The Revenger's Tragedy by Thomas Middleton

First produced: 1606-1607; first published, 1607

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Tragedy

Time of plot: Renaissance

Locale: Italy

Principal characters

• Vendice, the revenger, disguised as Piato
• Hippolito, his brother, also called Carlo
• Castiza, their sister, object of Lussurioso’s lust
• Gratiana, their mother, a widow
• The Duke, the ruler of the principality
• Lussurioso, his legitimate son
• Spurio, his illegitimate son
• The Duchess, his recent bride
• Ambitioso, ,
• Supervacuo, and an
• Unnamed Third Son, the Duchess’s sons by a previous marriage
• Antonio, the Duke’s final successor

The Story:

Vendice holds a skull in his hand. It is the skull of Gloriana, his late betrothed, who was poisoned by the Duke when she resisted his lecherous advances. Vendice watches as the Duke, accompanied by his new wife and his two sons, passes through the city. Combined with the hate provoked in Vendice by his fiancé’s horrible murder is his outrage over the death of his father, caused by the same corrupt ruler. In addition, Vendice’s brother reports that he has been asked by Lussurioso, the Duke’s heir and a man as depraved as his father, to locate a pander. Vendice disguises himself as Piato, a pander, and is hired by Lussurioso, thereby gaining access to the ducal household.

The sons of the Duchess—the Duke’s stepsons—are as corrupt as the Duke’s sons. The Duchess’s third son recently raped the wife of Antonio, who subsequently killed herself. When this son is brought to trial and sentenced, the Duke puts off the young man’s execution and orders that he be kept in prison. His two older brothers promise to help him escape. Their mother, the Duchess, reveals her love for Spurio, the Duke’s illegitimate son, who hates his father. Spurio accepts the Duchess’s advances because adultery with his stepmother will avenge him on his father.

As Lussurioso’s pander, Vendice is commissioned to set up an assignation between Lussurioso and Vendice’s own sister, Castiza. Vendice is delighted when Castiza emphatically rejects Lussurioso’s suit but is horrified when their mother tries to persuade her daughter to yield.

Having returned to the ducal palace, Vendice learns from Hippolito that the Duchess and Spurio have been seen together and that they have an appointment for that very night. Vendice uses this information to deflect Lussurioso from his pursuit of Castiza. Ostensibly to protect his father’s honor but actually to get rid of Spurio, his hated half brother, Lussurioso rushes to the Duke’s bedchamber and attacks the man who is in bed with the Duchess. This man is not Spurio, however, but the Duke. The Duke, who is not seriously injured in the attack, orders Lussurioso taken to prison under sentence of death.

The Duchess’s sons, eager to eliminate their stepbrothers, attempt to trick the Duke by seeming to ask for mercy for Lussurioso while depicting the heinousness of killing a ruler. The crafty Duke surprises them by granting their request to have Lussurioso executed. What they do not know is that Lussurioso has already been released through a prior order of the Duke. When they arrive at the prison and inform the jailer that it is the Duke’s command that “their brother” is to die, the jailer, with only the Duchess’s third son in custody, executes their younger brother.

Meanwhile, Vendice continues plotting. The Duke has commanded him, still disguised as Piato, to bring a woman to the Duke in some secluded spot. Knowing that the Duchess and Spurio are to meet in a particular lodge, Vendice selects this place and brings the skull of his betrothed, decked out in rich attire. On the mouth of the skull, he smears the same poison that the Duke used to kill her. The Duke is fooled into kissing the poisoned skull, and Vendice and Hippolito, who have been waiting, compel him to spend his dying moments watching his wife embrace his bastard son. Nine years after Gloriana’s death, Vendice has gotten his revenge on the Duke for killing his beloved.

Before the meeting arranged by Vendice, the Duke had told others that he would be taking an undisclosed journey; hence no one knows where he has gone or makes any attempt to find him. Lussurioso, however, has resolved to get rid of Piato, whose information led to Lussurioso’s imprisonment, and he orders Hippolito, whom he knows to have a brother unknown to the court, to bribe that brother to kill Piato. Vendice is thus in the strange position of being hired to murder himself. Vendice and Hippolito decide to dress the still-undiscovered body of the Duke in the clothes Vendice has worn in his disguise as Piato, believing that Piato will be assumed to have fled in the Duke’s clothes. The brothers also decide to punish their mother because she urged their sister to yield to Lussurioso. They are so moved by her repentance, however, that they spare her life and return to the ducal palace to complete their plot.

