t8'l r¿ o, ,o THE AVENEING EERO: RE"IIENGE TRAGEDY AND TEE RELATION OF DRAMATIST TO GENRET 158?-1611 PEILTP JAI,¡ES AYRES, B.A. A THESIS SIIBMIETED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PEILOSOPHÏ IN lHE DEPARTMENî OF ENGIISUT TINMRSTTY OF ADELATDÐ .TUNE 1971 CONTENTS Page SUMMÂRÏ iii STATEMENT vl- ACKI'IOI{LEDGEMENTS vii EXPLé,NATORT NOTE viii INTRODUCTfON 1 PART T JUSTIFIED REVENGE AND NOBIE REVENGERS Chapter I ELizabethan Attitudes and Elizabetb,an Narratives 24 Chapter II A Precedent for KYd, 5t Chapter III The Spanish d and the Morality of Hieronirno 6g Chapter TV The Spanish T and Anticipations of Change 105 PART rr REVENGE TRAGEDT, 1600-1611 Chapter V Antonio I s Revenge 121 Chapter VI Lustfs Dominion 149 Chapter VII Hoffman 167 Chapter VIÏI The Revengerrs Traged.y 191 Chapter IX The Revenge of Bussy DrAnbois and The Atheístrs Trag edy 212 CONCLUSION "57 APPENÐIX 260 BTBTfOGRAPEÏ 267 1L SII}IMARY 'The first section of the dissertation examines the literary backgrouncl of justified. revenge. This is a necessary prelude to Part IIr which is taken up with an inquiry into the relations of individual authors to the genre they work in and. nod.ify. Chapter I is involved. with tbe justifiett revenger ín Elizabeth.an narrative literature; the narratives offer a nore fruitful avenue for inquiry into the probable re6pon6e of Elizabethan audiences to stage revengers like Kydts than contenporary essays and. sernons, whÍch tend. to reflect the orthgdox attitud.es of church. and. state on the subject of private revenge. Chapter II exa¡rines the noet inportant pre-Kyd.ian revenge playt Eorestesr and. its authorre unorthodox handl-ing of his subject matter. The norality of revenge in The Spa¡ish Tragedy, the first and nost influential- revenge tragedy, is next inquired. into and found. to be equally unorthod.ox. Kydr in factr €DCoìlP- ages bis aud.ience to see his protagonist as justified. throughout the play. The fourth chapter closes Part f iii rfith an atteEpt to isolate sone important anticipations of the changes wrougbt in the Kydian forn after 1600. Part TI is given over to tbe central inquiry: to wbat extent and in wbat ways did dranatists working in the forn of Kydian revenge traged.y fron 16OO to t611 slow their concern for the kind. of play they were d.eveloping, and bow conscious vere the changes they effected in the concept of tbe hero? Marstonts Antoniors Revenge providee the best example of a conscious reaction against the dra-matic repre- sentatj.on of justified revenge, a reaction against the kind. of revenger figured in Hieronimo (and probably EamJ-et). Maretonts play is in a 6ense a parody of the tragedy of blood r but it is a serious parod.y. Marston inverts commonly accepted noral standards and shows up the norality of a revenger Like Eieronimo for what it is. The hero is presented as noble and justified. to the endr but the re6pon6e sougbt fron the aud.ience is in fact the oppoeite of that apparently encouraged on the surface of the p1ay. Lustf s Dominion is inoportant in that it offers an extended exaniuation of tbe causal relationship between vinclictive- ne6s and. vi11ainy, although here tbere is much less evidence of a conscious relationship between d.ranatist and. generic tradition. Hoffman exhibits Cb.ettlers concern for the genre Lv in several ways; significantly, the hero is allowed' to retain his noble etance in his o'dn eyes while being reduced in the eyes of the aud.i€rcê. The red.uction of the bero is also a central eIement in The Revengerr s , where again tbere is evidence that the analysis of the morality of revenge is being undertaken in reaction to the concept of the revenger as justified. and. noble. Chapman I s The Rev of Bussy DrAmb ois and Tourneurrs The Atheistrs Trage dy enbo dy a new kincl of herot the,ilbonest revengerlr r¿bo is content to wait until he can achieve a norally acceptable revenge or until d.ivine retri- butíon relieves him of responsibility. In this 6enser these two playÊ are the culmination of a transitÍonal period in the history of revenge tragedy. Along with the othersr they provide an area for research into the intellectual basest the conscious nature, of generic change. v This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any Ïiniversity, ancl (to the best of my knowleclge a''d belief) no material previously published or written by another personr except when due refereuce is made in the text or notes. Ithe thesis does, however, contain original nater- ia1 which has L'een published. or accepted for publication by scholarJ.y journals. The section in Chapter VIII on parallel action and reductive technique in The Rev erls 