Through four hundred years of accumulated disparaging comments from critics, revenge plays have lost much of the original luster they possessed in early modern England. Surprisingly, scholarship on revenge tragedy has invented an unfavorable lens for understanding this genre, and this lens has been relentlessly parroted for decades. The conventional generic approach that calls for revenge plays to exhibit a recurring set of concerns, including a revenge motive, a hesitation for the protagonist, and the revenger’s feigned or actual madness, imply that these plays lack philosophical depth, as the appellation of revenge tends to evoke the trite commonalities which we have created for the genre. This dissertation aims to rectify the provincial views concerning revenge tragedies by providing a more complex, multivalent critical model that makes contemporary the outmoded approaches to this genre. I argue that Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival, and the ways in which it engages with new historical interpretations of early modern drama, functions as a discursive methodology to open up more creative interpretative possibilities for revenge tragedy. Carnival readings expose gaps in new historicism’s proposed systems of omnipresent power, which deny at every turn the chance for rebellion and individuality. Rather than relegating carnival to an occasional joke, quick aside, or subplot, revenge plays explore carnivalesque concerns, and revengers plot their vengeance with all the aspects of a carnival. In these plays, revengers define subjectivity in terms of the pleasure-seeking, self-serving urges of unofficial culture; negotiations for social change occur in which folk culture avoids a repressive, hierarchal order; and carnival play destabilizes courtly systems that track, classify, pigeonhole, and immobilize individuals.

This thesis focuses on the religious aspects of William Shakespeare's Hamlet which, I argue, form the foundation of Hamlet's plot and are critical to understanding Hamlet's character and his dilemmas. Early modern culture was particularly saturated with religious allusions. The advent of the Reformation and emergence of printing resulted in an explosive growth in the publication of new Bible translations and other religious materials. While I note that most early modern writers of general literature made frequent use of biblical texts and themes, I add that Shakespeare's use of the Bible and Christian doctrine in Hamlet is especially subtle and substantial. Shakespeare achieves this by establishing Hamlet as a particularly devout Christian Prince who is a student at the University of Wittenberg. I argue that it is Hamlet's theological pedantry which makes him procrastinate throughout the play. Additionally, Hamlet's Christian characteristics exhibit syncretic - Catholic and Protestant - Christianity as represented by Elizabethan religious culture. Shakespeare incorporates contemporary religious beliefs in the play not for dogmatic purposes but rather for dramatic expedience. I compare Hamlet to other contemporary revenge tragedies and establish how the underlying Christian themes, as revealed in Hamlet's character through his soliloquies, set Hamlet apart from other revenge plays. Finally I argue that Hamlet exacts his revenge through a particular performance that operates exclusively within his Christian worldview. Ultimately, as I conclude in the third chapter, through the character of Hamlet, Shakespeare also makes the best dramatic use of contemporary religious beliefs and contentions to make his audience ponder the big question that concerned them: the eventual fate of the human soul.

Through four hundred years of accumulated disparaging comments from critics, revenge plays have lost much of the original luster they possessed in early modern England. Surprisingly, scholarship on revenge tragedy has invented an unfavorable lens for understanding this genre, and this lens has been relentlessly parroted for decades. The conventional generic approach that calls for revenge plays to exhibit a recurring set of concerns, including a revenge motive, a hesitation for the protagonist, and the revenger’s feigned or actual madness, imply that these plays lack philosophical depth, as the appellation of revenge tends to evoke the trite commonalities which we have created for the genre. This dissertation aims to rectify the provincial views concerning revenge tragedies by providing a more complex, multivalent critical model that makes contemporary the outmoded approaches to this genre. I argue that Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival, and the ways in which it engages with new historical interpretations of early modern drama, functions as a discursive methodology to open up more creative interpretative possibilities for revenge tragedy. Carnival readings expose gaps in new historicism’s proposed systems of omnipresent power, which deny at every turn the chance for rebellion and individuality. Rather than relegating carnival to an occasional joke, quick aside, or subplot, revenge plays explore carnivalesque concerns, and revengers plot their vengeance with all the aspects of a carnival. In these plays, revengers define subjectivity in terms of the pleasure-seeking, self-serving urges of unofficial culture; negotiations for social change occur in which folk culture avoids a repressive, hierarchal order; and carnival play destabilizes courtly systems that track, classify, pigeonhole, and immobilize individuals.

