Abstract
Many critics have felt that if The Revenger’s Tragedy1 cannot be shown to be fundamentally orthodox then it cannot help but be hopelessly decadent. If, for example, it can be shown to affirm morality-play didacticism and its corresponding metaphysical categories (and hence idealist mimesis), an otherwise very disturbing play is rendered respectable. Moreover, the embarrassing accusation of a critic like Archer — that the play is ‘the product either of sheer barbarism, or of some pitiable psychopathic perversion’ — can be countered with the alternative view that it is a ‘late morality’ where ‘the moral scheme is everything’.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
William Archer, The Old Drama and the New (London, 1923), p. 74;
John Peter, Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature (Oxford, 1956), p. 268. Instead of Archer’s indignation, or Peter’s rendering of the play respectable, another tradition of critics showed a deep fascination with ‘Tourneur’s’ psychopathology. Thus J. Churton Collins writes that ‘Sin and misery, lust and cynicism, fixed their fangs deep in his splendid genius, marring and defacing his art, poisoning and paralysing the artist’ (Cyril Tourneur, The Plays and Poems, ed. J. Churton Collins [London, 1978], p. lvi), while T. S. Eliot described the motive of The Revenger’s Tragedy as ‘truly the death motive, for it is the loathing of horror and of life itself’ (Selected Essays, 3rd edn [London, 1951], p. 190).
These arguments are more fully outlined, and contested, in Jonathan Dollimore, ‘Two Concepts of Mimesis: Renaissance Literary Theory and The Revenger’s Tragedy’, Themes in Drama, 2, Drama and Mimesis, ed. James Redmond (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 38–43.
Peter Lisca, ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy: A Study in Irony’, Philological Quarterly, 38 (1959), 250.
Nicholas Brooke, Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy (London, 1979), p. 14.
From R. J. Hollingdale’s selection, Essays and Aphorisms (Harmondsworth, 1970), pp. 51–4; for a complete edition of Parerga and Paralipomena, see E. F. J. Payne’s two-volume translation (Oxford, 1974).
See A. Nicoll (ed.), The Works of Cyril Tourneur (London, 1929), pp. 16–18.
L. G. Salingar, ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy and the Morality Tradition’, Scrutiny, 6: 4 (1938), 404.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2001 The Editor(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dollimore, J. (2001). The Revenger’s Tragedy: Providence, Parody and Black Camp. In: Simkin, S. (eds) Revenge Tragedy. New Casebooks. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-21397-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-21397-5_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-92236-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-21397-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)