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 WRITERS AND THEIR WORK

I SOBEL A RMSTRONG
General Editor

REVENGE TRAGEDIES
OF
THE RENAISSANCE
 Title page, The Spanish Tragedy (1615).
Reproduced with the permission of the British Library.
REVENGE TRAGEDIES
OF
THE RENAISSANCE
Janet Clare
 In memory of Barbara Peters
and Inga-Stina Ewbank

# Copyright 2007 by Janet Clare

First published in 2007 by Northcote House Publishers Ltd, Horndon, Tavistock,
Devon, PL19 9NQ, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 (0) 1822 810066 Fax: +44 (0) 1822 810034.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or stored in an
information retrieval system (other than short extracts for the purposes of review)
without the express permission of the Publishers given in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-7463-1085-4 hardcover
ISBN 978-0-7463-0918-6 paperback
Typeset by PDQ Typesetting, Newcastle-under-Lyme
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom
 Contents

List of Illustrations vi

Acknowledgements viii

Biographical and Historical Outline ix

References and Abbreviations xiii

Introduction: Revenge and Revenge Tragedy 1

1 Revenge and Justice: Elizabethan Revenge

Tragedies 18

2 Revenge and Metatheatricality: Antonio's Revenge,

The Revenger's Tragedy 55

3 Theatre of God's Judgement: The Atheist's Tragedy,

The Changeling 76

4 Revenge out of Italy: The White Devil, The Duchess of

Malfi, Women Beware Women, `Tis Pity She's a Whore 92

5 The Woman's Part: The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois,

The Maid's Tragedy 115

Notes 134

Select Bibliography 140

Index 147
 Illustrations

Frontispiece: title page, The Spanish Tragedy (1615).

Reproduced with the permission of the British Library.

1 Peter Needham as Revenge and Michael Bryant

as Hieronimo in the 1982 Royal National Theatre
production of Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, directed
by Michael Bogdanov. With the permission of
the photographer Laurence Burns. 27
2 Daniel Thorndike as Balzuto and Michael Bryant
as Hieronimo and in the 1982 Royal National
Theatre production of Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy,
directed by Michael Bogdanov. With the permission
of the photographer Laurence Burns. 33
3 David Burke as the Ghost in the 1989 Royal
National Theatre production of Hamlet, directed
by Richard Eyre. With the permission of the
photographer John Haynes. 41
4 John Castle as Claudius and Sylvia Sims as Gertrude
in the 1989 Royal National Theatre production of
Hamlet, directed by Richard Eyre. With the
permission of the photographer John Haynes. 46
5 John Castle as Claudius and Daniel Day-Lewis as
Hamlet in the 1989 Royal National Theatre
production of Hamlet, directed by Richard Eyre.
With the permission of the photographer John
Haynes. 48

vi
 ILLUSTRATIONS

6 Antony Sher as Vindici and Stella Gonet as Castiza

in the 1987 Royal Shakespeare production of
The Revenger's Tragedy, directed by Di Trevis.
Joe Cocks Studio Collection # Shakespeare
Birthplace Trust. 67
7 Antony Sher as Vindici in the 1987 Royal
Shakespeare Company production of The
Revenger's Tragedy, directed by Di Trevis.
Joe Cocks Studio Collection # Shakespeare
Birthplace Trust. 68
8 David Waller as the Duke and Ian Richardson as
Vindici in the 1966 Royal Shakespeare Company
production of The Revenger's Tragedy, directed by
Trevor Nunn. Photographer Reg Wilson # Royal
Shakespeare Company. 71
9 Miranda Richardson as Beatrice and George Harris
as De Flores in the 1988 Royal National
Theatre production of The Changeling, directed
by Richard Eyre. With the permission of the
photographer John Haynes. 89
10 Dennis Quilley as Brachiano in the 1991 Royal
National Theatre production of The White Devil.
With the permission of the photographer
Ivan Kyncl. 100
11 SineÂad Cusack as Evadne and John Carlisle as the
King in the 1980 Royal Shakespeare Theatre
production of The Maid's Tragedy, directed by
Barry Kyle. Joe Cocks Studio Collection #
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. 131

vii
 Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to colleagues and friends who read sections of

this book and were generous with their time and comments: Anne
Fogarty, Frank McGuinness, Peter Culhane and, especially,
Raymond Hargreaves. As always, I am indebted to John Gallagher
for all his support and to the late Douglas Jefferson, who
discussed some revenge plays with me in the book's early stages.
Students in my `Hamlet and Renaissance Revenge Tragedies'
seminar at University College Dublin, particularly William Moore,
Mary Boland, Kevin Power and Aoife Mahon, provided an
invaluable forum for the development of some of the ideas in
this book.
I would like to acknowledge the help I have had from Gavin
Clarke of the Royal National Theatre Archive, from Susan Brock
and Helen Hargest of the Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-upon-
Avon, and from Janet Birkett of the Theatre Museum, Covent
Garden. I am grateful to the Shakespeare Trust 's Jubilee
Education Fund for a generous grant towards the reproduction
of photographs.
This book is dedicated to the memory of two wonderful
teachers and academics. I first read and saw several of the plays
discussed in this book while at school. Without the intellectual
stimulation and academic encouragement of Barbara Peters it
could not have been written. The lectures and work of Inga-Stina
Ewbank as a scholar of Renaissance drama, and latterly her
friendship, have been a source of continued inspiration.

viii
 Biographical and
Historical Outline

The date of the first performance of many Renaissance plays can

only be approximate. The year given is the earliest possible date as
recorded in Alfred Harbage and S. Schoenbaum, Annals of English
Drama 975±1700, third edition, revised by Sylvia Stoler Wagon-
heim (London, 1989).

DRAMATISTS

Thomas Kyd born 1558, died 1594

Henry Chettle born c.1560, died 1607
George Chapman born c.1560, died 1634
William Shakespeare born 1564, died 1616
Thomas Middleton born 1570, died 1627
Thomas Heywood born c.1570, died 1641
John Marston born 1576, died 1634
John Fletcher born 1579, died 1625
John Webster born c.1580, died 1634
Francis Beaumont born c.1584, died 1616
John Ford born 1586, died post-1640

CHRONOLOGY

1562 Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, Gorboduc (Christ-

mas revels at the Inner Temple).
1567 Construction of the first purpose-built theatre, the Red
Lion, in Stepney, London.
Translation by Arthur Golding of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

ix
 BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL OUTLINE

1561 Birth of Francis Bacon.

1569 Suppression of the Corpus Christi plays in York.
1576 Construction of the Theatre by James Burbage.
1581 Centralized system of theatrical censorship enforced
under the Master of the Revels.
Publication by Thomas Newton of Seneca his Tenne
Tragedies.
1587 Construction of the Rose playhouse on the Bankside.
Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (performed in 1592 by
Strange's Men). Play revised 1601±2.
Execution of Mary Queen of Scots.
1588 The Spanish Armada.
Thomas Hughes, The Misfortunes of Arthur (Gray's Inn at
Court).
1589 A lost play of Hamlet, possibly by Thomas Kyd.
1589±92 William Shakespeare, probably with Pembroke's Men,
composes his first plays.
1592±94 Re-grouping of theatrical companies; formation of Lord
Chamberlain's Men (Shakespeare's Company) and the
Admiral's Men (their chief rivals). Plays performed at the
Theatre and the Rose.
1593 Death of Christopher Marlowe.
1594 Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (?Pembroke's Men).
1597 Publication of Bacon's Essays, including `Of Revenge'.
1599 Opening of the Globe.
Revival of companies of boy actors.
Certain verse satires, including work of John Marston,
ordered to be publicly burnt.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (Chamberlain's Men).
1600 John Marston, Antonio's Revenge (Children at Paul's).
Shakespeare, Hamlet (Chamberlain's Men).
1601 Essex's rebellion. Execution of the Earl of Essex for
treason.
1602 John Webster begins to write for the stage.
Henry Chettle, The Tragedy of Hoffman, or A Revenge for a
Father (Admiral's Men).
1603 Death of Queen Elizabeth. Accession of James I.
Lord Chamberlain's Men become the King's Men.
Publication of John Florio's translation of Montaigne's
Essays.

x
 BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL OUTLINE

1604 Patent granted to the company at the indoor theatre at

Blackfriars: the Children of the Queen's Revels.
Thomas Middleton begins to write satirical comedies of
London life for the Children at Paul's.
1605 Gunpowder plot.
Inigo Jones begins designing court masques.
Thomas Middleton, The Revenger's Tragedy (King's Men).
1607 Thomas Heywood, The Rape of Lucrece (Queen Anne's).
1610 Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy
(King's Men).
George Chapman, The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois (Chil-
dren of Whitefriars).
1611 Cyril Tourneur, The Atheist's Tragedy or The Honest Man's
Revenge (?King's Men).
1612 John Webster, The White Devil (Queen Anne's).
1614 John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (King's Men).
1615 John Ford, `Tis Pity She's a Whore (later performed by
Queen Henrietta's Men).
1620 Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women (? King's Men).
1622 Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Changeling
(Lady Elizabeth's Men).
1625 Death of James I; accession of Charles I.

xi
 References and Abbreviations

I have quoted Shakespeare from the most recent Arden editions of

the plays: Titus Andronicus, ed. Jonathan Bate (London, 1995);
Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins (London, 1982).
Quotations from The Spanish Tragedy, The Revenger's Tragedy, The
Atheist's Tragedy and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois are from Four
Revenge Tragedies, ed. Katherine Eisaman Maus (Oxford, 1995).
Other citations are from the following editions of the plays:
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy, ed. T. W.
Craik, Revels Plays (Manchester, 1988)
Henry Chettle, The Tragedy of Hoffman, ed. Harold Jenkins (Oxford,
1951)
John Ford, `Tis Pity She's a Whore, ed. Derek Roper, Revels Plays
(London, 1975)
John Marston, Antonio's Revenge, ed. Reavley Gair, Revels Plays
(Manchester, 1978)
Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women, ed. J. R. Mulryne, Revels
Plays (London, 1975)
Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Changeling, ed. N. W.
Bawcutt, Revels Plays (London, 1958; reprinted with additions, 1961)
Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, Gorboduc in Two Tudor
Tragedies, ed. William Tydeman (London, 1992)
Seneca, Thyestes in Four Tragedies and Octavia, trans. E. F. Watling
(Harmondsworth, 1966)
John Webster, The White Devil, ed. John Russell Brown, Revels Plays
(London, 1966)
John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, ed. John Russell Brown, Revels
Plays (London, 1964)
Biblical references are from the King James Bible (1611).
Abbreviations used in the notes:
PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association
SEL Studies in English Literature

xii
 Introduction:
Revenge and Revenge Tragedy

Revenge, as the infliction of harm in righteous response to

perceived injury or injustice, is a universal practice, transcultural
and pan-historical. As is most often the case in tragedy, the
enactment of revenge can be a personal desire, a sacred duty
that falls upon a member of a family or clan; or it can be part of
the collective consciousness of a victimized people. From duels
to punishment beatings, the impulse to revenge is a primitive
drive to retribution: A kills B and must be made to pay with his
life by someone who identifies with B. Retributive justice is seen
as effecting closure and restoring balance. Its starkest articula-
tion within the Judeao-Christian tradition is to be found in
Exodus: ‘And if any mischief follow then thou shalt give life for
life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe’
(Exodus 21:23–5). In the shockingly spectacular theatre of
Renaissance revenge tragedy we find the literal enactment of
such forms of retaliation; an original act of bodily mutilation is
replicated in a reprisal which matches or, more often, exceeds
the offence.
Indeed, acts of revenge tend to be more cruel and insatiable
than other acts of aggression. The very vocabulary of revenge, its
constitutive metaphors, gives expression to this extreme
punitive quality, as in the term ‘thirst for revenge’, and both
the verbal and the visual imagery of revenge tragedies convey
this compelling sense of thirst and appetite: ‘Now could I drink
hot blood,/ And do such bitter business as the day/ Would quake
to look at’ (III. ii. 351–3) declares Hamlet, sure now of the king’s
guilt, for once assuming the posture of a conventional avenger.
There is a kind of grotesque appropriateness in equating

1
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

revenge with feasting, in terms of the metaphors and cognates

of satiation. In Titus Andronicus Shakespeare borrows from the
description in Seneca’s Thyestes of Atreus’s revenge on his
brother Thyestes in depicting the repayment of atrocity as
culminating in the spectacularly brutal form of the cannibalistic
feast. A similar literal working of the vengeful appetite is
represented in John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge when Antonio
determines that his antagonist Piero will ‘feed on life’, in this
case Piero’s innocent son Julio. Antonio goes only so far as to
present Piero with a dish containing his son’s limbs, but his
barely submerged desire to close vengeance with a cannibalistic
banquet is clear. In Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy Hieronimo
imagines a fate for his son’s murderers which stops just short of
devouring them: he will, he declares, appeal to Proserpine in the
underworld that she ‘may grant/ Revenge on them that
murdered my son/ Then will I rend and tear them thus and
thus,/ Shivering their limbs in pieces with my teeth’ (III. xiii.
120–3). In Titus Andronicus and Antonio’s Revenge the respective
appetites of the revenger and of the offender ironically coalesce:
the metaphorical appetite of revenge is satisfied by the spectacle
or anticipation of the enemy’s physical satiation.
Seen from a social and moral perspective, such real or
imaginatively projected acts, evoking excesses of cruelty, would
be judged grotesque and deplorable and revenge the unleashing
of a base and dangerous emotion. Certainly, revenge is commonly
regarded as a barbaric practice because of its violent extremes
which frequently exceed an ‘eye for an eye’, perpetuating
indiscriminate and often gratuitous killing. Yet, the response
evoked by some revenge tragedies is more ambivalent as we
witness or hear of an injury – often cold-blooded murder – that is
itself base and dangerous and causes the protagonist to
experience gross injustice and an unbearable sense of loss. From
the perspective of a suffering individual, revenge can be
representative of a morally considered desire to keep faith with
the dead and a ritual of closure that brings liberation for the
protagonist. But it can extend beyond this, in that revenge may be
represented as conceivably the only way of restoring order in a
society where the political and moral framework has been
violated. The original offence is so great that nothing less than
extreme, counterbalancing wounds can be inflicted.

