and 1633) and an even larger body of allusions, parodies and references in contemporary literature. The language, plot and stagecraft of The Spanish Tragedy had a profound effect on the early modern theatre, including on the other plays printed in this volume. It has had some notable modern revivals, including the National Theatre, London, directed by Michael Bogdanov (1982), the Shakespeare Center in New York, directed by Ron Daley (1986), and at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, directed by Michael Boyd (1997).

  John Marston (1576–1634), Antonio’s Revenge

  Marston was born in Oxfordshire, and educated at Brasenose College and at the Middle Temple, where his father was a prominent lawyer. His early literary works include fashionable Ovidian love poetry and satires, which fell foul of the Bishops’ Ban on satire in 1599. His dramatic works for the Children at St Paul’s, a successful children’s company, include Antonio and Mellida (1600), part one of Antonio’s Revenge (1600). Later Marston wrote for the Children of the Blackfriars, including The Malcontent (1604) and The Dutch Courtesan (1604), and he collaborated with his rival Jonson and George Chapman on Eastward Ho (1605). By the end of the decade he was ordained a priest and withdrew from theatrical life.

  Antonio’s Revenge was printed in 1602, and its chronology in relation to that of Hamlet, with which it clearly shares a good deal, is contested. It has never had a professional stage revival since Elizabethan times.

  William Shakespeare (1564–1616), Hamlet (1603)

  Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and he had moved to London and begun a career as an actor and playwright by the beginning of the 1590s. He was a sharer (part-owner) in the Chamberlain’s Men from 1594, and wrote exclusively fo
r the company (later named the King’s Men) until his retirement in around 1611. By the time of Hamlet, written around 1600 and first published in 1603, he had written in a range of genres from romantic comedy to narrative poetry. Hamlet is often seen to mark a transition from the comedies and histories of the 1590s towards the more tragic plays of the new century.

  The earliest printed text (1603) is the one used in this edition. It was followed in 1604 by a second, much longer version of the play, and in Shakespeare’s posthumously printed collected dramatic works, the Folio of 1623, by a third version (see Appendix). Disparaged by bibliographers as a corrupted version of Shakespeare’s intentions, Hamlet (1603) has gradually gained more acceptance, and has had a particular impact in the theatre, where its unfamiliar take on a sometimes over-familiar play has been highly successful: the Nottingham Playhouse, directed by Andrew McKinnon (1983), the Orange Tree in Richmond, directed by Sam Walters (1985), the Oregon Shakespeare Festival directed by Barry Kraft (1994), and as the two-handed play Kupenga Kwa Hamlet (The Madness of Hamlet), directed by Arne Pohlmeier for Two Gents Productions on UK tour (2010).

  Henry Chettle (died between 1603 and 1607), The Tragedy of Hoffman

  Much about Henry Chettle’s life is unknown, including his dates of birth and death. Initially trained as a printer, he was a prolific playwright working, almost always in collaboration with other writers, for Philip Henslowe at the Admiral’s Men throughout the 1590s, although little of his work reached print. The Tragedy of Hoffman, or The Revenge for a Father seems to be Chettle’s attempt to rework the popular Hamlet themes for the Chamberlain’s Men’s great rivals, probably in 1602. It was not published until 1631, when it was described ‘as it hath bin diuers times acted with great applause, at the Phenix in Druery-lane’; there is no modern stage history although a semi-staged reading, directed in Oxford by Elisabeth Dutton under the auspices of the Malone Society in 2010, is recorded online [via http://bit.ly/hoffman2010].

  Thomas Middleton (1580–1627), The Revenger’s Tragedy

  Middleton was a Londoner who attended Queen’s College, Oxford, but seems to have preferred writing to study, leaving without a degree and publishing poetry and satire before turning to drama and comic pamphlets. His extensive corpus of plays ranges across genres, from city comedy to Italianate tragedy, from political satire to Lord Mayors’ pageants; he collaborated with Shakespeare on the satirical Timon of Athens and with other writers, including Thomas Dekker and William Rowley; and he wrote for a number of different theatre companies, including, for The Revenger’s Tragedy, the King’s Men, performed 1605. His work has been published in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works (ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, 2007).

  Middleton’s authorship of The Revenger’s Tragedy has only recently been accepted; anonymous editions were printed without authorial attribution in 1607 and 1608. During much of the twentieth century it was asserted that Cyril Tourneur, the author of The Atheist’s Tragedy, had written it. Recent productions have been the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by Di Trevis (1987), the Manchester Royal Exchange, directed by Jonathan Moore (2008), and the National Theatre, London, directed by Melly Stills (2008). In 2002 Alex Cox released his film The Revengers Tragedy, set in a futuristic dystopian Liverpool.

  Introduction

  The quest for retribution can seem a timeless, cross-cultural phenomenon, from Greek drama to soap opera, from urban myths of wronged wives cutting up expensive suits to retaliatory military action on an international scale. But it is also true that revenge as a shaping motif in tragic drama has some specific historical instances, and particularly in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period. The plays included in this edition are part of a wider dramatic phenomenon which, while it draws some of its inventive energy from broader cultural mythemes of vengeance, also responds to the circumstances of its own moment in three distinct ways: in its depiction and interrogation of justice, in its analysis of death and in its playful engagement with theatricality.

