Write a short essay on Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy.
Revenge Tragedy is a form of
tragic drama in which someone, usually a hero or a villain rights wrong.
According to the literary historians, the earliest instance of a kind of revenge tragedy is the Oresteia of Aeschylus. During the Renascence period two main ‘revenge’
traditions are discernible : first, the French-Spanish tradition, best
exemplified in the work of Lope de Vega (1562-1635), Calderon (1600-81) and
Corneille ( 1606-84 ). In their treatment of revenge themes, the emphasis is on
the point of honour and the conflict between love and duty. The second, and
more important, was Senecan.
Though tragic narrative, as
illustrated in the Fall of Princes
and Mirror for Magistrates, had a great hold on the readers,
there was hardly any tradition of tragedy on the English stage when Elizabeth
came to the throne. English tragedy developed from the classical models of
Seneca. Early Elizabethan tragedy is Senecan tragedy. The Latin dramatist of
the first century A.D. writing for a sophisticated, aristocratic audience had
produced tragedies notable for the horrors which filled them, for their
exaggerated character-drawing, their violently rhetorical language coupled with
emotional hyperboles, and a wealth of epigram. His influence was first felt in
the Latin plays of the universities, especially Cambridge, where between 1550
and 1560, the theatre was very Senecan and his appeal was so great that, by
1581, he had become the first classical dramatist to have the entire canon of his ten tragedies
translated into English by different hands and in 1581, they were published
together in an impressive volume. From the universities where many of the
up-coming dramatists such as Marlowe, Peele and Greene were students during the
peak period of Senecan influence, by way of the Inns of Court, the Senecan
influence reached the popular stage.