2
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

The ambivalence of feeling aroused by the misery of the

wronged individual or individuals, on the one hand, and the
wreckage of revenge on the other, has made revenge a
compelling dramatic form. Moreover, the extremity of the
emotions released in such acts, as well as the spectacular closure
they induce, has made revenge a recurrent subject of national
drama. From the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and
Euripides, whose myths were adapted, stripped of some of their
dignity, by the Roman philosopher and dramatist Seneca,
through to revenge and honour in Golden Age Spanish drama
of Lope de Vega and Calderón and their contemporaries of the
English Renaissance, revenge is a dramatic form with an
extensive cultural history. Dramatists have understood how
grief turns to anger so that the desire to revenge becomes a
violent obsession and, equally, the visceral fascination this
creates as theatre. Loss and rage distort the psyche of the
revenger and a determination is forged that retaliation should
exceed the original offence. In The Spanish Tragedy, generally
regarded as the first revenge play of the Elizabethan commer-
cial, popular theatres, Hieronimo resolves to revenge the
murder of his son Horatio by Lorenzo, the nephew of the King
of Spain; but he also vows that the killing will not stop with
Lorenzo. He declares that he will ‘marshal up the fiends in hell/
To be revenged on you all for this’ (III. xii. 77–8). ‘You all’, in the
play’s catastrophe, includes the prince’s innocent father, the
Duke of Castile, so that in the final reckoning the Spanish line of
succession is wiped out. In feuds – real or fictional – vengeance
breeds vengeance; violence escalates and all parties are
consumed in a domino effect of hatred and retaliation.
The prime motivation for such atrocious acts is the emotion of
anger which moral philosophers such as Plato, Seneca and
Cicero, widely read in the Renaissance, had argued was better
to be eradicated altogether while recognizing its deep-rooted
nature. Concluding his essay on anger, Montaigne quotes
Aristotle’s observation that choler can serve ‘virtue and valour
as a weapon’; but, adds Montaigne, ‘it must be some new-
fangled weapon; for we wield the other weapons: that one
wields us; it is not our hand that guides it: it guides our hand; it
gets a hold on us: not we on it.’1 Seneca, in three moral essays
describing anger as the most terrible and frenzied of all the

3
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

emotions, advocated the Stoic remedy of restraint.2 Seneca’s

plays of revenge – rhetorical dramas of declaration, not
performance – show the ghastly effects of anger. Figures such
as Hecuba, Medea, Atreus and Hercules are overwhelmed by it
and subsequently enact the most hideous forms of vengeance.
Thyestes murders his brother’s children; Medea murders her
own children in revenge against her adulterous husband Jason;
and Phaedre plots the destruction of her stepson Hippolytus
when he is unresponsive to her desires. The emotional
dynamics of revenge cause the abandonment of restraint and
can produce psychic disorder. In plays of the Renaissance we
witness protagonists like Titus in Titus Andronicus and Hieronimo
in The Spanish Tragedy metamorphosed by anger, devising and
performing atrocities. Anger feeds on anger and in both these
figures leads to moments of mental breakdown and insanity.
In his often-quoted essay ‘On Revenge’, Francis Bacon
differentiated between public revenge, an example of which
he gave as the death of Caesar and which is ‘for the most part
fortunate’, and private revengers deemed mischievous, vindic-
tive and unfortunate.3 The suggestion is that if the pursuit of
revenge is open and declared, rather than covert, the offence
may be mitigated. It was the plotting of private revenge, often in
the secluded setting of the court, which preoccupied Kyd,
Shakespeare, Marston and Webster. Playwrights, however,
invest revenge with varied moral shading according to the
nature of the private revenger. On the one hand, we have
revengers who act, as they see it, to bring justice and restore
balance; on the other, there are characters who declare revenge
and act in ways that are destructively self-advancing. Extreme
figures of hatred like Lorenzo in The Spanish Tragedy, Iago in
Othello and Aaron in Titus Andronicus appropriate or usurp
revenge as their motive while Titus, Hieronimo and Hamlet
associate revenge with justice and duty. Somewhere in between
are figures like Vindici in The Revenger’s Tragedy and Bosola in
The Duchess of Malfi.
As is clear from its usage in non-dramatic texts of the period,
revenge was not exclusively imbricated with issues of justice, but
also stemmed from less elevated instincts. John Norden, in The
Mirror of Honour, for example, commenting on the essential
qualities of the military commander, warns against envy, ‘for it

4
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

feedeth only upon the damnable desires of doing injury in the

best’ and a marginal note is added, ‘Envy will find matter to
bear colour of lawful revenge’.4 In juxtaposing ‘lawful’ and
‘revenge’, it is accepted that revenge may in some circumstances
be justified, while the point remains that, in Norden’s observa-
tion, revenge is used falsely to represent acts dictated by sinister
motives. There are illustrations of this appropriation in the plays
discussed in this book, as we see characters, identified in
Freudian terms as all id and ego, and bent on nothing but self-
advancement, employing the term revenge simply to remove
those who obstruct their desires.
If the revenger is far from a type character, what distinguishes
one forced by circumstance to plot in secret for some kind of just
reprisal from a villain who may deploy the term revenge as a
rationale for deadly intrigue? One possible distinction is that
with the latter there is an opacity of motive. Further, the
spurious revenger continues to shroud his action in secrecy once
the deed is done, while the revenger obsessed with obtaining
some kind of justice lays claim to his act. Lorenzo in The Spanish
Tragedy, after the murder of Horatio further conspires to cover
his tracks and wants his part to remain forever unknown. Iago’s
last contemptuous words are ‘Demand me nothing. What you
know, you know./ From this time forth I never will speak word.’
On the other hand, at the close of The Revenger’s Tragedy Vindici
proudly and – consistent with the play’s tone – gleefully
acknowledges himself and his brother as the duke’s murderers:
‘We may be bold/ To speak it now. ’Twas somewhat witty
carried,/ Though we say it; ’twas we two murdered him’ (V. iii.
95–7). The admission leads to his own execution. Hamlet’s dying
words are a request to his friend Horatio to report his ‘cause
aright’ and ‘tell his story’. For the protagonist of revenge plays
the act of revenge is one of closure, figuratively and literally as,
in his public identification with his deed, reparation is made for
the past and is sealed with his own death, while the malicious
schemer dies taking his secrets to the grave.
For the moralist such distinctions in the twisted or in the
psychologically complex motivations of revenge are largely
irrelevant. In Bacon’s view society cannot function if individuals
are allowed to seek redress on their own: ‘The more man’s
nature runs to [revenge], the more ought law to weed it out.’ A

5
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

system of justice can be seen as a human best endeavour to

provide an objective and impartial means of redressing wrongs.
A criminal justice system imposing formal punishment also
externalizes grief and offers the would-be avenger satisfaction.
Yet what happens when the offender is the sovereign or head of
state as, for example, in Hamlet, Antonio’s Revenge, The Maid’s
Tragedy and The Revenger’s Tragedy, or when justice is unobtain-
able, as in The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus? Bacon
acknowledges that ‘the most tolerable sort of revenge is for those
wrongs for which there is no remedy’, but with the caveat ‘Let a
man take heed the revenge be such as there is no law to punish;
else a man’s enemy is still beforehand, and it is two for one.’ The
corrupt state where wrongs cannot be remedied is a recurring
location for Renaissance plays as well as a metaphor, as in
Hamlet, for a more endemic human corruption. Where there is
no legal redress, an unwritten code is invoked. Revenge does
not necessarily put the law out of office, as Bacon affirms it does,
because in plays like The Spanish Tragedy, Antonio’s Revenge and
The Duchess of Malfi the law is seen to have no office in the first
place. Then the code of revenge becomes the closest approxima-
tion to law: a rough justice, or, as Bacon declared, a ‘wild justice’,
on the brink of anarchy.
There is no evidence in English Renaissance culture that
revenge was or could ever be officially condoned.5 For the
legislator revenge was repugnant to the natural law, while for
the moralist it was considered barbaric. In 1612 a Scottish noble
Lord Sanquire was brought to trial for taking vengeance on a
man who several years earlier had blinded him in one eye in a
fencing match.6 Francis Bacon, as Solicitor General, equated the
crime with vengeance: ‘Your temptation was revenge, which the
more natural it is to man, the more have laws, both divine and
human, sought to repress it.’ Bacon couples social and religious
prohibition. Yet biblical teaching was tangled and sometimes
paradoxical. On the one hand, as has been noted, the vengeful
god of Exodus, almost adumbrating the retributive bodily
mutilations of Renaissance tragedy, advocates ‘eye for eye,
tooth for tooth’. Again, in Numbers God tells Moses, ‘The
revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer: when he
meeteth him, he shall slay him’ (35:19). In Psalms there is
exultation in revenge: ‘The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth

6
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked’
(58:10). But this approval of violent retribution is superseded by
the teaching of the New Testament where the would-be
revenger finds little support for his actions. St Paul in his letter
to the Ephesians exhorts ‘Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the
sun go down upon your wrath’ (4:26). Paul makes it explicit that
vengeance usurps divine prerogative: ‘Recompense to no man
evil for evil’ (Romans, 12:17) and adds the much cited clause,
‘Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is
written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord’
(Romans, 12:19). The avenger might, however, see a loophole
here; just as Hamlet reflects on himself as God’s ‘scourge and
minister’ (III. iv. 176), the revenger might fashion himself as an
agent of divine justice or chastisement. But, overall, armed with
New Testament scripture, the theologian could only condemn
revenge, and the revenger has to quote selectively to find any
biblical sanction for his actions.
We cannot, though, innocently adopt dominant Elizabethan
ideologies against revenge as the context for reading revenge
tragedy. As an aesthetic domain, theatre is not bound to
replicate its culture’s orthodoxy. The instincts and dilemmas
which inhere in revenge, resisted in Bacon’s essay, make for
powerful theatre as the dramatist explores what the law-giver
forbids as an individual enterprise. In plays of revenge the
revenger is humanized, his predicament individualized and,
through the theatrical convention of the soliloquy, the audience
has access to the recesses of his mind. Moreover, by showing the
avenger’s inner self in conflict with the corrupt political world
he inhabits, the playwright can problematize the official
morality of revenge. There is a touch of the rebel or
revolutionary in several avengers in Renaissance theatre, as
they rise up against a state of the world they find intolerable.
Certainly, in drama stretching over several decades from the
1580s onwards, questions are raised which are largely absent in
anti-revenge advocacy. How does a protagonist respond to a
situation where revenge must be taken against a tyrant ruler,
even though it remains treason and means almost certain death
for the avenger? What happens when revenge is expected of an
individual not necessarily predisposed to act in such a way, as in
Hamlet? What happens psychologically to the individual in the

