Revenge is a kind of wild justice.
Jun. 30th, 2003 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepenny[The subject line is a quote from Francis Bacon, and "wild," in context, is NOT a compliment. --Ed.]
So my dissertation reading at the moment is Fredson Bowers's book Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, first published in 1940. Not surprisingly, I disagree with almost every interpretive move he makes, but he does provide at least a beginning of historical context for the question I posed on Friday, to wit: were there any real-life historical cases in England of the kind of revenge commonly practiced in revenge tragedy?
The short answer is still no.
The long answer is, as with most things, much more complicated. First, I have to say that I (and Eleanor Prosser, author of Hamlet and Revenge and, hey, most early modern Englishmen including George Chapman) distinguish between revenge and dueling. Dueling was a problem, particularly under James (Bowers blames this on the influence of the Scots, who were, he says, "nearer to barbarism" than the English (Bowers 32)), but dueling is not what happens in revenge tragedy. The duel in Hamlet is a case in point, actually, because (a.) it's not Hamlet's idea, and Hamlet is our principal revenger and (b.) Laertes, who is seeking revenge directly through the duel, is also not abiding by the code of dueling, but is abusing it in a distinctly Machiavellian fashion, and Bowers will be the first to tell you that Machiavellianism is not English. (I find Mr. Bowers rather tedious; you'll have to forgive me.) A stronger point is that Laertes is using the duel, not itself as revenge (i.e., a trial of arms), but as a cover for his revenge (poisoning Hamlet). A duel occurs, yes, but it is actually quite distinguishable from the actual actions of revenge.
Moreover, George Chapman's two revenge plays, The Tragedy of Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, go to great lengths to establish that dueling is not revenge. In the first play, Bussy duels for the typical Eliz/Jac reason (his honor has been called into question)--no revenge involved. And despite the fact that he and his seconds slaughter his opponent and his seconds (Bussy is in fact the only man left alive--I love these plays), there is no revenge taken for that. The revenge in this play is Montsurry's revenge on his wife Tamyra and Bussy for cuckolding him.
The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois is even more explicit, as the alleged revenger, Bussy's saintly prig of a brother Clermont (sorry, my editorializing), spends the entire play trying to get Montsurry to accept a challenge, which Bussy and Clermont's bloodthirsty sister Charlotte stigmatizes repeatedly as not being adequate revenge. It is in fact opposed to all Clermont's Stoic principles to revenge Bussy; a duel is the only thing he'll countenance, and it's quite clear that no one in the play conceptualizes the two as the same thing.
So dueling is similar to but not the same as revenge, and all Bowers's evidence about dueling is irrelevant.
The other problem with Bowers is that he uses the term "revenge" extremely loosely, so that the Countess of Essex murdering Overbury, he suggests, is "revenge for defaming her character" (Bowers 26). Other examples he cites are of a gentleman who murdered a fencing master in revenge for the accidental loss of an eye (and who was universally deplored in England, let me add), and the petty escalation of a quarrel from slander to attempted murder--which I wouldn't classify as revenge at all. The actual conditions of revenge as we see them in the plays--a revenger seeking revenge for the murder of a parent, sibling, or lover--still do not pertain in early modern England.
And no matter how hard Bowers tries to twist his evidence--he has a bee in his bonnet, common among critics of his generation, that if we do not find the "hero" of a revenge tragedy sympathetic and admirable, then that is a sign of serious defects in the play rather than of the fact that the playwright didn't mean us to find the "hero" particularly sympathetic--it's still perfectly clear that the behavior of revengers in revenge tragedy was abnormal and abhorrent in the Eliz/Jac ethical and moral system. That doesn't mean they wouldn't have found the plays entertaining (I watched and thoroughly enjoyed Ocean's Eleven last night, so the question's on my mind), just that there's no need to bend over backwards to argue that they could have approved of a revenger or felt his actions to be justified.
---
WORKS CITED
Bowers, Fredson. Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy. 1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966.
So my dissertation reading at the moment is Fredson Bowers's book Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, first published in 1940. Not surprisingly, I disagree with almost every interpretive move he makes, but he does provide at least a beginning of historical context for the question I posed on Friday, to wit: were there any real-life historical cases in England of the kind of revenge commonly practiced in revenge tragedy?
The short answer is still no.
The long answer is, as with most things, much more complicated. First, I have to say that I (and Eleanor Prosser, author of Hamlet and Revenge and, hey, most early modern Englishmen including George Chapman) distinguish between revenge and dueling. Dueling was a problem, particularly under James (Bowers blames this on the influence of the Scots, who were, he says, "nearer to barbarism" than the English (Bowers 32)), but dueling is not what happens in revenge tragedy. The duel in Hamlet is a case in point, actually, because (a.) it's not Hamlet's idea, and Hamlet is our principal revenger and (b.) Laertes, who is seeking revenge directly through the duel, is also not abiding by the code of dueling, but is abusing it in a distinctly Machiavellian fashion, and Bowers will be the first to tell you that Machiavellianism is not English. (I find Mr. Bowers rather tedious; you'll have to forgive me.) A stronger point is that Laertes is using the duel, not itself as revenge (i.e., a trial of arms), but as a cover for his revenge (poisoning Hamlet). A duel occurs, yes, but it is actually quite distinguishable from the actual actions of revenge.
Moreover, George Chapman's two revenge plays, The Tragedy of Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, go to great lengths to establish that dueling is not revenge. In the first play, Bussy duels for the typical Eliz/Jac reason (his honor has been called into question)--no revenge involved. And despite the fact that he and his seconds slaughter his opponent and his seconds (Bussy is in fact the only man left alive--I love these plays), there is no revenge taken for that. The revenge in this play is Montsurry's revenge on his wife Tamyra and Bussy for cuckolding him.
The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois is even more explicit, as the alleged revenger, Bussy's saintly prig of a brother Clermont (sorry, my editorializing), spends the entire play trying to get Montsurry to accept a challenge, which Bussy and Clermont's bloodthirsty sister Charlotte stigmatizes repeatedly as not being adequate revenge. It is in fact opposed to all Clermont's Stoic principles to revenge Bussy; a duel is the only thing he'll countenance, and it's quite clear that no one in the play conceptualizes the two as the same thing.
So dueling is similar to but not the same as revenge, and all Bowers's evidence about dueling is irrelevant.
The other problem with Bowers is that he uses the term "revenge" extremely loosely, so that the Countess of Essex murdering Overbury, he suggests, is "revenge for defaming her character" (Bowers 26). Other examples he cites are of a gentleman who murdered a fencing master in revenge for the accidental loss of an eye (and who was universally deplored in England, let me add), and the petty escalation of a quarrel from slander to attempted murder--which I wouldn't classify as revenge at all. The actual conditions of revenge as we see them in the plays--a revenger seeking revenge for the murder of a parent, sibling, or lover--still do not pertain in early modern England.
And no matter how hard Bowers tries to twist his evidence--he has a bee in his bonnet, common among critics of his generation, that if we do not find the "hero" of a revenge tragedy sympathetic and admirable, then that is a sign of serious defects in the play rather than of the fact that the playwright didn't mean us to find the "hero" particularly sympathetic--it's still perfectly clear that the behavior of revengers in revenge tragedy was abnormal and abhorrent in the Eliz/Jac ethical and moral system. That doesn't mean they wouldn't have found the plays entertaining (I watched and thoroughly enjoyed Ocean's Eleven last night, so the question's on my mind), just that there's no need to bend over backwards to argue that they could have approved of a revenger or felt his actions to be justified.
---
WORKS CITED
Bowers, Fredson. Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy. 1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966.
