Five Revenge Tragedies: The Spanish Tragedy; Hamlet; Antonio's Revenge; The Tragedy of Hoffman; The Revenger's Tragedy

821 Pages·2012·2.58 MB·English

by  William Shakespeare

KYD, SHAKESPEARE, MARSTON, CHETTLE,
MIDDLETON
Five Revenge Tragedies
The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet (1603), Antonio’s Revenge, The Tragedy of
Hoffman, The Revenger’s Tragedy
Edited and with an Introduction by
EMMA SMITH
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Chronology
Playwrights
Introduction
Further Reading
Note on the Texts
FIVE REVENGE TRAGEDIES
Thomas Kyd,
The Spanish Tragedy
William Shakespeare,
Hamlet (1603)
John Marston,
Antonio’s Revenge
Henry Chettle,
The Tragedy of Hoffman
Thomas Middleton,
The Revenger’s Tragedy
Appendix: Hamlet (or Hamlets)
PENGUIN CLASSICS
FIVE REVENGE TRAGEDIES
EMMA SMITH is Fellow and Tutor in English at Hertford College, Oxford. She
has published widely on Shakespeare and on early modern drama, particularly
on the plays in print and in performance. She is co-editor of The Elizabethan Top
Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England and is working on a
book on the Shakespeare First Folio.
Chronology
Dates of performance, usually conjectural, are taken from Alfred Harbage’s
Annals of English Drama 975–1700, rev. Sylvia Stoler Wagonheim (1989); ‘c.’
indicates an approximate date; ‘?’ indicates conjectural information.
Revenge tragedies Theatrical background Historical background
1567 First purpose-built theatre in London
1572 Attacks on Protestants in St
Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in
Paris
1581 Publication of Seneca his Ten
Tragedies
1584 First English colony in America,
Roanoke, founded by Ralegh
1587 Execution of Mary Queen of
Scots
1588 Failure of Spanish Armada
c. 1590 Marlowe’s Dr Faustus (Admiral’s Men)
1592 Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy
performed (Strange’s Men at the
Rose)
1593 Theatres closed due to plague
Murder of Marlowe
1594 Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus Chamberlain’s Men founded Tyrone’s rebellion in Ireland
began Nine Years’ War
Death of Kyd
1596 Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Riots against high food prices
(Chamberlain’s Men)
1597 Failure of second Spanish Armada
1599 Opening of the Globe Theatre by Bishops’ Ban orders satires to be
Shakespeare’s company, the Lord publicly burned
Chamberlain’s Men
Earl of Essex mounts
Revival of boys’ companies (unsuccessful) expedition to quell
Irish rebellion
Beginning of ‘Wars of the Theatres’,
particularly involving Jonson, Marston and
Dekker
1600 Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge
(Children at St Paul’s)
c. 1600 Shakespeare’s Hamlet
(Chamberlain’s Men)
1601 Jonson paid for additions to The Earl of Essex’s rebellion: he is
Spanish Tragedy executed for treason
1602 Chettle’s Tragedy of Hoffman
(Admiral’s Men)
1602 Publication of The Spanish
Tragedy with additions
1603 Lord Chamberlain’s Men become King’s Death of Queen Elizabeth;
Men accession of King James I
1604 Patent granted for indoor theatre at Peace with Spain
Blackfriars
1605 Middleton’s The Revenger’s Jonson’s first court masque Gunpowder plot to blow up
Tragedy (King’s Men) Parliament
Shakespeare’s King Lear (King’s Men)
1607 First settlement at Jamestown,
Virginia
1610 Chapman’s The Revenge of Bussy
D’Ambois (Children of
Whitefriars)
1611 Tourneur, The Atheist’s Tragedy
(?King’s Men)
1612 Death of Prince Henry
1613 Webster, The Duchess of Malfi Globe Theatre burns down during
(King’s Men) performance of Shakespeare’s All is True
1614 Hope Theatre built on Bankside for plays
and bear-baiting
Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair performed at
Hope (Lady Elizabeth’s Men)
1616 Death of Shakespeare Jonson’s Folio of his plays and poems
1620 Middleton, Women Beware Pilgrim Fathers set out for
Women (King’s Men) America on the Mayflower
1623 Shakespeare’s collected works published in
Folio
1625 Death of James I; accession of
Charles I
Playwrights
Thomas Kyd (1558–94), The Spanish Tragedy
Kyd was the son of a London scrivener and attended Merchant Taylors’
School. There is no record of his having attended university. His only other
attested literary composition is a translation of the tragedy Cornelia from the
French (published in 1594), although critics have suggested that he wrote the
play Soliman and Perseda, sharing its name with Hieronimo’s playlet, and an
earlier, lost version of Hamlet, the so-called Ur-Hamlet. He shared lodgings with
fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe, and was imprisoned when atheistical
papers, which Kyd attributed to Marlowe, were found there.
The date of composition of The Spanish Tragedy is uncertain – perhaps as
early as 1587, since it does not mention the Spanish Armada of the following
year – and it is first recorded on stage in February 1592 when Lord Strange’s
Men played at the Rose Theatre. A further twenty-eight performances are
recorded in theatre proprietor Philip Henslowe’s accounts between 1592 and
1597, making it an unprecedented success; a comic prequel was commissioned
called The First Part of Jeronimo (published in 1605), and Ben Jonson was paid
to write additional passages to the original play in 1601. The play’s popularity is
corroborated by the large number of printed editions (eleven between 1592 and