7
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

process of becoming a revenger? Bacon does indeed hint at a

response when he claims at the end of his essay that ‘vindictive
people live the life of witches’; but only the drama can represent
the terrible pressures on the mind created by the obligation to
revenge. Within the often extravagant and discursive plotting of
the revenge plays of the Renaissance such issues are embedded.
While these tragedies of revenge engage the audience at
moral, psychological, emotional and political levels, arguably
their most immediate impact lies in the ritualistic and
spectacular quality they possess. The staging of the rituals of
revenge is often visually impressive in symbolism and tableaux.
In Hoffman, Antonio’s Revenge, The Revenger’s Tragedy and ’Tis Pity
She’s a Whore, characters variously gather together to swear and
then enact vengeance. Revenge tragedy is a theatre of cruelty
and a theatre of blood, so much so that a play like Titus
Andronicus with its human sacrifice, rape and mutilation and
final act of cannibalism was judged so hideous that throughout
the eighteenth century it was thought not to be Shakespeare’s
work.7 But the play is of its kind. Whatever their exploration of
ethical and political issues, revenge tragedies are visceral in
their displays of horror and violence. Unlike the extreme acts of
classical tragedy, Renaissance playwrights did not report the
atrocity, but represented it on the stage. Audiences brought to
the theatre not only prior theatrical experiences of revenge but
other cultural and social associations. The ritualized ‘justice’ of
the private avenger could be said to correspond to the theatre of
punishment orchestrated by the state, which was witnessed by
theatre audiences in the public execution. Revenge tragedies
invert the process of state punishment and depict the subject
acting violently against autocracy. In Henry Chettle’s Tragedy of
Hoffman, for example, the opening stage direction reads strikes
open a curtain where appears a body. This is the corpse of Hoffman’s
father, executed by order of the state as a pirate and condemned
to die by being crowned with a scorching hot crown. Hoffman
addresses the corpse, ‘the dead remembrance of my living
father’, and vows revenge. In the next scene he is represented as
torturing to death with a searing crown his first victim, Prince
Otho, thus replicating his father’s death. The play closes with
Hoffman about to meet the same fate as his father and Otho at
the order of the Duke of Saxony. Here state revenge or

8
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

punishment and private revenge or retaliation become mirror

images of each other.
State punishment, like private revenge, was the rite that
concluded the crime and exceeded the savagery of the crime
itself.8 The punishment of a traitor – the monarch’s revenge –
was the most horrendous of deaths: although a few were
granted late reprieve, alleged traitors were drawn to the
gallows, hung, disembowelled while still alive and then be-
headed; aristocratic traitors were merely beheaded. As a symbol
of the state’s power to root out treason, the head of the traitor
was displayed on Tower Bridge. The ‘private’ revenges of
Antonio, Titus and Vindici are no more horrendous in their
physical torment and in the triumphant acknowledgement of
their vengeful acts than the institutionalized revenge of the
scaffold. Public executions often bore the specific mark of the
crime: the tongues of blasphemers were pierced; the right hand
of a murderer was cut off. Such theatrical representation of the
crime was in turn reproduced in the public theatres as revengers
such as Hoffman, Hamlet, to a point, and Vindici imitate, in
their acts of crowning and poisoning, the original ‘offence’ and
employ a similar symbolism. In this sense, in the visual imagery
they deploy, the plays do indeed re-present their culture’s
orthodoxy.

REVENGE AND GENRE

The appeal of revenge to playwrights both technically and

aesthetically is obvious. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
(1967), Tom Stoppard’s inventive and metadramatic response to
Hamlet, the Player remarks to Guildenstern, ‘There’s a design at
work in all art – surely you know that? Events must play
themselves out to aesthetic, moral and logical conclusion.’9
Despite a certain flippancy, we can see how pertinent the
observation is to revenge, which may be considered the
dramatist’s ideal weapon of choice, providing, as it does, a
hand chain of cause and effect on which to play. As a catalyst for
action, and as dramatic resolution, revenge, bound up with
ideologies of tyranny and absolutism and with more domestic
concerns of rivalry, love and honour, is remarkably adaptable to

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 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

different kinds of drama. In time, the repetition of the theme

and of accompanying motifs was to lead to elements of parody
in plays like The Revenger’s Tragedy and Antonio’s Revenge or, as in
Hamlet, more subtle and distinctive explorations of the complex-
ities of revenge. This very resilience and flexibility of revenge as
cause and motivation are demonstrated in the way that for
decades, through to the mid seventeenth century, dramatists
returned to and reshaped stories of revenge.10
Revenge – or the pursuit of revenge – is not, of course,
exclusive to tragedy. In the Elizabethan history play, dynasties,
factions and clans strive to avenge atrocities committed against
them. Shakespeare’s first tetralogy of history plays – the three
Henry VI plays and Richard III – is structured on an extensive
pattern of revenge as the Yorkists and Lancastrians kill in serial
retaliation. In Richard III the balance which revenge is seen to
effect is present in the play’s rhetorical patterning, notably in
the lines of the lamenting women. Queen Margaret in her
rebuke to the Duchess of York bitterly reflects on their
respective losses and the counterbalancing retribution: ‘Thy
Edward, he is dead, that killed my Edward:/ Thy other Edward
dead, to quit my Edward;/ . . .Thy Clarence, he is dead, that
stabbed my Edward’ (IV. iv. 63–7). Revenge forms part of the
epic scope of pre-Tudor history and as such it is represented less
in terms of individual responsibility and compulsion and more
in terms of historical necessity. This is less the case with
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, a classical history play that is
structured on revenge. In deeming public revenge admissible,
Bacon had cited the example of the assassination of Julius
Caesar or rather the reprisal against the assassins. In Julius
Caesar, however, no such clear moral exemplum emerges as we
see the shaping of source material for theatrical purposes and its
redirection for different political ends. Shakespeare invests the
historical narrative with an element of the popular revenge play
as Caesar’s ghost appears to Brutus predicting the victory of
Antony and Octavius over Brutus and Cassius at Philippi. The
dramatic narrative is altogether more morally complex than
Bacon’s passing remark would seem to allow as the assassin
Brutus considers that in murdering Caesar he is striking against
tyranny. Mark Antony and Octavius act decisively, but clearly
from mixed motives, to avenge the assassination. The play closes

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 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

not with a sense of retribution and appeasement for the murder

of Caesar, or the vindication of public revenge, but with a sense
of loss at the death of Brutus, recognized by his opponents as a
noble Roman. Interestingly, the dynamics of this historical
revenge play contrast with those of fictive, popular revenge
tragedy. In the latter, the audience often reaches some under-
standing of the loss and predicament of the avenger, whereas
revenge in the history play is seen as a weapon consciously
manipulated for political ascendancy.
As a universal response, revenge lends itself easily to comedy
where it provides a way of settling scores, by bringing
discomfiture and humiliation to the opponent, though not
physical injury.11 We can see this pattern in Marston’s The
Malcontent when the villain Mendoza is exposed and the
restored Duke orders him literally to be kicked out of Genoa.
In comedy, as so horrifically and spectacularly happens in
tragedy, one act of retaliation begets another. In Twelfth Night,
for example, a group of roisterers led by Sir Toby Belch take
revenge on the puritanical steward Malvolio for suppressing
their drunken revels by tricking him into believing that the
mistress of the household is in love with him. Malvolio’s
subsequent humiliation and torment lead to a darkening of
the mood of the comedy encapsulated in the threat to his
tormentors of further retaliation in his exit line: ‘I’ll be revenged
on the whole pack of you.’ By its very nature revenge adds
shades of darkness to comedy. One of the clearest illustrations
of this is The Merchant of Venice, the most intractable of
Shakespeare’s so-called romantic comedies. There is an inter-
esting fusion in this play of what in tragedy remains discrete;
that is, private revenge which is identified with the institutio-
nalized revenge of the law. In demanding a pound of Antonio’s
flesh as forfeiture for the merchant’s failure to repay the loan,
and in refusing Bassanio’s offer of its double repayment,
Shylock is clearly out for blood revenge. As Shylock ‘whets his
knife’ ready to slice Antonio’s flesh thereby causing his death,
and as Gratiano refers to the Jew’s ‘wolvish, bloody, starved, and
ravenous’ desires, we have the verbal and visual imagery of
revenge tragedy. The difference here, of course, is that this is
taking place in the civilized venue of the Venetian court
presided over by the Duke.

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 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

Shylock embodies the spirit of revenge and yet operates

within the parameters of the law and speaks the language of
public justice. When Bassanio asks him ‘Do all men kill the
things they do not love?’, Shylock’s reply is animated by hatred
for the Christian community (a hatred which can be understood
within the play) and by thoughts of revenge, ‘Hates any man the
thing he would not kill?’ Yet, as he reiterates, he stands for law,
and Portia, disguised as the lawyer, accepts that, despite the
strangeness of his case, the Venetian law cannot deny him. In
his pursuit of private revenge pursued in public, Shylock is
defeated not by Portia’s eloquent disquisition on mercy, but,
finally, by the law that is applied against him with the same
literalism with which he invoked it. He is within his rights to
demand a pound of Antonio’s flesh, but not to spill one drop of
Antonio’s blood. Recognizing his defeat, Shylock is prepared to
withdraw his demands and accept the money, but, here,
refracting the perpetuating tendencies of revenge, Shylock is
punished and humiliated by the court and the Christian
community as he is forced to surrender his wealth and religion
for threatening the life of a gentile. The Merchant of Venice just
keeps within the bounds of comedy, but, in its depiction of
revenge as colouring the relationship between Jew and
Christian, there is a disturbing anatomization of the malice,
envy and hatred that lie behind the supposed Venetian civility.
If genres other than tragedy employ motives and motifs of
revenge, it can also be said that a strain of black comedy is
intrinsic to revenge tragedy. Revenge tragedy is an unstable
genre shot through with elements of the grotesque and liable to
tilt into farce. Within the narrative structure of revenge plays
and the excesses of retaliation there is a darkly comic potential.
Taking the cue from Senecan avengers like Atreus, who declares
‘You cannot say you have avenged a crime/ Unless you better it’
(Thyestes, Act II, ll. 195–6), the retaliatory act outdoes the original
crime. But there is often something so melodramatic in this very
inordinate re-action that the audience, in some sense on the side
of the revenger, may be provoked into uneasy laughter at his
lavish, cruelly refined, but often aesthetically appropriate,
contrivances. Grotesque action threatens to topple over into
sickening farce, as in the cannibalistic feast in Titus Andronicus
and, in The Revenger’s Tragedy, Vindici’s whetting of the Duke’s

12
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

sexual desires with the dressed-up skeletal frame of Vindici’s

sometime lover Gloriana, before the Duke dies by kissing the
poisoned skull. Laughter is a mechanism of release not only for
the audience, but also for the characters, burdened with the task
of revenge, who take refuge in hollow laughter. One of the
defining moments in Titus Andronicus is when Titus hears that
his sons, whom he thinks he has saved by lopping off his hand,
have been executed: he can only laugh; he cannot even begin to
grieve. Hamlet’s bitter, sardonic humour, his quips and self-
mockery may be seen as ways of articulating and rising above
the conflicting pressures bearing down on him.
In his comprehensive study of revenge tragedy John Kerrigan
has commented on the comic strain of the plays and
distinguishes between the comic interludes and surprises of
other tragedies, which criticism tends to integrate, and comic
components of revenge plays, which spring spontaneously from
tragic action. ‘Repeatedly’, concludes Kerrigan, ‘vengeance
generates from out of its dramaturgical potential a strain of
awkward comedy which raises laughter and kills it.’12 We could
take this further and say that writers of revenge plays are
conscious and highly manipulative of the comic strain which
inheres in their material. For example, as Evadne, the female
avenger of The Maid’s Tragedy, ties the king to the bed ready to
stab him to death, the king is made to exclaim to his lover, ‘What
pretty new device is this, Evadne?’ (V. i. 47). Nervous laughter is
thus released immediate to the heinous act of killing the king – a
deed from which male characters have shied away. The
enactment of revenge within a masque or play, as in The
Revenger’s Tragedy, The Spanish Tragedy and Women Beware Women,
could be seen as something of a stage cliché, but again the
aesthetic distancing associates revenge with ‘play’ and artifice, a
contrived act which entertains as much as it disturbs or shocks.
In such scenes there is considerable dramatic irony as we move
between two levels of action – the apparent and the actual – and
the semblance of the ‘play’ is revealed to a startled on-stage
audience to be the murderous ‘reality’.
Renaissance revenge tragedies, as this study will illustrate,
are often highly metatheatrical in that playwrights borrowed
visual and verbal images from earlier plays to enhance a
theatrical artifice. At a time when originality was not particu-