This thesis offers a materialist account of dramatic genre. It shows how English revenge tragedies were mediated by the social circumstances of their early modern dramatic production, and how in turn such circumstances found expression in dramatic form. Its method draws on Marxist critical theory, but the work also makes extensive use of traditions in English social history and more conventional literary criticism. Influenced by Walter Benjamin’s early work, 'Urprung des deutschen Trauerspiels', in which ‘origin’ (Ursprung) is distinguished from ‘genesis’ (Entstehung), the dissertation offers an account of the genre’s dialectical relationship with the social realities and legal circumscriptions accompanying theatrical performance at the time revenge plays became popular. Focusing on the characterization of avenging protagonists, the dissertation suggests how the ambivalent disposition of such figures to narrative and scene drew on historical problems of social and occupational identity in early modern England. The first chapter dwells on the ambiguities of the avenger’s marginalisation in Thomas Kyd’s seminal revenge play, The Spanish Tragedy. This chapter realizes the problem of revenge as one relating to the household, and in turn connects this to the image of the early professional theatre as a disorderly house. Building on this analysis of the historical grounds of Hieronimo’s disenfranchisement and revenge, the second chapter explores the resources of characterization provided for such avengers by the dramatic tradition of the Vice which, by the 1570s and 1580s, had become associated with the professional actor. The third chapter examines how the idiom of the ruin in the two tragedies of John Webster might invite a Benjaminian analysis of the revenge play as a vulnerable allegory of production. This chapter looks to link revenge plays’ representations of death to contingencies of performance. The final two chapters are connected by an interest in the relationship between characterization and forms of historical risk. Chapter 4 explores the duel at Hamlet’s climax from a variety of perspectives, arguing that its debased nature as a ritual of valour interacted in highly sophisticated ways with the problems of intentionality and invention associated with earlier revenge plays as well as with performance itself. The final chapter builds on the arguments of Chapter 4 while recalling many of the arguments made earlier in the thesis. Demonstrating the dialectical interaction of the actor-as-servant and the servant-intriguer, this fifth chapter situates the study of such characterization within the historiographical controversies surrounding the early-modern wage labourer. This dissertation aims (i) to provide innovative criticism of English revenge tragedy, insisting upon the genre’s dialectical foundation in processes of dramatic production; (ii) to outline a viable, dialectically materialist genre criticism; (iii) to show how changes in socio-economic dependencies produced specific dramaturgical effects, particularly as these related to the process of characterization.

The aim of this study is to demonstrate the destructive effects of infidelity in the old-aged husband-the young wife marriages which end up with tragedy. In John Ford&rsquo / s Love&rsquo / s Sacrifice (1633) and Lope de Vega&rsquo / s Punishment Without Revenge (1631), tragedy turns out to be the inevitable consequence of the plays since the motives of jealousy, honour, revenge and love converge and lead people to commit sinful crimes. Within this scope, the first chapter of the thesis is devoted to the historical information about the state of English and Spanish theatres together with the biographies of the playwrights. In the second chapter, the tripartite relationship between jealousy, revenge, and honour is dealt with based upon examples from the primary sources in a historical framework. The reasons and results of these themes are studied through the characters in the plays. The third chapter covers the theme of love, its history and its influence on characters. In this chapter, the nature of love between the characters and its consequences are examined. The conclusion asserts that the old-aged husband and the young wife create a mismatched union and accompanied with the motives of honour, jealousy and revenge, the institution of marriage breeds tragic consequences. The analysis of the above mentioned themes is based on a historical context and it is also concluded that although Love&rsquo / s Sacrifice (1633) and Punishment Without Revenge (1631) belong to the Renaissance age, both plays bear the influences of the Greco-Roman drama tradition. Thus, the similarities and differences between classical and Renaissance tragedy are demonstrated.

At the heart of Thomas Kyd's revenge tragedy The Spanish Tragedy lies an arranged marriage around which all of the other action revolves. Bel-Imperia of Spain has been betrothed against her will to Prince Balthazar of Portugal, but she is no ordinary woman, and she has plans of her own. Bel-Imperia's unwillingness to participate in the arranged marriage is indicative of the rise of the companionate marriage; it represents a rejection of the arranged marriage that dominated upper class society in earlier years. This study seeks to throw light upon early modern attitudes towards marriage, focusing particularly on the arranged marriage, the companionate marriage, and the state marriage. Additionally, it examines the role of woman as peace-weaver, a practice that dates back as far as the Beowulf manuscript. Using historical as well as literary sources to delineate these forms, I apply this information to a study of the play itself, with an emphasis on its performative value. Since the proposed marriage dictates all of the action of the play, an analysis of the bartered bride, Bel-Imperia, is of particular importance. This essay examines her character in depth as well as her relationships with Andrea and Horatio, who love her; with Lorenzo, the King, and her father, who seek to exploit her; and with Hieronimo, who becomes her partner in revenge. Additionally, I contrast her with Isabella, one of only two other female characters in the play and conclude by delineating how my analysis would affect a performance of the play and by "directing" a hypothetical interpretation of The Spanish Tragedy.