1633) and an even larger body of allusions, parodies and references in
contemporary literature. The language, plot and stagecraft of The Spanish
Tragedy had a profound effect on the early modern theatre, including on the
other plays printed in this volume. It has had some notable modern revivals,
including the National Theatre, London, directed by Michael Bogdanov (1982),
the Shakespeare Center in New York, directed by Ron Daley (1986), and at the
Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, directed by Michael Boyd
(1997).
John Marston (1576–1634), Antonio’s Revenge
Marston was born in Oxfordshire, and educated at Brasenose College and at
the Middle Temple, where his father was a prominent lawyer. His early literary
works include fashionable Ovidian love poetry and satires, which fell foul of the
Bishops’ Ban on satire in 1599. His dramatic works for the Children at St Paul’s,
a successful children’s company, include Antonio and Mellida (1600), part one
of Antonio’s Revenge (1600). Later Marston wrote for the Children of the
Blackfriars, including The Malcontent (1604) and The Dutch Courtesan (1604),
and he collaborated with his rival Jonson and George Chapman on Eastward Ho
(1605). By the end of the decade he was ordained a priest and withdrew from
theatrical life.
Antonio’s Revenge was printed in 1602, and its chronology in relation to that
of Hamlet, with which it clearly shares a good deal, is contested. It has never had
a professional stage revival since Elizabethan times.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616), Hamlet (1603)
Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and he had moved to London
and begun a career as an actor and playwright by the beginning of the 1590s. He
was a sharer (part-owner) in the Chamberlain’s Men from 1594, and wrote
exclusively for the company (later named the King’s Men) until his retirement in
around 1611. By the time of Hamlet, written around 1600 and first published in
1603, he had written in a range of genres from romantic comedy to narrative
poetry. Hamlet is often seen to mark a transition from the comedies and histories
of the 1590s towards the more tragic plays of the new century.
The earliest printed text (1603) is the one used in this edition. It was followed
in 1604 by a second, much longer version of the play, and in Shakespeare’s
posthumously printed collected dramatic works, the Folio of 1623, by a third
version (see Appendix). Disparaged by bibliographers as a corrupted version of
Shakespeare’s intentions, Hamlet (1603) has gradually gained more acceptance,
and has had a particular impact in the theatre, where its unfamiliar take on a
sometimes over-familiar play has been highly successful: the Nottingham
Playhouse, directed by Andrew McKinnon (1983), the Orange Tree in
Richmond, directed by Sam Walters (1985), the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
directed by Barry Kraft (1994), and as the two-handed play Kupenga Kwa
Hamlet (The Madness of Hamlet), directed by Arne Pohlmeier for Two Gents
Productions on UK tour (2010).
Henry Chettle (died between 1603 and 1607), The Tragedy of Hoffman
Much about Henry Chettle’s life is unknown, including his dates of birth and
death. Initially trained as a printer, he was a prolific playwright working, almost
always in collaboration with other writers, for Philip Henslowe at the Admiral’s
Men throughout the 1590s, although little of his work reached print. The Tragedy
of Hoffman, or The Revenge for a Father seems to be Chettle’s attempt to
rework the popular Hamlet themes for the Chamberlain’s Men’s great rivals,
probably in 1602. It was not published until 1631, when it was described ‘as it
hath bin diuers times acted with great applause, at the Phenix in Druery-lane’;
there is no modern stage history although a semi-staged reading, directed in
Oxford by Elisabeth Dutton under the auspices of the Malone Society in 2010, is
recorded online [via http://bit.ly/hoffman2010].
Thomas Middleton (1580–1627), The Revenger’s Tragedy
Middleton was a Londoner who attended Queen’s College, Oxford, but seems
to have preferred writing to study, leaving without a degree and publishing
poetry and satire before turning to drama and comic pamphlets. His extensive
corpus of plays ranges across genres, from city comedy to Italianate tragedy,
from political satire to Lord Mayors’ pageants; he collaborated with Shakespeare
on the satirical Timon of Athens and with other writers, including Thomas
Dekker and William Rowley; and he wrote for a number of different theatre
companies, including, for The Revenger’s Tragedy, the King’s Men, performed
1605. His work has been published in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works
(ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, 2007).
Middleton’s authorship of The Revenger’s Tragedy has only recently been
accepted; anonymous editions were printed without authorial attribution in 1607
and 1608. During much of the twentieth century it was asserted that Cyril
Tourneur, the author of The Atheist’s Tragedy, had written it. Recent productions
have been the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by Di Trevis (1987), the
Manchester Royal Exchange, directed by Jonathan Moore (2008), and the
National Theatre, London, directed by Melly Stills (2008). In 2002 Alex Cox
released his film The Revengers Tragedy, set in a futuristic dystopian Liverpool.