13
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

larly valued, some recall of motifs in plays representing revenge

is to be expected. Presumably, the spectators’ pleasure in
watching such plays was bound up with the recognition of
redeployed devices they had witnessed in other works. In our
own time, of all revenge plays, Hamlet has acquired a cultural
centrality; but the textual evidence suggests this was true also in
the early seventeenth century. In The Atheist’s Tragedy, for
example, Charlemont’s meditations in the graveyard would
surely have recalled Hamlet’s evocative words as he gazes at the
skull of Yorick, his father’s jester, while the gravediggers are
preparing the grave of Ophelia. The actual and the assumed
madness in Chettle’s Hoffman also betrays the influence of
Hamlet. The Spanish Tragedy exerted its influence for decades on
subsequent revenge plays, notably in depicting revenge as
taking place under cover of a court entertainment or masque.
Several revengers carry with them physical emblems, reminders
of loss and duty: Hamlet writes down in his ‘tables’ the
injunction of the ghost to kill Claudius; Vindici carries the skull
of his dead lover Gloriana, and Hieronimo clasps the napkin
stained with the blood of his son Horatio.
The formal features outlined above bring a certain coherence
to a group of plays recognized as belonging to the tradition of
revenge tragedy. From the early twentieth century it has been a
critical practice to think of Renaissance plays with a revenge
theme, modelled on Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy and displaying a
debt to Seneca, as having a distinct generic identity.13 In
Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy Fredson Bowers examined the
genealogy of revenge tragedy beginning with Kyd. 14 In
Bowers’s account the genre developed by incorporating Germa-
nic and later Italian influences manifest in Jacobean and
Caroline plays. A similar approach is reflected in a more recent
study by Charles A. and Elaine S. Hallet, The Revenger’s Madness,
in which it is supposed that there is a certain configuration of
formal elements – notably the appearance of a ghost and the
madness, real or feigned, of the avenger – which defines and
delimits the approach.15 In her edition Four Revenge Tragedies
Katherine Eisaman Maus finds more socio-political than
dramatic congruence between plays as diverse as The Revenger’s
Tragedy and The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois (the latter, with The
Atheist’s Tragedy, classified as an anti-revenge play). Maus

14
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

acknowledges conventions and characteristics in common,

however idiosyncratically they are displayed, and observes that
a play of revenge can be better understood if it can be shown
how it deviates from the norms of its genre.16 What remains
problematic is defining the norms of the genre other than in
very general terms. Katherine Maus singles out the revenger’s
dilemma and his demands for justice in a politically corrupt
world, rather than any shared dramatic or theatrical qualities.
But, again, amongst the plays discussed in this study there is
much variation in the motivations and actions of individual
revengers and a demand for justice is not always paramount.
Formal elements can only roughly define a generic category:
ghosts appear and characters go mad in plays other than
revenge plays. Renaissance revenge plays, unlike classical
antecedents constructed entirely upon an archetypal pattern
of revenge orchestrated by the gods, are discursive in their
action and despite some shared features each has its own
peculiar accent in style and tone as well as its individual take on
revenge. Few plays then can be said to concentrate entirely on,
or expose, a fixed drive to revenge; typically, revenge plots
become complicated by court politics and intrigue, and by love
and sexual desire as well as counter-plots against the revenger.
The need to revenge can be induced by a gross miscarriage of
justice, but, equally, it is represented as a crime of passionate
retaliation for an offence or slight and as such elicits quite
different audience responses. Indeed, in later revenge plays
honour, variously defined and sometimes quite cynically
constructed, displaces justice as motivation. It is doubtful
whether Renaissance dramatists were aware that they were
consciously employing conventions of a defined tragic subgenre;
few Renaissance plays in their titles or title pages, in which it was
common practice to offer an elaborately descriptive subtitle, call
attention to the revenge theme or to the role of the protagonist as
revenger. Genres are not passively inherited, but made and re-
made every time a new play is written and performed. Verbal or
structural evocation of one revenge play does not necessarily
indicate a consciousness of genre and tradition; it can also denote
opportunistic borrowing. Indeed, the deployment of common
motifs often highlights aesthetic difference rather than depen-
dence.

15
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

The term ‘revenge tragedy’, with its implication of a specific

subgenre of tragedy, is then in the main resisted in this study, as
is the notion that The Spanish Tragedy can be regarded as a
template for subsequent plays. As I have argued, the nature of
revenge as it defines dramatic action is per se problematic. In The
Duchess of Malfi, for example, there is a counterpointing of
psychotic Ferdinand’s perverted revenge against his widow sister,
‘guilty’ only in so far as she disobeys him in remarrying, with that
of the intelligencer and murderer Bosola, whose conscience is
awakened, and who caps his many roles by assuming that of the
Duchess’s revenger. Revenge was used to signify cultural
‘otherness’. Marston in Antonio’s Revenge, Middleton in The
Revenger’s Tragedy and Women Beware Women and Webster in The
White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi exploited and heightened a
perception of the Italian city states, with their counter-reforma-
tion ideologies, as locations of corruption, feud and blood
revenge. When revenge can be associated with resentment as
in Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge and Massinger’s Duke of Milan, with
a primitive and anarchic justice as in Titus Andronicus and The
Spanish Tragedy, with providential justice as in The Atheist’s
Tragedy and with masculinity as in The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois,
the problems of establishing the genre become apparent.
With revenge so evident a theme in Renaissance drama, it is
legitimate to ask why particular plays have been selected for
discussion. The chapters will focus on plays in which revenge
figures either as a motive of dramatic action, usually leading to
the death of the protagonist, or as the matrix for more discursive
dramatic action. Rather than group plays entirely in chronolo-
gical order, the choice of texts discussed in individual chapters
has largely been determined by shared dramatic concerns or by
what revenge signifies in terms of justice, honour, divine
vengeance, gender and national identity. It is, of course,
necessary to have some sense of the dramatic chronology of
revenge tragedies, if only to be aware of the antecedents of a
specific play. But there is no simple trajectory of revenge
tragedy to suggest that as it developed self-consciously, the form
became, morally and aesthetically, outworn and decadent. There
were parodies of revenge by Marston and Middleton in the early
seventeenth century, implying a theatrical self-awareness, yet,
years after such serio-comic representation, revenge was again

16
 INTRODUCTION: REVENGE AND REVENGE TRAGEDY

presented with an ethical seriousness and psychological

intensity. Some plays we will examine might seem only
coincidentally revenge plays. While noting certain formal
characteristics and evident debts and intertexts, the aim of this
study will be, however, to consider each play on its own terms,
examining both the configuration of revenge and the distinctive
theatrical idiom.
Far from belonging to a genre that rehearses convention,
revenge plays show themselves to be unpredictable in their ways
of projecting ethical dilemma and unstable in their recourse to
farce, satire, parody and melodrama. Bacon’s axiom that revenge
is a kind of wild justice is an oxymoron in so far as it implies the
reparation of wrong through unruly and violent acts. ‘Wild’ also
encapsulates something of the aesthetic experience of plays of
revenge. Revengers, of course, become wild – distracted,
demented, out of their wits, passionately vehement or impet-
uous. Similarly, the action itself is not easily controlled, as wild
and spectacular responses bring us close to melodrama and
laughter becomes a defence against the bleak experience of loss
and violence. The wild justice we see enacted in these plays is a
response to something we could, by analogy, describe as wild
injustice. Its exponents, with their egotistical contempt for the
lives of others, inhabit a menacing space of infantile wilfulness
informed by adult urges. Theirs is a strange world, close to our
worst fears and hidden desires, and this explains the sense of
horror and fascination these plays continue to exert: a horror
which is, of course, held in check by the various transformations
effected by the illusion of theatre.

17
 1

Revenge and Justice:

Elizabethan Revenge Tragedies

The immense popularity of the first surviving revenge play of

the newly established commercial theatre, Thomas Kyd's The
Spanish Tragedy, spawned a dramatic preoccupation with the
theme for several decades. Kyd, like Shakespeare, was not
university educated, but the classical training he received at the
Merchant Taylors' School in London is well demonstrated in the
language, rhetorical style and imagery of The Spanish Tragedy.
The financially precarious profession of playwright was one of
the options available to a man with literary aspirations. Kyd's
career followed a very different path from that of Shakespeare ±
he died in penury ± but he made his mark as a pioneering
dramatist for the newly established commercial theatre.1 Indeed
one critic has gone as far as to identify Kyd alongside
Christopher Marlowe with the creation of Elizabethan tragedy.2
The intricate plotting, characterization and intuition of
theatrical effect make Kyd's play highly original, although, like
other popular revenge plays, it has antecedents in the academic
drama, specifically the dramatic works of Seneca (c.4 BC±AD 65)
and neo-Senecan drama. The plays of Seneca had been
translated into English by Jasper Heywood, John Neville and
John Studley in the mid sixteenth century and all the tragedies
were published by Thomas Newton in 1581.3 Seneca is often
perceived solely in terms of the atrocious crimes which his plays
relate and in this context Thyestes is most often cited as a prime
example of a play dominated by the outrageous acts of a
bloodthirsty revenger. In the play, Atreus, brother of Thyestes, is
caught up in a cycle of revenge incited by Tantalus, his uncle,

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 ELIZABETHAN REVENGE TRAGEDIES

whose tormented ghost summoned from the underworld

appears at the beginning of the play, asking `What ill am I
appointed for?' In response to Thyestes's rape of his wife,
Atreus plots to afflict him `with greater pain'. A servant
comments incredulously on Atreus's lack of pity in the final
act of vengeance, the murder of his brother's children: after the
ritual of their murder, described in piteous detail by the Chorus,
their limbs are served up as a feast to their father. In the English
translation by Jasper Heywood (1561) an additional soliloquy
was composed in which Thyestes appeals to the gods to avenge
this atrocity.4 Thus revenge continues in perpetuity.
In considering the horrific excesses of Senecan drama, it
should be remembered that in the Renaissance Seneca was also
admired for his loftiness of style, sententiousness and moral
seriousness. Elizabeth I had translated from Seneca's plays and
the English translation by Jasper Heywood of Troas was
dedicated to her. Thomas Newton, in his admiring preface to
Tenne Tragedies, warned against a literal reading of the plays
without due attention to style and dramatic context:
And whereas it is by some squeamish Areopagites surmised, that the
reading of the tragedies, being interlarded with many phrases and
sentences literally tending (at the first sight) sometime to the praise
of ambition, sometime to the maintenance of cruelty, now and then
to the approbation of incontinency, and here and there to the
ratification of tyranny, can not be digested without great danger of
infection: to omit all other reasons, if it might please them with no
forestalled judgement to mark and consider the circumstances, why,
where, and by what manner of persons such sentences are
pronounced . . . For it may not be thought and deemed the direct
meaning of Seneca himself, whose whole writings (penned with a
peerless sublimity and loftiness of style) are so far from countenan-
cing vice that I doubt whether there be any amongst all the
catalogue of heathen writers that with more gravity of philosophical
sentences, more weightiness of sappy words, or greater authority of
sound matter beateth down sin, loose life, dissolute dealing, and
unbridled sensuality: or that more sensibly, pithily, and bitingly
layeth down the guerdon of filthy lust, cloaked dissimulation and
odious treachery: which is the drift whereunto he leaveth the whole
issue of each one of his tragedies.
Seneca's preoccupation with power and its corruption was only
one aspect of his appeal to English Renaissance playwrights. His

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 REVENGE TRAGEDIES OF THE RENAISSANCE

style was much admired and emulated; Kyd, Shakespeare and

Marston draw on Seneca, either through direct citation, or
through the use of set descriptive passages, the grieving lament
and stichomythia. Formally, popular playwrights revealed an
indebtedness to Seneca in their depictions of tormented or
vindictive ghosts from the underworld, or through an appeal to
mythic structures of relentless revenge.5 We can see how the
appeal to Seneca and the adaptation of Senecan material was a
means of validating vernacular drama. Recourse to Seneca gave
the new, popular and commercial Elizabethan theatre cultural
capital.
Seneca's plays were read or performed under private
auspices; that is, at court, at the inns of court and at the
universities. Oedipus and Medea were read ± or declaimed ± in
Latin and were possibly even treated to some kind of restricted
performance in Cambridge colleges in the decades before
Newton's edition.6 Plays were also written at least partially in
imitation of Seneca. Amongst the various entertainments,
intellectual disquisitions and debates scheduled for Elizabeth
I's visit to Oxford in 1564, there was a performance in the hall of
Christ Church of a Latin play Progne, now lost.7 The play was
evidently a representation of the violent story told in the sixth
book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, later to be evoked by Shakespeare
in Titus Andronicus, in which Procne wrought revenge on her
husband Tereus for his rape of her sister, Philomel. One of the
students, Bereblock, described the play and his response to it:
It is wonderful how she [Procne] longed to seek vengeance for the
blood of her sister. She goes about therefore to avenge wrongs with
wrongs, and injuries with injuries; nor is it all reverent to add crimes
to crimes already committed . . . And the play was a notable
portrayal of mankind in its evil deeds, and was for the spectators, as
it were, a clear moral of all those who indulge too much either in
love or in wrath, each of which even if they come to fairly good men
nevertheless inflame them with too strong desire, and make them far
fiercer and more ungovernable, and very different in voice,
countenance, spirit, in word and deed, from moderation and self-
control.8
What is interesting about this response is the moralistic tone,
very much in keeping with the condemnations of anger and
retaliation expressed in the essays of Seneca, Bacon and

20
 ELIZABETHAN REVENGE TRAGEDIES

Montaigne. Extreme emotions lead only to self-destruction.