Using recent scholarship on intersubjectivity and cultural cognitive narratology, this project explores the disruption and reformation of early modern identity in Elizabethan revenge tragedies. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate how revenge tragedies contribute to the prevalence of a dialogical rather than monological self in early modern culture. My chapter on Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy synthesizes Debora Shuger’s work on the cultural significance of early modern mirrors--which posits early modern self-recognition as a typological process--with recent scholarship on the early modern dialogical self. The chapter reveals how audiences and mirrors function in the play as cognitive artifacts that enable complex experiences of intersubjectivity. In my chapter on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, I trace how characters construct new identities in relation to their shared suffering while also exploring intersubjectivity’s potential violence. When characters in Titus imagine the inward experience of others, they project a plausible narrative of interiority derived from inwardness’s external signifiers (such as tears, pleas, or gestures). These projections and receptions between characters can lead to reciprocated sympathy or violent aggression. My reading of John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge explores revenge as a mode of competition. Marston suggests a similarity between the market conditions of dramatic performance (competition between playwrights, acting companies, and rival theaters) and the convention of one-upmanship in revenge tragedy, i.e. the need to surpass preceding acts of violence. While other Elizabethan revenge tragedies represent reciprocity and collusion between characters as important aspects of intersubjective self-reintegration, Marston’s play emphasizes competition and rivalry as the dominant force that shapes his characters. My final chapter provides an analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I argue that recent scholarship on intersubjectivity and cognitive cultural studies can help us re-historicize the nature of Hamlet’s “that within which passes show.” Hamlet’s desire for the eradication of his consciousness explores the consequences of feeling disconnected from others in a culture wherein identity, consciousness, and even memory itself depend on interpersonal relations.

MA (Tshivenda) / Senthara ya M. E. R. Mathivha ya Nyambo dza Afurika, Vhutsila na Mvelele / See the attached abstract below

This thesis examines Hamlet and Measure for Measure as related “problem plays.” In these plays, Shakespeare uniquely combines the genre of parable and the literary device of irony as a means to involve his audience in the experience of ordeal and deliverance that both reorients the protagonists’ personal, political, and ultimately theological assumptions and prompts spiritual insight in the spectator. As in a parable, a spiritual dimension opens subtly alongside each story to inform the play’s action and engage the spectator in the underlying theological discourse. Irony invites the audience to see the disparity between pretended or mistaken reality and the spiritual truth—between what “seems” and what “is.” As these complex dramatized parables unfold, potent tapestries of multilayered thematic irony coalesce into providential irony that exalts, rather than defeats, the protagonists and ultimately determines the outcome.

‘The Ophelia Versions: Representations of a Dramatic Type from 1600-1633’ interrogates early modern drama’s use of the Ophelia type, which is defined in reference to Hamlet’s Ophelia and the behavioural patterns she exhibits: abandonment, derangement and suicide. Chapter one investigates Shakespeare’s Ophelia in Hamlet, finding that Ophelia is strongly identified with the ballad corpus. I argue that the popular ballad medium that Shakespeare imports into the play via Ophelia is a subversive force that contends with and destabilizes the linear trajectory of Hamlet’s revenge tragedy narrative. The alternative space of Ophelia’s ballad narrative is, however, shut down by her suicide which, I argue, is influenced by the models of classical theatre. This ending conspires with the repressive legal and social restrictions placed upon early modern unmarried women and sets up a dangerous precedent by killing off the unassimilated abandoned woman. Chapter two argues that Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen amplifies Ophelia’s folk and ballad associations in their portrayal of the Jailer’s Daughter. Her comedic marital ending is enabled by a collaborative, communal, folk-cure. The play nevertheless registers a proto-feminist awareness of the peculiar losses suffered by early modern women in marriage and this knowledge deeply troubles the Jailer’s Daughter’s happy ending. Chapter three explores the role of Lucibella in The Tragedy of Hoffman arguing that the play is a direct response to Hamlet’s treatment of revenge and that Lucibella is caught up in an authorial project of disambiguation which attempts to return the revenge plot to its morality roots. Chapters four and five explore the narratives of Aspatia in The Maid’s Tragedy and Penthea in The Broken Heart, finding in their very conformism to the behaviours prescribed for them, both by the Ophelia type itself and by early modern society in general, a radical protest against the limitations and repressions of those roles. This thesis is consistently invested in the competing dialectics and authorities of oral and textual mediums in these plays. The Ophelia type, perhaps because of Hamlet’s Ophelia’s identification with the ballad corpus, proves an interesting gauge of each play’s engagement with emergent notions of textual authority in the early modern period.