Universität Paderborn, Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften
Hauptseminar: William Shakespeare
Wintersemester 2006/2007, 7. Semester

Hamlet and the Genre of the Revenge Tragedy

by: Melanie Kloke

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Revenge in the Elizabethan World 3

3. Revenge and the Elizabethan Audience 5

4. Influences on Shakespeare’s Revenge Plays 6

5. The pattern of Elizabethan Revenge Plays: The Kydian Formula  8

5.1 The Action in the Kydian Revenge Play 8

5.1.1 The Delay 9
5.1.2 Play-Within-a-Play  9

5.2 Characters in the Kydian formula  10

5.2.1 The Avenger  10
5.2.2 The Villain  11
5.2.3 The Ghost 11

5.3 The Message of the Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy  12

6. Hamlet as a Revenge Play 12

6.1 The Action of Hamlet  13

6.1.1 The Delay 14
6.1.2 The Play-Within-a-Play  15

6.2 The Characters  15

6.2.1 The Avenger  16
6.2.2 The Villain  17
6.2.3 The Ghost 18

6.3 The Message of Hamlet 18

7. Conclusion  19

8. Bibliography 20

1. Introduction

In Elizabethan England the genre of the revenge tragedy was very popular. Many plays of this kind by several different playwrights, including William Shakespeare, were written and staged in the 16th and 17th centuries. The success of the genre was not only due to it’s bloody, criminal, and therefore exciting action but also to the topicality of revenge at that time. In revenge plays questions were raised which concerned the Elizabethans and which made them reflect on their own situations and attitudes. It was around 1570, that English playwrights took over the concept of the revenge tragedy from foreign authors such as Seneca.¹ However, the genre was so successful and widely spread among the English, that a new Elizabethan revenge tragedy was developed. The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd, which can be regarded as the prototype of the English revenge drama, constituted a pattern containing the basic elements of a revenge play, which a lot of contemporary authors, such as Shakespeare, are said to have followed.² In the following, the success of the Elizabethan revenge play will be examined with respect to the attitude towards vengeance at that time. Furthermore, the relevance of the revenge tragedies for the Elizabethan audience will be taken into consideration. Afterwards, the pattern introduced with Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, the Kydian formula³, will be depicted before it’s basic constituents will be related to Hamlet, the most famous Shakespearean tragedy, in which revenge is an important motive.

2. Revenge in the Elizabethan World

Revenge is a topic mankind has been familiar with for many centuries. Formerly, when no states and laws existed, the primitive people regarded violent acts against themselves not as a crime and a public matter, but as a personal injury and therefore a private affair. Therefore, revenge was the only means of justice those people could stick to. Since the bounds within a families were very close ones and solidarity was an important value, blood revenge taken by the family of the victim on any member of the opposed family was quiet common.⁴ Even in the development of the English nation and its laws, vendetta was not sued and not illegal for a very long time, and even Christianity did not have any influence on it at first. With King Edward I, however, a law against blood revenge was first established. Despite of this law, vendetta was still privately used. Even though the legal system developed more and more over the centuries, avengers could often avoid punishment. Henry VII developed the indictment to simplify the prosecution of murderers on a public level, which was supposed to reduce private approaches.⁵ The development of a legal condemnation of revenge was developed late and slowly, but the more strict it became the more ethically immoral also blood-revenge became. Since the preceding years had been full of national quarrels and disorder in the country, which were due to private struggles, not only the church but also the state of the highly Christian Elizabethan England condemned private revenge.⁶ In the Elizabethan times, private revenge was officially forbidden and was punished severely, as only God himself was supposed to have the power to take revenge.⁷ This attitude was also spread among the religious public. The people were not supposed to avenge their murdered relatives, but to leave the revenge to God. Taking revenge by themselves would have meant action against God and therefore a sin. As a consequence, avengers were thought to be damned eternally and punished with physiological and psychological problems in the course of their lives as well.⁸ Also with regard to the law murder was a crime which had to be charged and could not be justified. The exception of this rule was manslaughter, meaning that the revenge had been an immediate reaction out of affect, which was actually forgiven.⁹ Murder, on the other hand, was totally illegal in Elizabethan times, because it was supposed to be based on malice, no matter whether the murder was due to blood-revenge or not. Thus, an avenger had to receive the same punishment as any other murderer.¹⁰ In the Elizabethan society revenge was not only regarded illegal and blasphemous, but also Un-English. It was a crime connected to Italy and Spain, a prejudice which had its basis on Machiavelli. The only thing the relatives of the victims could do was to wait patiently until God took his divine revenge¹¹ or to engage the law courts, in order to take public revenge. Next to the theory that the Elizabethans totally condemned private revenge there exists the idea of a less strict attitude against the ethics of the time. Since the legal system didn’t work out perfectly, which increased the distrust of the people in the state, some Elizabethans regarded blood- revenge as tolerable when there was no law dealing with the crime which had been committed. It can be suggested that, even though the morality of the time forbid private revenge and the Elizabethans regarded its as a crime and a sin, they tolerated it in certain cases. This was basically due to their knowledge about the times when blood-revenge had been allowed and the traditional view of revenging a family member’s death as being a sacred duty.¹² This challenging attitudes towards the topic, the strong believe in the religious morality on the one hand and the sympathy for revenge under certain circumstances on the other, made it into a topic which was very up-to-date.¹³ Thus, the topic of revenge on the Elizabethan stage was closely related to the reality and interests of the audience.

3. Revenge and the Elizabethan Audience

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1 Cf. Robert N. Watson, “Tragedies of Revenge and Ambition”, in: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy, ed. Claire McEachern (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002) p.161ff.

2 Cf. Andrea Stadter, Hyperion to a Satyr. Hamlet im Kontext zeitgenössischer Rachetragödien 1589-1603. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag 1989), p.16f.

3 Cf. Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1587-1642 (Princeton: Princeton UP 1971), p.71.

4 Cf. Ibid., p.4.

5 Cf. Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1587-1642, p.6ff.

6 Cf. Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1971), p.3ff.

7 Cf. Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1587-1642, p.11ff.

8 Cf. Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, p.3ff.

9 Cf. Ibid., p.18.

10 Cf. Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1587-1642, p.10f.

11 Cf. Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, p.10ff.

12 Cf. Bowers, The Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1587-1642, p.35ff.

13 Cf. Ibid., p.39f.