When revenge is transposed to the public theatres, however, it
becomes more histrionic in its representation and, as dramatists
recognized the potential in subverting the clear moralistic tone
of earlier academic drama, the plight of the revenger came to
elicit a more complex response.
Revenge was also a theme of Senecan academic plays, such as
Gorboduc, performed before Queen Elizabeth in 1570 by the
Gentlemen of the Inner Temple, and The Misfortunes of Arthur
(1588), also performed at court. In the former play, drawing on
the myth of Britain rather than classical mythology, the authors
Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton depict Gorboduc divid-
ing his kingdom between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex.
Counsellors advise against such a policy, `for with one land, one
single rule is best' and, predictably, political anarchy follows.
Ferrex, angry that his father, in dividing the kingdom, has
ignored his alleged rights as elder son, vows to avenge the
offence, but he is fatally pre-empted in his action: a messenger ±
following classical precedent in reporting violent acts ± recounts
the murder of Ferrex by Porrex, who now enters into sole
possession of the realm. Gorboduc, in an appeal which will be
reiterated time and again on the Elizabethan stage, calls on
heaven for retributive justice and, amplifying his distress,
invokes his own destruction: `O Heavens, send down the
flames of your revenge/ Destroy, I say, with flash of wreackful
fire/ The traitor son, and then the wretched sire' (III. ii. 946±8).
But such appeals are rhetorical only, as revenge is effected not
by divine but by human agency. Videna, mother of Ferrex and
Porrex, laments the death of Ferrex and, without any of the
deliberation which will characterize later revenge plays, vows
revenge on her son Porrex: `To thine own flesh, and traitor to
thyself,/ The gods on thee in Hell shall wreak their wrath/ And
here in earth this hand shall take revenge' (IV. i. 1004±6). Porrex
cannot hope to escape `just revenge' and his murder at the
hands of his mother is reported by Marcella, attendant to
Videna. Cruelty of brother towards brother is now transmuted
to that of mother against child in Marcella's lament: `Will ever
wight believe that such hard heart/ Could rest within the cruel
mother's breast/ With her own hand to slay her only son' (IV. ii.
1234±6). Gorboduc represents what Bacon would have judged

21
 REVENGE TRAGEDIES OF THE RENAISSANCE

public revenge in the sense that there is no secret plotting or

devising of elaborate strategies; one action inexorably follows
another. The play also presents the apparent complicity of
divine and human agencies as Marcella bemoans the `hard cruel
heart' that could `lend the hateful destiny that hand'. Gorboduc,
admired by a neo-classicist such as Sir Philip Sidney for its tragic
decorum and adherence to classical form, is a mythic antecedent
for Shakespeare's more indeterminate King Lear. Any political
message in Shakespeare's play remains open and opaque; not
so in Gorboduc, which carries the clear political moral that lack of
strength and unity at the centre of power will lead only to chaos
in the realm, while the revenge theme carries an equally
exemplary moral in its articulation of vengeance as unnatural,
destructive and self-perpetuating.

THE SPANISH TRAGEDY

Twenty-nine performances of The Spanish Tragedy are recorded

between 1592 and 1597: an impressive number exceeded only by
two other plays ± Christopher Marlowe's Jew of Malta and a lost
play, The Wise Man of West Chester ± according to extant records.9
The continuing appeal of The Spanish Tragedy is recorded in the
Induction to Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair (1614), where the
scrivener reads a mock agreement, drawn up between the
playwright and the audience: a pretext for Jonson to project an
image of his ideal audience and of a critically discerning
reception of his play. Consistency and constancy of judgement
are to be commended: `He that will swear Jeronimo or Andronicus
are the best plays yet, shall pass unexpected at, here, as a man
whose judgement shows it is constant, and hath stood still,
these five and twenty, or thirty years'. The Spanish Tragedy,
known here by the name of its protagonist Jeronimo or
Hieronimo, is coupled with another, near contemporaneous,
revenge tragedy, Titus Andronicus. Both are offered as examples
of plays which have, despite competing dramatic aesthetics,
retained their popularity and, in rather patronizing vein, the
scrivener concludes that, while such taste in drama betokens a
certain ignorance, `it is a virtuous and staid ignorance'. If
theatrical anecdotes can be credited, the popularity of The

22
 ELIZABETHAN REVENGE TRAGEDIES

Spanish Tragedy extended well beyond the composition of

Bartholomew Fair and into the Caroline period. Richard
Braithwait, in his book on female conduct, The English Gentle-
woman, refers disapprovingly to women who make `pleasure
their vocation' and cites as example an occasion when a dying
woman cried out vehemently for `Hieronimo'.10 That one of the
earliest plays of the Elizabethan stage is recalled in a work which
belongs to an era characterized by more elitist theatre, attests to
the sustained theatrical impact of the play. The remarkable
influence of The Spanish Tragedy is further borne out by its
evocation in early revenge plays, as they notably trade on its
success by displaying a similar concern with visual effects,
detailed plotting, the portrayal of overwhelming emotion and
an intense sense of injustice on the part of the protagonist.
Amongst other venues, the play was performed at the Rose
playhouse owned by Philip Henslowe, the first of the theatres
erected on the Bankside, which also doubled as a venue for bear
and bull baiting. It is from Henslowe's records of performances
and payments, his so called `Diary', that we learn of the
considerable number of revivals of the play.11 The Rose
playhouse was built in 1587 and, although we cannot say that
the play was written with this venue specifically in mind, Kyd
seems to have well understood the representational demands of
the new theatrical space available to him; in particular, the art of
constructing a play to be presented on the large, exposed stage
of the amphitheatre (the Rose stage was wide, but shallow). The
Spanish Tragedy is expressively theatrical in its dramatic
exploitation of sensational spectacle and of the rhetorically
patterned speech of lamentation and distraction. Departing
from classical precedents, Kyd relies hardly at all on the indirect
narration of his story by a Chorus or by messengers. The Chorus
of The Spanish Tragedy, unseen spectators of action which has
been predetermined, performs quite a different function. In the
play proper, Kyd combines a complex plot of intrigue and,
through Hieronimo's soliloquies, some sense of interiority
which gives his drama a new psychological dimension and
credibility.
As with subsequent revenge plays, and in contrast to the
single narrative of most classical revenge tragedies, The Spanish
Tragedy represents revenge and counter-revenge plots. The play

23
 REVENGE TRAGEDIES OF THE RENAISSANCE

opens with the ghost of the Spanish knight Don Andrea, who
informs us of his death in battle with the Portuguese, of his love
for Bel-imperia, niece to the King of Spain, and, finally, his quest
for revenge in the underworld. Andrea's desire for vengeance
frames the play, but the dramatic focus shifts away from it to the
alliance of Lorenzo, brother to Bel-imperia, and Balthazar, son of
the Viceroy of Portugal, and their malicious machinations in
murdering Horatio, friend to Andrea and son of Hieronimo.
Knight Marshal of Spain. Balthazar and Lorenzo construe their
murder of Horatio as revenge for Horatio's wooing of Bel-
imperia. It is Bel-imperia, who for ambivalent motives initiates
the love affair; but Lorenzo and Balthazar insist on seeing
Horatio as challenging the play's rigid social hierarchy in his
declarations of love, and they cruelly pun on his seeming
aspiration as they hang up his body: `Although his life were still
ambitious, proud,/ Yet is he at the highest now he is dead' (II. iv.
59±60). Balthazar's readiness to act as an accomplice to the more
sinister Lorenzo is explained by resentment and frustration
which he glosses as revenge. Horatio's death prompts Hier-
onimo's vengeance, which, far from the dispassionate contri-
vance of Lorenzo and Balthazar, produces outraged suffering
and moments of insanity. Further complications ensue with
Lorenzo's intrigue to ensure that none of his accomplices in the
murder of Horatio survive to betray him, and thus he engineers
the deaths of Serberine and Pedringano. Lorenzo's double-
dealing is in a sense replicated by Hieronimo's elaborate
plotting of revenge during the performance of Soliman and
Perseda, but in Hieronimo's case the double-dealing is more
complex: those who profess themselves innocent ± the actual
murderers ± play the murdered, unwittingly and in earnest.
The play encompasses pagan and Christian rhetoric for and
against revenge. In a similar cultural cross-current, it juxtaposes,
in the figures of the Chorus, the spirit of Revenge and the ghost
of Andrea, intimates in the pagan underworld, with characters
inhabiting Catholic Renaissance courts of Spain and Portugal.
There might seem to be some conflict between the two dramatic
constructs. In his soliloquy in Act 3, Hieronimo, presented as an
apparent agent of free will, agonizes over whether to revenge or
leave vengeance to God. Yet, from the opening chorus when
Andrea tells us that Proserpine has granted him Revenge as his

24
 ELIZABETHAN REVENGE TRAGEDIES

companion, we know that Revenge is scripting the tragedy.

Revenge is directed and controlled by the powers of the
underworld much as the Furies in classical plays determine
retribution, and this mythic necessity is commensurate with
Hieronimo's inner compulsion to revenge. Although in the
Choruses at the end of each act Andrea expresses impatience at
the leisurely way Revenge seems to be going about his purpose,
Revenge's words to Andrea leave us in no doubt of the outcome.
At the close of Act 2, Andrea is incredulous: not only has his own
killing in battle not been acquitted, but his friend Horatio has
now been murdered by Lorenzo and Balthazar. In a memorable
image, Revenge intimates that events will take their prescribed
course:
ANDREA. Broughtst thou me hither to increase my pain?
I looked that Balthazar should have been slain,
But `tis my friend Horatio that is slain . . .
REVENGE. Thou talkest of harvest when the corn is green.
(II. v. 1±6)

At the end of the third act, when Andrea is yet again

importuning Revenge to awaken, Revenge reminds him that
the characters are unconsciously fulfilling the destiny he has
dictated: `Behold, Andrea, for an instance how/ Revenge hath
slept, and then imagine thou/ What `tis to be subject to destiny.'
Events in the Spanish court are not then simply historicized
through the projection of the Spanish/Portuguese conflict; we
are also encouraged to share the Chorus's perspective of an
endless cycle of crime and retribution.
Being of the action but not in it, the Chorus occupies an
ambiguous space that is open to definition in the performance of
The Spanish Tragedy. Possibly in a gallery on high or standing at
the side of the stage, even occasionally intermingling with the
characters, Revenge is a constant reminder of an infernal
presence and of the illusory nature of Hieronimo's apparent
free will. Modern productions have made effective use of these
two extra-dramatic characters, interweaving them into the stage
action, visible ± as is their purpose ± only to the audience. There
is an element not only of tension but of comedy between the
impatient, incredulous Andrea and the laconic, deliberate
Revenge who sleeps out part of the play's action. In the