The Duke’s corpse, now dressed in the old clothes of Piato, is still lying in the lodge. The brothers plan to show the body to Lussurioso, tell him the manner of his father’s death, and then kill him. However, Lussurioso does not arrive alone. Vendice and Hippolito are only able to point out the form of the supposed Piato lying on a couch, say he is drunk, and then stab him on Lussurioso’s command. Discovering the true identity of the corpse, Lussurioso, pleased that his father’s death makes him the new duke, gives three orders: to search for Piato, the suspected murderer; to hold revels in honor of his succession to the title; and to banish the Duchess.

The Duchess’s two remaining sons resolve to murder the new duke. As Lussurioso and his nobles sit and argue over the ominous portent of a comet blazing in the sky, Vendice, Hippolito, and two other lords, in the fantastic costumes of masquers, enter and perform a dance. At its conclusion, they draw their swords and kill Lussurioso and his three companions.

The Duchess’s sons, Ambitioso and Supervacuo, along with Spurio and a fourth noble, come into the hall dressed in similar costumes and bent on the same bloody errand. Finding Lussurioso and his companions already dead, the would-be murderers fall out among themselves. Ambitioso kills Supervacuo, and Spurio kills Ambitioso, only to be stabbed by the fourth noble. When Antonio and the guards rush in, they assume that the masquers they find there are the only murderers, but the surviving fourth noble convinces them otherwise. Lussurioso is not quite dead, and he undergoes the final agony of having the returning Vendice whisper in his ear the full account of his revenge.

The ducal line having been wiped out, Antonio is proclaimed ruler. Vendice cannot resist telling the new duke that he and his brother are the avengers, and Antonio orders them to be executed, asserting that the men who murdered the old duke and his family might well murder him. Vendice accepts his sentence calmly, saying it is time for him to die.

Bibliography

Brucher, Richard T. “Fantasies of Violence: Hamlet and The Revenger’s Tragedy.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 211 (Spring, 1981): 257-270. Argues that as revenge tragedies, The Revenger’s Tragedy and Hamlet are exactly opposite. Likens Vendice to Thomas Marlowe’s Barabas or to Harry Callahan of the Dirty Harry films.

Coddon, Karin S. “’For Show or Useless Property’: Necrophilia and The Revenger’s Tragedy.” English Literary History 61 (Spring, 1994): 71-88. Offers historical information on attitudes toward and practices involving the dead. Argues that the skull of Gloriana functions as a symbol of female perfection and sinful female sexuality.

Corrigan, Brian Jay. “Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy, and Crisis Literature.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 38, no. 2 (Spring, 1998): 281-295. Examines the question of the play’s authorship, describing how it was long believed to be written by Cyril Tourneur but is now generally attributed to Thomas Middleton.

Finke, Laurie A. “Painting Women: Images of Femininity in Jacobean Tragedy.” Theatre Journal 36 (October, 1984): 357-370. Argues that men idealize women’s beauty to avoid the reality of death. Discusses how the painted woman is viewed with hostility in The Revenger’s Tragedy, in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (pr. 1614), and in John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (pr. 1629[?]-1633).

McMillin, Scott. “Acting and Violence: The Revenger’s Tragedy and Its Departures from Hamlet.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 24 (Spring, 1984): 275-291. Argues that The Revenger’s Tragedy is about the theater and discusses the double identities with which it abounds.

Neill, Michael. “Death and The Revenger’s Tragedy.” In Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion, edited by Garrett A. Sullivan, Patrick Cheney, and Andrew Hadfield. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Essay on Middleton’s play is part of a collection that examines individual plays of the period, addressing topics such as race, class, sexuality, social history, and the law.

Rist, Thomas. Revenge Tragedy and the Drama of Commemoration in Reforming England. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008. Examines The Revenger’s Tragedy and other works of the period, focusing on religious rituals related to the treatment of the dead.

White, Martin. Middleton and Tourneur. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Reexamines plays by Tourneur and Thomas Middleton in the light of new information about their authorship.