Violent pleasures of revenge tragedy

Abstract

This thesis explores the theatrical pleasures of transformative violence in three works of revenge tragedy: Titus Andronicus, Hamlet and The Revenger’s Tragedy. The tragic act of revenge encompasses many contradictions, because it is, by nature, a unique combination of crime and justice. This thesis explores how the paradoxical “wild justice ” of revenge tragedy entails various pleasurable transformations: of character, society, theatrical technique, and audience response. In doing so, it elaborates on two main features of revenge tragedies. First, revenge is necessitated by the societal breakdown, as manifested in the legal system’s failure to implement justice and the society-wide indifference towards criminality. Second, becoming a revenger is pleasurable because it breaks down the hero’s “old” sense of self and allows for passionate, creatively theatrical responses that address the underlying societal absurdities revealed by extreme violence. This research will outline how the revenger’s laughter indicates the strange sense of release – the mixture of pleasure and pain – that accompanies the breakdown of the former identity and the old sense of societal value, including the concept of “honour”. These breakdowns, while violent and painful for the revenger, are equally freeing and they open up the possibility for pleasure.

Chapter 1 on Titus Andronicus will discuss the topic of revenge in regard to how Titus progresses from being blind to societal absurdities to becoming a passionate, theatrical revenger. Titus’s new, performative identity allows him to contain his unbearable emotional turmoil and turns traumatic experiences into a sort of pleasure through extravagant and playful violence. Further, the chapter will account for how the gruesome genre of revenge tragedy can attract audience interest and bring pleasure to both contemporary and early modern audiences. Chapter 2 aims to demonstrate how Hamlet paradoxically belongs to and dissociates itself from the genre of revenge tragedy. The detailed account of Hamlet’s conflicted nature illustrates a shift in the revenger’s role that generates new types of pleasure. The hero within Hamlet appears to be aware of the genre; he plays with the role instead of playing a conventional part within the genre that upholds honour and social codes. Finally, the third chapter looks into Middleton’s parody of the genre, The Revenger’s Tragedy. The play features heavy-handed excessiveness that normalizes the societal absurdities that are necessitated by the genre and trivializes the morals that prior plays were so insistent upon. It is not just the main character, but the entire play-world, that seems to be aware of these absurdities and excesses of revenge. Compared with prior works of revenge plays, RT is considerably more aware of the audience’s presence and the task of staging pleasurable performance regardless of morality.