25
 REVENGE TRAGEDIES OF THE RENAISSANCE

production staged in the small Cottesloe auditorium of the Royal

National Theatre in 1982,12 Revenge was there to prompt
Hieronimo (Fig. 1). Clad in black leathers, suggesting both an
executioner and an exhausted stage hand, and smoking
cheroots, Revenge handed out the props of Bel-Imperia's letter
and Hieronimo's dagger, while Don Andrea stood aghast at the
tardiness of his work. Kyd presents what we might now see as a
Brechtian effect in that the audience is distanced from the
action; the play is a pageant working towards a foreseeable
conclusion. The extremities of Hieronimo's passion also con-
tribute towards this effect as his rhetorical expression makes us
aware of the actor playing the part and thus our response shifts
from empathy to understanding.
In Renaissance drama, relationships between literary texts are
endemic as dramatists drew eclectically from a wide range of
materials. In The Spanish Tragedy Kyd is clearly indebted to the
plays of Seneca, not only ± as in Thyestes, Trojan Women,
Agamemnon and Hercules Furens ± for his revenge theme, but
also for the play's rhetorical style. Hieronimo's laments for the
death of Horatio recall the sorrowing Hecuba's laments in Trojan
Women for the downfall of Troy and the murder of her husband
Priam. The passages descriptive of the underworld in the
Chorus speeches of Don Andrea in The Spanish Tragedy are
reminiscent of Theseus's account to Amphitryon of the inexor-
able torments of the underworld in Hercules Furens. In contrast
to the more amplified speeches of lament and evocative
description, Seneca also employs stichomythia, a quick-fire
dialogue of repartee and rejoinder. Kyd lacks the occasion for
this, but he would seem to like the effect, since he does
something similar in the wooing of Horatio by Bel-imperia,
during which the eavesdropping Balthazar and Lorenzo
interject their own twisted interpretations. The latter, of course,
go unheard and receive no reply, making their rejoinders asides;
nevertheless the dialogue and interjections have the antagonist
force typical of stichomythia.
In producing the first revenge tragedy of the popular theatre
Kyd's debts were not only literary ones. The Spanish Tragedy has
evident links with other cultural practices.13 Both the place of
execution and the platform where plays were performed were,
in the early modern period, known as a scaffold. In The Spanish

26
Figure 1. Peter Needham as Revenge and Michael Bryant as
Hieronimo in the 1982 Royal National Theatre production of Kyd's
The Spanish Tragedy, directed by Michael Bogdanov. With the
permission of the photographer Laurence Burns.

27
 REVENGE TRAGEDIES OF THE RENAISSANCE

Tragedy the link between stage and scaffold is particularly

apparent as Kyd constructs dramatic entertainment for the
public theatre from the images of public execution. We could say
that The Spanish Tragedy imaginatively represents part of public
life where atrocity was acceptable. Hieronimo discovers the body
of his son Horatio hanging in the bower where, like a common
criminal, he has been strung up following the murder plot
contrived by Lorenzo and Balthazar. That this image was central
to the play's theatrical iconography is suggested by the woodcut
on the title page of an edition of the play published in 1615
depicting the hanging corpse of Horatio in the bower (see
frontispiece). The woodcut represents the figures of Hieronimo,
bearing a sword and torch (to convey night on the undarkened
stage), with the caption `Alas it is my son Horatio'; Bel-imperia
appealing to Hieronimo in the caption `Murder, help Hieroni-
mo'; and a masked Lorenzo holding Bel-imperia, with the
words `Stop her mouth'. The dramatic configuration relates to
Act 2, scene 4, and compresses stage action: Hieronimo is not, of
course, present at the murder of his son, nor are Bel-imperia and
Lorenzo present at Hieronimo's discovery. Following the murder
of Horatio, Bel-imperia is forcibly removed from the scene,
leaving the stage ready for the shocking revelation to the father
of the dead son. The image, on the other hand, brings together
all the actors in the plots of murder and of retribution.
The scene of execution is re-enacted ± this time in a scene of
officially sanctioned justice ± when Pedringano is executed for
his murder of Serberine (following instructions from Lorenzo).
The scene incorporates black humour as Pedringano on the
scaffold persists in his belief that Lorenzo will intervene for his
reprieve, jesting with the hangman and prompting his
comment, `Thou art even the merriest piece of man's flesh that
e`er groaned at my office door' (III. vi. 80±81). In practice,
gallows humour was not uncommon; prisoners would jest with
the hangman or pun on their fate. But the most astonishing
deployment of the scaffold image comes in the catastrophe, as
Hieronimo, after wreaking destruction on the House of Castile,
reveals both that the tragedy that they have witnessed is no
mere spectacle and the part he has played:
No, princes, know I am Hieronimo,
The hopeless father of a hapless son,

28
 ELIZABETHAN REVENGE TRAGEDIES

Whose tongue is tuned to tell his latest tale. . .

Behold the reason urging me to do this!
(IV. iv. 82±7).

Here, the stage direction reads `Shows his dead son', conveying
the effect of Hieronimo drawing back a curtain which he had
fastened up at the beginning of the previous scene, to expose
the body of Horatio. Corpses of victim and murderer are
simultaneously displayed; the sight of the bodies of Horatio and
Lorenzo represents restored symmetry that is reinforced in
Hieronimo's rhetorically patterned words.
It is possible to argue that Kyd panders to an audience's
voyeuristic curiosity in the repeated use of the hanging,
mutilated corpse in a manner reminiscent of the public
executions at which they might equally be spectators. In Hamlet,
a later revenge play that owes much to ± but drastically departs
from ±The Spanish Tragedy, the corpses, until the catastrophe, lie
hidden, undisclosed. Hamlet 's father insists that what he
undergoes in purgatory is too hideous to speak of. Kyd, on
the other hand, presents death as grisly spectacle. The final
Chorus, in projecting the fates of Lorenzo, Balthazar, Pedringa-
no and Serberine, holds out the prospect of eternal torment as
revenge is perpetuated ad infinitum. Death may appear to end
their misery, but, concludes Revenge, `I'll there begin their
endless tragedy.' His words evoke the public execution where
the purpose was to inflict torture and torment that would be
replicated after death in the Hell of the damned. If there is an
element of voyeurism, however, it is integrated into the drama
as spectacle is consistently reinforced by the play's verbal effects.
Visual and verbal images effectively complement each other
throughout the play. Hieronimo crazily imagines a journey to
the underworld, `to th'Elysian plains', where he will recover his
murdered son Horatio and his distraught determination to `rip
the bowels of the earth' is accompanied by the equally hysterical
gesture of hacking at the stage with his dagger. By juxtaposing
visual and verbal in this way there is an imaginative exploration
of the nature of the violence to which Hieronimo is exposed and
which he inwardly experiences.
Like Hamlet, Hieronimo's suffering leads him to contemplate
suicide. It is characteristic of Kyd's style that, unlike Hamlet,
Hieronimo's dilemma is externalized as he delivers his soliloquy

29
 REVENGE TRAGEDIES OF THE RENAISSANCE

on suicide with emblematic stage props. He enters (III. xii)

carrying a poniard and rope and considers that his death would
gain him entry to the underworld, where access to its monarch,
Pluto, might give him the justice he has been denied on earth.
But he draws back ± `Who will revenge Horatio's murder then?'
± and in a symbolic gesture flings away the dagger and halter. A
similar emblematic use of stage properties to articulate the
protagonist's state of mind is evident in the following scene (III.
xiii) when Hieronimo enters with a book in his hand. From the
ensuing soliloquy it is not clear what the book is ± a play (or the
plays) of Seneca or the Bible, as he refers to both ± and, true to
the congruence in the play of pagan and Christian, he conflates
classical stoicism and Biblical teaching in deliberating on his
course of action. Should he leave vengeance to heaven which
will not `suffer murder unrepaid', and besides, `Mortal men may
not appoint their time'? Or, alluding to Seneca's play Agamem-
non, should he `strike, and strike home where wrong is offered
thee'? In contrast with Hamlet's soliloquies, where so much
remains unresolved and where any sense of resolution is
negated by subsequent meditation, Hieronimo does resolve his
dilemma and decides on a course of action:
And, to conclude, I will revenge his death!
But how? Not as the vulgar wits of men,
With open, but inevitable ills,
As by a secret, yet a certain mean,
Which under kindship will be cloaked best.
(III. xiii. 20±24)

Thus, indecision is temporary and Hieronimo embarks on a

cunning strategy of revenge that will involve lulling his enemies
into a false sense of security. In the next soliloquy, revenge ±
now `sweet revenge' ± is projected unequivocally as the only
possible course of action. He reveals little of his plan, however,
and the audience are kept guessing as to his strategy, so that it
could be, as Isabella `believes', that he has none at all.
As a tragic subject Hieronimo is characterized first by grief,
then by his sense of inordinate injustice and mental suffering
which lead to moments of madness. At the beginning of the play
Hieronimo is clearly esteemed by the king, who is anxious that
he be awarded the ransom money due to Horatio for his capture

30
 ELIZABETHAN REVENGE TRAGEDIES

of Balthazar. Yet the king later accepts without question the

words of his nephew Lorenzo, who dismisses Hieronimo as `in a
manner lunatic'; in the inflexible class structure of the play the
word of royalty is taken before that of a loyal servant. In the
early stages of the play his identity is indeed that of a dedicated
servant to the crown. He sits in judgement on Pedringano for his
murder of Serberine; he is faithful to the idea of full retribution
and condemns Pedringano to death as a common criminal, to be
hung on the scaffold. This brings a further reflection of
Horatio's ignominious death and when Hieronimo observes
`This makes me to remember thee my son', his words carry more
weight than he knows. The hanging corpse painfully reminds
him of Horatio's similar fate, yet he is ignorant of the part
Pedringano has played in Horatio's murder. His role as Knight
Marshall is indeed ironic: he is an arbiter of justice, but for him
justice is denied. He appeals to the highest authority, the king,
for retribution for Horatio's murder; but his passionate out-
pourings of loss and his manic gestures make it easy for Lorenzo
to convince the king and court that, in coveting the ransom
promised to Horatio, Hieronimo has become mad. His distracted
pleas go unheeded amidst the formal court business and when
justice through royal channels is denied him, Hieronimo sees
private revenge as the only alternative. If he cannot find legal
redress, he must become the executioner himself.
It could be argued that when Hieronimo embarks on revenge,
which encompasses the innocent as well as the guilty, this marks
a transition from heroic status to that of villain, but this seems
rather too simplistic. Hieronimo's actions are grounded in moral
deliberation; his compulsive responses are entirely credible,
emanating first from grief and then from a sense of injustice. His
soliloquy when he discovers his murdered son captures his
distracted passions. As the elaborate conceits convey ± eyes are
`fountains fraught with tears' ± he is overwhelmed by sorrow. In
the final scene, when the audience views Horatio's corpse,
Hieronimo's speech carries the weight of emotion, expressive of
unbearable loss and an aching need for retribution:
See here my show, look on this spectacle!
Here lay my hope, and here my hope hath end;
Here lay my heart, and here my heart was slain;
Here lay my treasure, here my treasure lost;

31
 REVENGE TRAGEDIES OF THE RENAISSANCE

Here lay my bliss, and here my bliss bereft;

But hope, heart, treasure, joy, and bliss,
All fled, failed, died, yea, all decayed with this.
From forth these wounds came breath that gave me life;
They murdered me that made these fatal marks.
The cause was love, whence grew this mortal hate.
(IV. iv. 88±97)

Despite the verbal artifice in the use of alliteration and

repetition, the emotion breaks through the formal patterning:
the lines effectively convey the depths of suffering and
encapsulate the extremities of love and hate which compel
revenge. Hieronimo's heightened feelings are communicated in
.

the distortion of his logical patterns of thought. Horatio's death

is metaphorically the death of his father. The self-observation
`They murdered me that made these fatal marks' should
rationally precede the impulse to revenge which has energized
Hieronimo: `From forth these wounds came breath that gave me
life.' The point is simply made: love for Horatio breeds hatred
for his killers.
Horatio's body is a constant reminder to his father of inner
trauma, as well as a powerful symbol of murder and injustice. In
The Spanish Tragedy physical objects are powerful mementoes
and, like places, trigger memory of what has been lost. The
napkin given to Horatio by Bel-imperia, who had received it
from Andrea, serves this function. Hieronimo claims the napkin
and with it mops up his son's blood on discovering the body in
his bower. Subsequently, Isabella, before killing herself, razes
the bower to the ground in an attempt to destroy the memory of
± and avenge herself upon ± the place where her son was
murdered (IV. ii). The handkerchief, symbolic of love and death,
is obsessively retained and produced at key moments in the
drama. One particular episode illustrates the way Kyd uses his
stage properties so effectively. In the midst of his soliloquy
when he is meditating on the rights and wrongs of revenge,
Hieronimo breaks off, hearing a noise. He is approached by
three citizens and an old man. The citizens ask Hieronimo, in
his position as Knight Marshal, to intervene on their behalf
before the king. Hieronimo questions each of them and asks of
the Old Man what is the cause of his supplication (Fig. 2). In
what appears as a bizarre coincidence, one which is typical of

