JACOBEAN REVENGE TRAGEDY

The Revenge Tragedy is a type of play in which the tragedy is achieved through pursuit and attainment of revenge.
This genre was essentially popular in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. The Revenge Tragedy had its root in
antiquity. It stemmed from the works of the Roman dramatist Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC 65 AD). But the
genre ushered in English tragedy by the writings of Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) with The Spanish Tragedy (1589?).
Although he was the chief representative of the trend of Revenge Tragedy, the genre was reshaped through the
writings of other dramatists such as, William Shakespeare (15641616) in Titus Andronicus (c. 1594) and Hamlet
(c. 1601); Christopher Marlowe (15641593) in The Jew of Malta (c. 1592); Cyril Tourneur (15751626) in The
Revenger's Tragedy (1607); John Marston (15761634) in Antonio and Mellida (1600) and Antonios Revenge
(1601); John Webster (15801634) in The White Devil (1612) andThe Duchess of Malfi (1614).
Major Characteristics
All Revenge Tragedies typically comprise or hinge round the following tenets:
A secret murder is committed and the ghost of the murdered person appears before the friend or relative of the
avenger asking him to take revenge.
Revenge is considered as a sacred duty rather than a pursuit engendered by rage or personal injury.
The characters, usually the central one, fall into either feigned or real madness.
The avengers hesitation delays the revenge.
The revenge-seeker usually seeks revenge on the verge of insanity.
Awe arising events/environment: graveyard, torture, suicide, mutilation and gruesome bloodshed.
Immortality: incest, adultery, rape, etc.
Rivalry between families.
A period of disguise, intrigue, or plotting, in which the murderer and the avenger scheme against each other.
The major role is played by a malevolent servant, usually known as malcontent, who is a Machiavellian villain.
The protagonist often kills innocent persons.
A play-within-the-play as a means of exposing or killing the avengers target.
The play usually ends with the success of the revenge but the revenge-seeker dies shortly after that.
The reader feels sympathy for the avenger.
Long soliloquies giving insight into the characters' mentality and moral uncertainty.
The play ends with multiple of deaths.
Usually the plays are written in five acts, which are roughly as follows:
a. Act I: a ghost appeals for revenge.
b. Act II: the avenger plots for revenge.
c. Act III: the confrontation of the avenger and the victim.
d. Act IV: the vengeance is prevented.
e. Act V: the revenge is completed.

The Theatre of the Absurd

The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays written primarily by a number of
French playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has

evolved from their work. These works usually employ illogical situations, unconventional dialogue, and
minimal plots to express the apparent absurdity of human existence. The French thinkers such as
Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre used the term absurd in the 1940s in recognition of their
inability to find any rational explanation for human life. The term described what they understood
as the fundamentally meaningless situation of humans in a confusing, hostile, and indifferent world.
The salient features of Absurd Drama are as follows:
1.

2.
3.
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5.
6.
7.

In practice, absurd drama departs from realistic characters, situations and all of the
associated theatrical conventions. Time, place and identity are ambiguous and fluid, and even
basic causality frequently breaks down.
Meaningless plots, repetitive or nonsensical dialogue and dramatic non-sequiturs are often
used to create dream-like, or even nightmare-like moods.
Absurd drama reveals the meaninglessness of human existence.
Absurd drama produces the effect of alienation. It presents anxiety, despair, and a sense
of loss.
It presents a pessimistic vision of humanity struggling vainly to find a purpose and to
control its fate.
The absurdist think rationally and not romantically. They present life as an absurdity or
farce, or comedy.
Absurd drama is not purposeful and specific as it solves no problem.

The British scholar Martin Esslin first used the phrase theatre of the absurd in a 1961 critical
study of several contemporary dramatists, including the Irish-born playwright Samuel Beckett and
the French playwrights Eugne Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov. Esslin saw the work of
these playwrights as giving artistic articulation to Albert Camus' philosophy that life is inherently
without meaning, as illustrated in his work The Myth of Sisyphus. The Theatre of the Absurd is
thought to have its origins in Dadaism, nonsense poetry and avant-garde art of the 1910s 1920s.
Despite its critics, this genre of theatre achieved popularity when World War II highlighted the
essential precariousness of human life. Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot is one of the most
prominent examples of this type of drama.