  In its representation of a man seeking justice for a murder to which the institutions of the state seem powerless to respond, Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy initiated a pattern followed by subsequent revenge tragedies. As knight marshal, Hieronimo’s judicial role in the Spanish court multiplies the ironies of his own legal impotence, and when he meets the petitioners desperate for his help in pursuing their own cases, he ‘Tear[s] the papers’ (3.13): the letter of the law is, quite literally, shredded. Unable to seek redress through legal means, Hieronimo instead turns to private revenge, although he describes the operations of legal process in terms strikingly similar to those of the revenge quest: ‘For blood with blood, shall while I sit as judge, / Be satisfied, and the law discharged’ (3.6). Characteristically in these plays, the ruling figures are actively or passively implicated in the crimes which must be revenged. The indifferent Spanish king, the regicide king in Hamlet (1603) and the feebly vicious duke in The Revenger’s Tragedy are all culpable, and thus the genre seems to head off any possibility of legal redress, giving rather a kind of licence to the necessarily ingenious methods of the revenger. Law courts in The Revenger’s Tragedy and in The Spanish Tragedy are shown to be infected with unrepentant wit, as Junior and Pedringano each show their disregard for the institutions of civil society. Instead, ‘the stage is the courtroom in which the case is tried’, as Sartre puts it.1 Revenge tragedies do not exactly portray legal problems; instead, they supplant such a representational regime with their own savage, ritualized forms of justice.

  The Elizabethan juror Francis Bacon’s remarks on revenge are often-quoted: ‘revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong putteth the law out of office.’2 Bacon’s opposition between revenge and the law has been an important one for discussions of the genre in its historical context. In a landmark study of Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587–1642 (1940), Fredson Bowers used extensive contemporary legal cases to pinpoint Elizabethan attitudes to revenge, and noted that the law ‘punished an avenger who took justice into his own hands just as heavily as the original murderer’, even though there was a kind of cultural sympathy for those who took on the burden of blood revenge for the murder of a relative.3 Bowers suggested that this paradox was enacted in the revenge genre, where revengers often set out with the audience’s sympathy, which they gradually forfeited as their lust for blood exceeded the original crime.

  In many ways, however, revenge plays seem designedly structured to compromise the status of the revengers, even by placing the nature of that original crime under suspicion. The deaths of Andrea in the battle with the Portuguese (The Spanish Tragedy), or of the king in his orchard (Hamlet (1603), or of the chaste Gloriana (The Revenger’s Tragedy) or Mellida (Antonio’s Revenge) are the precondition for the revenge plays but are not depicted within them. Their status is contested and subject to rewritings by the living. In Chettle’s Tragedy of Hoffman, the execution of Hans Hoffman for piracy appears to have been an entirely legal, if merciless, course, and the a priori unsuitability of this death for Hoffman’s own revenge quest sets this whole play off at an ethically oblique angle. Or rather, perhaps, it suggests what may also be true elsewhere: that the original crime is to revenge tragedy rather as the MacGuffin is to Hitchcock – an initial spur that is largely irrelevant once the dynamic of the plot and characters has been established. For example, Vindice gains his fiendishly appropriate revenge on the duke for the death of Gloriana in Act 3 of The Revenger’s Tragedy: thereafter his avenging energy is more fundamentalist in its pursuit of general depravity rather than personal wrong, and Gloriana’s role seems thus to have been to prompt, rather than pre-empt, his course of action.

  Eric Hobsbawm has identified a cross-cultural phenomenon he calls ‘banditry’: a mode of ambivalent popular lawlessness in which individuals are set at odds with their rulers or institutions but retain the sympathy of their
class as folk heroes.4 The revenger–bandit in these plays occupies an equivocal ethical position. On the one hand, his agency and his pursuit of duty can be admirable, and his grief powerfully articulated. The simplicity of Hoffman’s cry of anguish ‘You killed my father’ (5.3), or of Hieronimo’s ‘as dear to me was my Horatio / As yours, or yours, or yours, my lords to you’ (4.4), seems to emphasize that revengers are shaped by monstrous and unearned injustices. On the other hand, however, the revenger tends to be characterized by increasing savagery. As John Kerrigan identifies, in taking revenge the revenger effects an exchange with his adversary: ‘when B, injured by A, does to A what A did to him, he makes himself resemble the opponent he has blamed, while he transforms his enemy into the kind of victim he once was’.5 The moral disturbance of this transference gives the revenge genre its queasy narrative energy. Antonio’s Revenge visualizes the interplay, moving from the opening image of Piero ‘unbraced, his arms bare, smeared in blood, a poniard in one hand, bloody, and a torch in the other’ to its echo in Antonio ‘his arms bloody, a torch and a poniard’(3.5). For Hoffman the overlap is psychic, as he takes on the identity of Otho, the man he murdered; Vindice experiences the same uncanny recognition when Lussurioso dispatches him to kill – himself; Hamlet is both subject (in relation to his father) and object (in relation to the death of Corambis) of that play’s revenge quests.

  Revengers thus both enact and compromise systems of ethical and legal justice, and they take their ethical bearings less from audience experiences of the law or of ethics and more from previous plays in the genre. As Robert Warshow writes of a modern genre often associated with the early modern revenge plays, the cinematic Western – both are preoccupied with the isolated, self-reliant individual with his own moral code inhabiting a contested space which plays out its contradictions in the ultimate destruction of the hero – ‘it appeals to the previous experience of the type itself; it creates its own field of reference’.6 Revenge tragedies are less concerned with the external field of law and justice than they might seem, and more concerned, perhaps, with their own generic dramaturgy.