32
33
Figure 2. Daniel Thorndike as Balzuto and Michael Bryant as Hieronimo in the 1982 Royal National
Theatre production of Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, directed by Michael Bogdanov. With the
permission of the photographer Laurence Burns.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
the seventh century is instructive. Ægilberht, a Frank, had
succeeded Birinus, the first missionary bishop; but, from some cause
or other, he lost the favour of the king[864], who proposed to divide
his diocese, which was too large in fact for one prelate, and to
appoint Wini, a native Westsaxon, to the second see. Ægilberht then
withdrew from England in disgust, and the king committed the
undivided bishopric to Wini: but on some subsequent
misunderstanding, this bishop was expelled from Wessex, and
afterwards purchased the see of London from Wulfhari, king of the
Mercians. Coinwalh then applied for and obtained another bishop
from Gaul in the person of Liuthari or Lothaire, Ægilberht’s nephew.
Equally great irregularities seem to have been admitted in respect to
the Northumbrian sees in the time of Wilfrið; and indeed throughout
the Anglosaxon history it appears that the ruling powers, that is the
king and the witan, did in fact succeed in retaining the nomination of
the bishops in their own hands[865]. I have already mentioned
instances of episcopal nominations by the witena gemót[866], and
called attention to the significant fact of so many royal chaplains
promoted to sees[867]. It is difficult no doubt to withstand a royal
recommendation, and though in the case of the Anglosaxon prelates
this does not always seem to have ensured the canonical virtues, it
perhaps very sufficiently supplied their want. After the appointment
or election had thus been made, it was usual for the bishop elect to
make his profession of faith to his metropolitan; then to receive
episcopal consecration from him, assisted by such of his suffragans
as he thought fit. He then most likely received seizin of the
temporalities in the usual way by royal writ. The following is the
instrument issued in 1060, for the temporalities of the see of
Hereford, on the appointment of Walther, queen Eádgyfu’s Lorraine
chaplain. “Eadwardus rex saluto Haroldum comitem et Osbearnum,
et omnes meos ministros in Herefordensi comitatu amicabiliter. Et
ego notifico vobis quod ego concessi Waltero episcopo istum
episcopatum hic vobiscum, et omnia universa illa quae ad ipsum
cum iusticia pertinent infra portum et extra, cum saca et cum socna,
tam plene et tam plane sicut ipsum aliquis episcopus ante ipsum
prius habuit in omnibus rebus. Et si illic sit aliqua terra extra dimissa
quae illuc intus cum iustitia pertinet, ego volo quod ipsa reveniat in
ipsum episcopatum, vel ille homo ipsam dimittat eidem in suo
praetio, si quis ipsam cum eo invenire possit. Et ego nolo ullum
hominem licentiare quod ei de manibus rapiat aliquam suam rem
quam ipse iuste habere debet, et ego ei sic concessi[868].”
As this is obviously, indeed professedly, a Latin translation, I
subjoin copies of the similar writs issued on the occasion of Gisa’s
appointment to the see of Wells[869].
“✠ Eadward king grét Harold erl and Aylnóð abbot and Godwine
schýre réuen and alle míne þeynes on Sumerseten frendlíche; and
ich kýðe eów ðæt ich habbe geunnen Gisan mínan préste ðes
biscopríche hér mid eów and alre ðare þinge ðás ðe ðǽr mid richte
tógebyrað, on wóde and on felde, mid saca and mid sócna, binnon
porte and bútan, swó ful and swó forð swó Duduc biscop oð ány
biscop hit firmest him tóforen hauede on ællem þingan. And gif hér
áni land sý out of ðám biscopríche gedon, ich wille ðæt hit cume in
ongeæn óðer ðæt man hit ofgo on hire gemóð swó man wið him bet
finde mage. And ich bidde eóu allen ðæt ge him fulstan tó dríuan
Godes gerichte lóck huer hit neod sý and he eówwer fultumes
biðurfe. And ich nelle nánne man geðefien ðæt him úram honde teó
ánige ðáre þinge ðás ðe ich him unnen habben[870].”
“✠ Eadward king grét Harold erl, and Aylnóð abbot, and Godwine
and ealle míne þeines on Sumerseten frendlíche; ich queðe eóu ðæt
ich wille ðæt Gyse biscop beó ðisses biscopríches wrðe heerinne mid
eóu. And álch ðáre þinge ðe ðás ðár mid richte tógebyrað binnan
porte and bután, mid saca and mid sócna, swó uol and swó uorð
swó hit éni biscop him tóuoren formest haueð on ealle þing. And ich
bidde eóu alle ðæt ge him beón on fultome Cristendóm tó sprekene,
lóc whar hit þarf sý and eówer fultumes beðurfe eal swó ich
getrowwen tó eów habben ðat ge him on fultume beón willen. And
gif what sý mid unlage out of ðán biscopríche geydón sý hit londe
óðer an oððer þinge ðár fulstan him uor mínan luuen ðæt hit in
ongeyn cume swó swó ge for Gode witen ðat hit richt sý. God eú
ealle gehealde[871].”
 The metropolitans themselves were to receive consecration from
one another, in order that the expense and trouble of going to Rome
might be avoided: but during the abeyance of the archiepiscopate of
York, the prelate elect of Canterbury appears to have been
sometimes consecrated in Gaul, sometimes by a conclave of
suffragan bishops at home: thus in 731 Tátwine was consecrated at
Canterbury by Daniel, Ingwald, Aldwine and Aldwulf, the respective
bishops of Winchester, London, Worcester and Rochester[872]; and
Pope Gregory the Third either made or acknowledged this
consecration to be valid by the transmission of a pall in 733. We
have no evidence by whom the consecrations were performed, in
many cases, but it is probable that the old rule was adhered to as
much as possible. In 1020, Æðelnóð was consecrated to Canterbury
by archbishop Wulfstán: the ceremony took place at Canterbury on
the 13th of November[873] in that year: and since in many cases the
ordination of archbishops is mentioned without any details, but yet
as preliminary to their going to Rome for their palls, it is likely that
the chroniclers tacitly assumed the custom of reciprocal functions in
Canterbury and York to be too well known to require description.
When the nomination or election by the king and his witan had
taken place, it is probable that a royal mandate was sent to the
metropolitan, to perform the ceremony of consecration. We have yet
the instrument by which Wulfstán of York certifies to Cnut the
performance of this duty in the case of archbishop Æðelnóð[874]: the
archbishop says:—“Wulfstán the archbishop greets Cnut his lord, and
Ælfgyfu the lady, humbly: and I notify to you both, dear ones, that
we have done as notice came from you to us respecting bishop
Æðelwold, namely that we have now consecrated him.” He then
prays that the new prelate may have all the rights and dues granted
to him, which have been usual, and enjoyed by his predecessors:
which perhaps is to be understood as a formal demand that the
temporalities may be properly conferred upon him. There can be no
manner of doubt as to the meaning of the word swutelung, which I
have rendered by notice, and Lingard by order[875]: it is a legal
notification, and the technical word in a writ is swutelian. But I do
not believe that Cnut was any more imperative in this matter than
his predecessors had been. An Anglosaxon archbishop would never
have found it a very safe thing to neglect a royal command by
ancient right[876].
The bishops were in fact officers of the administration, and
whatever importance their ecclesiastical functions may have
possessed, their civil character was not of less moment. It is
abundantly obvious that men of such a class, possessing nearly a
monopoly of what learning existed, would be necessarily called to
assist in the national councils, and would be very generally employed
in the diplomatic intercourse with foreign countries: few persons of
equal rank would have been competent to conduct a negotiation
carried on in writing: and there is no doubt that their high position in
the universal institution of the church rendered them at that period
the fittest persons to manage those affairs which concerned the
general family of nations. Moreover a close alliance always existed in
England between the aristocracy and the clergy: faithful service of
the altar, like faithful service of the state, gave rank and dignity and
privileges; and the ecclesiastical authority and influence of the
bishop, as well as his habits of business, and general aptitude to
advance the interests of the crown, frequently designated him to
discharge the somewhat indefinite, but weighty, duties of what we
now call a prime minister. Administration is in truth of such far
greater importance than constitution, that we can readily see how
greatly the social welfare of England did in reality depend upon this
class, to whom so much of administrative detail was committed: and
it was truly fortunate for the country that the clerical profession was
one that a gentleman could devote himself to without
disparagement, and therefore embraced so many distinguished
members of the ruling class.
The civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions were, it is well known, not
separated in England until after the Conquest. William the Norman
was the first to establish that most questionable division, the
consequences of which were often so bitterly felt by his successors.
Previous to his reign the bishop had been the assessor of the
ealdorman in the scírgemót or county-court, and ecclesiastical
causes, except such as were reserved for the decision of the
episcopal synods, were subjected, like those of the laity, to the
judgment of the scírþegnas or shire-thanes: thus even probate of
wills was given in the county-court. This participation of bishops in
the administration of justice, useful and necessary in the early ages
of Christianity, was very probably derived from the functions of their
heathen predecessors, the priests of the ancient gods. The old
Germanic placita were held, as is well known, under the presidency
of the priests, and these were courts of law as well as courts of
parliament. In fact there is no reason whatever to doubt that, long
before the introduction of Christianity, the public pleadings were
opened with religious ceremonies, and that the course of procedure
was regulated by religious ideas[877]. The gods were present,—to
secure the peaceful administration of justice, to sanction the finding
of the freemen, to give a holy character to the act of doing right
between man and man,—to terrify the perjurer and the criminal,—
perhaps to justify the extreme penalty of the law in extreme cases;
for it is probable that to the gods alone could the life of a great
wrongdoer be offered, as an atonement to the Law, of which God is
the root and guardian. The institution of the ordeal by which it was
superstitiously supposed that the Almighty would reveal the hidden
truth or falsehood of men, further tended to connect, first the pagan
and afterwards the Christian priesthood with the administration of
justice. In that most solemn appeal to the omniscience and justice of
God, the clergy necessarily took the prominent part; and although
we cannot believe that they always resisted the temptation offered
by that most strange juggle, it may charitably be asserted that their
intervention not rarely saved the innocent from the penal
consequences of an uncertain and painful test.
I have remarked in an earlier chapter[878] upon the union of the
sacerdotal with the judicial power: at a very early stage of human
society, the functions of the priest and the judge seem in general to
have been inseparable; nor were they separated in fact upon the
introduction of Christianity. In the very commencement of our æra,
when the church really did exist as a brotherhood under the
guidance of the first disciples, it was most natural that all
contentions between members of the body should be settled by the
arbitration of the whole church, or such as represented it. Litigation
before the ordinary tribunals of the state, even could such have
been resorted to by Christians, was little consonant with the doctrine
of charity which was to prevail among the members of one mystical
body, founded on almighty Love. Accordingly St. Paul himself[879]
expressly forbids the disciples to carry their contentions before the
secular authorities, implying that it is their duty to bring them to the
consideration of their fellow-believers, that they may be amicably
settled, in the spirit of forbearance and Christian moderation. And as
persecution gradually threatened the terrified community, this course
became unavoidable: it was impossible for the Christian to submit to
the pagan forms of the tribunals, yet to refuse these was to proclaim
the adoption of a proscribed and illegal association. The
establishment of a hierarchy among the Christians themselves
supplied some remedy for this difficulty, and it was soon decided
that the disputes of the brotherhood were to be brought before the
presbyter or bishop as a judge,—a course which in itself was natural
in countries where the Romans had permitted the existence of some
authority in the national tribunals, and had not insisted upon
dragging every cause before their own officers. The peculiar
situation of the Christians themselves as citizens of a new state—viz.
the religious state—tended to consolidate this system. Christianity
took cognizance of motives, of acts entirely beyond the reach of
mere human law, and the community claimed a right to judge of the
internal as well as the external state of its members. Immorality, not
cognizable by any positive law, was a proper subject for the
animadversion of a body whose duty it was to exclude from
communion all who pertinaciously refused to perform the duties of
their profession. It was thus that a twofold jurisdiction became
lodged in the church,—and in the bishop or presbyter, as its
representative in each particular locality,—long before the reception
of Christianity among the religiones licitae transformed the customs
of an obscure sect into recognised laws of the empire. But no sooner
had the terms of the great alliance been arranged, than the state
hastened to give the imperial sanction to what had hitherto been
merely the bye-laws of a sodality: and the decisions of a council, if
confirmed by the assent of the emperor, were at once raised to the
rank of imperial laws. Thus the council of Carthage in 397 had
threatened with excommunication any clergyman who should pursue
another before the secular tribunals; and this decree, repeated in
451 by the fourth general Council—that of Chalcedon—had received
the sanction of Marcianus, and become part of the law of the Roman
empire. The jurisdiction of the bishops in the affairs of the clergy
was thus rendered legal; but it was at a later period extended so as
