Revenge tragedy

With the dark symmetry characteristic of revenge tragedy, the remains of the poisoned Gloriana—and, symbolically, of all of the victims of the Duke s lust—become transformed into a weapon against her poisoner. Her kiss reflects back to the Duke the figurative poisons of his own palsy-lust (Li.34), fused with the literal poisons with which he killed Gloriana. As the pivot on which this mimetic act of revenge turns, the skeleton s embrace comes to embody the seductive but poisonous theatricality that pervades the play. 

As noted above, other examples of revenge tragedies in which poisons become medicinal by dint of their purgative effect include especially Sejanus and The White Devil, discussed in Chapter i. 

Holdsworth, R. V. The Revenger s Tragedy as a Middleton Play. In Three Revenge Tragedies. Ed. R. V. Holdsworth, 79-105. Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1990. 

The Atheist s Tragedy, in Katharine Eisaman Mans (ed.), Pour Revenge Tragedies (Oxford University Press, 1995). 

Compare Atheist s Tragedy, ed. Morris and Gill, xviii-xxiv, and Maus (ed.). Four Revenge Tragedies, xxvii-xxxi. 

I Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1 87-1641 (Princeton University Press, 1940), 100. All citations in the text are from David Bevington, Lars Engle, Katharine Eisaman Mans and Eric Rasmussen (eds.), English Renaissance Drama A Norton Anthology (New York W. W. Norton, zooz). 

Bowers, Fredson, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1 8 -1642 (Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press, 1940)... 

Griswold, Wendy, Renaissance Revivals City Comedy and Revenge Tragedy in the London Theatre iyj6-i 8o (University of Chicago Press, 1986)... 

Kerrigan, John, Revenge Tragedy Aeschylus to Armageddon (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1996)... 

Neill, Michael, English Revenge Tragedy , in Rebecca Bushnell (ed.), A Companion to Tragedy (Oxford Blackwell, 2005), 328-50... 

John Kerrigan, Revenge Tragedy Aeschylus to Armageddon (Oxford University Press, 1996) Michael Neill, Issues of Death Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1997). 

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