4Traeedy appeared. in similar form in t VIII (lgZo), 1o7-1o?; the Append'ix virtually unchanged in Notes & eraes , N.S. XVlr (1970), 212-211; the Marston chapter will appea-r in nodified forn in Stuclies in English Literature lJoo-19OO; and the first chapter in nodifÍed forn in Stud.ies in Pbilolo YI ACKI{OIJLEDGE}4ENTS For a6Êi6tance in the form of a research grant in 1969 ancl the iutorehip I took up in 19?O f am grateful to the llniversity of Ad.elaicte, and in particular to Professor J. A. Colmer and. Professor C. J. Borne. My greatest debt is to my supervisor, Dr AIan Brissenden, who proviiled' much encouragement and scholarly ad.vice and who ehowed confidence in the thesis at every stage of its development. I ehould alËo like to thank rny wife, who offered useful criticism and without tthose encouragement and financial aseistance this project could. ¡ot have been etarted- vLt- EXPLANATORT NOTE Unless otherwise indicated, al1- quotations fron prinary sourcee are taken from first etlitions, whose pJ.ace of publication is London. Contractions are expanded'. The d,ate that follows the first mention of any play refers to composition. I have relied on the dates given i-n Samuel. SchoenbaumrE revised edition of Alfred Harbagefs AnnaLs of Enelish Drama, 9?5 -1700 (Lond.on, 1964), but I have prefeffed. to sinpLify the proced.ure folloned. there. Thus, whereas Schoenbaum eaters The Revenge of Bussy DrAmboÍs under 1610 and gives its linits as c. 1601-1612, r write ttc. 161o.tr Tbe only exception to this rule is the date I give to The Atheistrs dy: Irving Ribnerrs argument for 1611 (Introduction to his Revels edition [Londonr 1964ft pp. xxiii-xxv) is too persuasive to be ignoredt and. as the dlate is important in its being terninal for this stud'yr I have followed. Ribner. Abbrevj.atione of the titles of well-knovrn journals fo11 ow the form used in the annual ÞILA Bibliography- vLL]. V INTRODUCTION The primary ain behiucl this dissertation is to subject the earl-ier revenge traged.ies to a close critical exanination in an attenpt to show the extent to whicb play- wrights working in the ge¿re fron 1600 to 1611 were conscious of tbe ways they were changiug the forn as begun and d.efined by Kyd. Apart fron @ (c. 1587), the plays I shalL be ¡nost concerned. with in this regard. are Marstonrs Antoniors Revense (c. 1600) Lustfs Doninion (r6ooe) t probably by Dekker in collaboration with Day and' Haughtont Chettle's @ (t6Oe), (c. 1606), traditioaalJ.y ascribed to Tourneur, Chapmants &i-evenge of Buss DfAmbois (c. 1610)r and Tourneurrs The Atbeistrs $"gçAE (". 1611). The tbesis will concentrate on the most striking change in revenge tragedy over the period,r the dìamatistsr increasingly orthodox treatment of the avenging hero. Fred,eon Bowers treated. tbeee plays (anong others) as a group in his Elizabethan Revenge TraRedyr still the most 1 2 traged.y of Ee authoritative general study of the ""oeog".1 de¡¡onstrated., by way of fairly brief analyeie of the plays under Kyd.rs inned.iate influence, that there was a noticeable change in the way the revenger was presented over the period. Vith the exception of Chapnanrs Clermont and Tourneurrs Gharlenont, both of whon reveal their authorsr more orthodox treatment of revenge not through their villainy but through their refusal to take revenge, protagonists become increas- ingly vicious and. nore openly villainous, until the kind' of revenging hero Kyil presented. ie practically unrecognizable in the villains who dominate tragedy after the first d.ecade of the new century. The plays dealt with nost closely in this thesis are those which appear to modify the morality of the orígina1 Kydiar revenger in signifícant vrays and tuhich afford., to varying d.egrees, opportunities to examine the relation of writer to tradition through the decad'e. The Stud.y represents nore, however, than an elaboration on Bowersf treatment of these p1aYs. ' Since the first publication of his book in 194O, several of Bowersr critical aseunptions have been seriously questioned.. One of the most significant ehifts in critical 1 ]. bethan Rev ed. 1 8 -1642 (Priuceton, 1g4o), Chap er IV and. esp. pp. t opinion involves the norality of Kyd.rs hero and tbe nost Iikely forns a contemporary audiencers response to that hero would have taken. Hieroninoo is now generally Eeen to bave been presented as a nuch more noble1 virtuous protagonist than would have been allowed. by Bor*ers (who sar* him as a fairly sympathetically d.rawn character), deserving of hie aud.iencers eynpathy and even, perhaps, of its condonation to the very end. of the play. Bowersr view of Hieronimo aEi a character an audience could.