to include a much wider sphere. Justinian not only commanded all
causes in which monks were concerned to be referred to the bishop
of the diocese, but made him the only legal channel of proceedings
even in cases where laymen had claims against the clergy[880].
Arbitration by the bishop had thus grown up into a custom, at first
absolutely necessary, and afterwards always desirable, in a society
like the Christian. Accordingly Constantine permitted all contentions
to be so settled. But it was a rule of Roman law that there could lie
no appeal whatever from a voluntary arbitration; and in pursuance
of this rule, in the year 408, Arcadius and Honorius decreed that the
sentences of bishops should be without appeal[881]. In this manner
was the ecclesiastical jurisdiction founded in the Greek and Roman
empires.
Happily for ourselves, this could not be admitted without
modification in the Germanic states. Had it indeed been so, every
trace of independence would long since have perished, and the
whole civilized world have found itself subject to the principles and
regulations of an effete scheme of jurisprudence. The antagonism of
the Germanic customary right it was that saved us from the
consequences which must have followed the universal prevalence of
maxims elaborated by another race, and sprung out of a different
social condition. It was the conflict of the Roman and Ecclesiastical
laws with those of the Teutonic victors that produced that modified
system of relations, under which, by the blessing of Providence,
civilization has been maintained, the general well-being of mankind
advanced, and human society firmly established throughout Europe,
on a basis susceptible of progressive, perhaps illimitable
improvement. Useful as a counter-check to the somewhat disruptive
system of the Germans, the Roman and Ecclesiastical laws have yet
never been able to destroy the nationality, or abridge the freedom,
of our races; while they have tended to give consistency and method
to our own customs, and to reduce into form and harmony what, but
for them, might have been liable to fall asunder from its own internal
vigour. Like the centripetal and centrifugal forces, they have
balanced one another, and held our social state together as one
majestic and consistent whole.
The method of doing justice between man and man, which was
the very foundation-stone of the Teutonic polity, was in direct
opposition to the doctrines of Roman jurists and the practice of the
church. Justice went out from among the people themselves, not
from the king or the bishop. The people spoke both as to fact and
law, the ancient customary law; nor did they at any time allow their
relations as Christians to abrogate the older rights they had
possessed as citizens, where the exercise of these was clearly
compatible with the recognition of the former. In respect to their
religion, they duly submitted to the ecclesiastical authority, made
confession, performed penance, and hearkened to advice tendered
by qualified functionaries; but they nevertheless still met in their
folk- and shire-moots to hold plea, declare folk-right, and
superintend its execution by their national officers. Not even to the
clergy themselves did they accord an immunity from the universal
duties of freemen: and although they may have been disposed to
acquiesce in the claim to be quit of personal military service, they
never excused suit and service to the popular courts. Only when the
relation of a cleric to his superior was that of an unfree man to his
lord, did the state release him from this duty, or rather did the state
hold him unworthy of this privilege.
The existence of such a body as the English clergy could not
possibly be ignored. As organized agents of a system which
professed to exercise a right of rule over the most secret desires and
motives of men,—as students distinguished by their knowledge, or
remarkable for their piety,—as landlords, in the enjoyment of great
wealth, and chiefs of numerous dependents,—lastly as advisers and
ministers of the ruling class, or intermediaries in the intercourse with
foreign states,—they formed a power whose claims to attention
could not be neglected. But their social position itself was that which
brought them continually in relation with the other aggregates of
freemen, and they were therefore called upon to take their place
with other landowners, lords, or ministerials in the popular councils.
With all their attachment to the customary law and the national
franchises, the Anglosaxons never lost sight of the fact that
Christianity had introduced new social relations: they were ready to
admit that there was now a godcund or divine as well as woroldcund
or secular right; and in the exposition of the former they were willing
to follow the guidance of those who professed to make it their
especial study. Moreover the system of Anglosaxon jurisprudence
depended very much upon the trustworthy character of witnesses,
and the ordination of the clergy was justly taken to have imposed
upon them the obligation of a peculiar truthfulness. The testimony of
members of their class became therefore a very important thing in
the sight of the moot-thanes who might have disputed points to
settle, or who, in mixed causes, might shrink from doing wrong to
the venerable body by too strict an application of the principles by
which themselves were bound. Lastly, as there was a merciful
tendency among the people to have disputes settled by arbitration
and on equitable grounds, rather than by the strict rules of law, the
clergy, whose jurisdiction extended to the motives of Christians
rather than the mere acts of citizens, were valuable intermediaries
between contending parties. The dignity of the class—the honor
clericalis—was cheerfully recognised, the wisdom and goodness of
the body acknowledged, and the propriety of being to a great
degree guided by the experience and enlightenment of their leaders,
readily conceded. Accordingly the bishop became an inseparable
assessor of the Frankish count and of the Anglosaxon ealdorman in
their respective courts[882].
The duties of a bishop as the officer of a state, and
contradistinguished from his merely ecclesiastical functions, were to
assist in the administration of justice between man and man, to
guard against perjury, and to superintend the administration of the
ordeals; further to take care that no fraud was committed by means
of unjust measures, to which end he was made the guardian of the
standards, and the judge of what work might be demanded from the
serf; above all, to watch over the maintenance of the peace, and the
upholding of divine as well as secular law[883]. The canons of the
church did indeed prohibit the presence of bishops on trials which
might involve the penalties of death or mutilation; and even the
Constitutions of Clarendon, the object of which was to place the
clergy on their proper and ancient footing towards the other
members of the church and state, recognised this exemption[884]: but
there is little reason to suppose that it was regarded by the
Anglosaxons; indeed the popular courts had no power to pass
sentences of so deep a dye, until long after the custom of the
bishop’s presence therein had been established too firmly to be
questioned. It was otherwise among the Franks, and we may
perhaps attribute this to the strong nationality of the Frankish clergy,
which indisposed them to claim their canonical immunity.
Another exemption which the bishops properly possessed, seems
also to have been often neglected in this country,—that namely of
personal service in the field. No doubt, all over Europe, as soon as
the bishops became possessed of lands liable to the hereban, or
military muster, they, like other lords, were compelled to place their
armed tenants on foot, for the public service, when duly required:
but their levies were mostly commanded by officers specially
designated for that purpose and known under the names of
advocati, vicedomini, or vidames; being in general nobles of power
and dignity who assumed or accepted the exercise of the bishop’s
royalties, the management of his estates, the administration and
execution of his justice, and a remunerative share of his revenues
and patronage. In Saxon England, however, we do not meet with
these officers; and though it is probable that the bishop’s geréfa was
bound to lead his contingent under the command of the ealdorman,
yet we have ample evidence that the prelates themselves did not
hold their station to excuse them from taking part in the just and
lawful defence of their country and religion against strange and
pagan invaders[885]. Too many fell in conflict to allow of our
attributing their presence on the field merely to their anxiety lest the
belligerents should be without the due consolations of religion; and
in other cases, upon the alarm of hostile incursions, we find the
levies stated to have been led against the enemy by the duke and
bishop of the district.
Attention has been called in another chapter to the fact that the
bishops did not universally (or indeed usually), make their residences
in the principal cities[886]. A remarkable distinction thus arose
between themselves and the prelates of Gaul and Germany. The
latter, strong in the support of the burgesses, and identified with the
urban interests, found means to consolidate a power which they
used without scruple against the king when it suited their
convenience, or which enabled them to extort from him the grant of
offices that virtually rendered them independent of his authority.
This was generally effected through the bishop’s obtaining the
county, that is becoming the count, and thus exercising the palatine
power in his city, as well as that which he might already possess iure
episcopii, and as defensor urbis or patron of the municipality. This,
rare indeed under Charlemagne, but not uncommon in the times
which preceded and followed him, can at least not be proved to
have taken place in England before the Conquest[887]. There is
indeed one instance which might seem at first sight to contradict this
assertion, but which upon closer investigation rather confirms it. We
learn that certain thieves, having attempted a sacrilegious entry into
the church of St. Eádmund, and being miraculously delivered into
the hands of the authorities, were put to death by the orders of
Ðeódred, then bishop of London and of Eastanglia[888]. This event
took place after the conquest of the last-named province by
Æðelstán, who about 930 drove the Danes from it or reduced them
under his own power. At that time it appears uncertain whether the
conquered kingdom had been duly arranged and settled, or whether
any ealdorman had been appointed to govern it. If not, we must
imagine that Ðeódred, the only constituted authority on the spot,
acted at his own discretion in a case of urgency, without absolutely
possessing the legal power to do so; that the act was in short one of
those examples of what in modern times we understand by the term
Lynch-law, that law which men are obliged to administer for
themselves in the absence of the regular machinery of government.
But it is further observable that, according to the terms of the
legend itself, these thieves were taken in the manner, and
consequently liable to capital punishment without any trial at all[889];
this justice we may suppose Ðeódred to have executed, and to its
summary character we may attribute the regrets he expressed on
the subject at a later time. It is also possible to account for the act
by supposing that even at this early period the bishop possessed his
sacu and sócn in the demesne of St. Eádmund, and that he
proceeded to execute his thieves by his right as lord of the sócn: but
there is no clear proof that the immunity did exist before the time of
Cnut, and I therefore incline to the second explanation as the most
probable. But if Ðeódred did not act in pursuance of possessing the
comitial power, we may safely say that there is no evidence
whatever of any Saxon bishop having exercised it[890]. As assessor to
the ealdorman, the bishop was especially charged to attend to the
due levy of tithe and other church imposts; but this was clearly
because he had a direct interest in the law that decreed their
punctual payment, and was certain not to connive at any neglect in
its execution, which the ealdorman out of favour or carelessness
might possibly have been disposed to do.
But a still higher authority was placed in the hands of the bishop,
derived in fact from the assumed pre-eminence of the ecclesiastical
over the secular power. If the geréfa would not do justice, and
maintain the peace in the land, then the bishop was especially
commanded to enforce the fines which the king and his witan had
apportioned to that officer’s offence[891]. It was no doubt argued that
no geréfa would be found bold enough to incur the danger of
offering violent resistance to the sacred person of the prelate; and
even the ealdorman, who might have set the king at defiance, would
tremble to encounter the substantial terrors of excommunication and
a laborious penance.
The high station occupied by the bishop in the social hierarchy is
proved by the amount of his wergyld and of the fines assigned to
offences against his honour, his person, and his property. Although
the bishop and the presbyter are in fact but of one order in the
church, yet the state found it convenient to place the former on
much the higher scale. In the “North-people’s law” an archbishop is
reckoned upon the same footing as an æðeling or prince of the
blood, at fifteen thousand thrymsas, and a bishop upon the same
footing as an ealdorman at eight thousand. The breach of a bishop’s
surety or protection, like the ealdorman’s, rendered the offender
liable to a fine of two pounds, which in the case of an archbishop
rose to three[892]. He that drew weapon before a bishop or
ealdorman was to be mulcted in one hundred shillings, before an
archbishop, in one hundred and fifty[893]. Under Ini the violence done
to a bishop’s dwelling, and the seat of his jurisdiction, was to be
compensated with one hundred and twenty shillings, while the
ealdorman’s was protected by a fine of only eighty: in this the
episcopal dignity was placed upon a level with that of the king
himself[894]. Similarly Wihtrǽd had declared his mere word, without
an oath, to be like the king’s, incontrovertible.
The ecclesiastical functions of the bishops were here the same as
elsewhere. To them belonged the ordination of priests and deacons,
the hallowing of chrism, the ceremonies of confirmation, the
consecration of churches and churchyards, nuns and monks; they
had a right to regulate the lives and conversation of their clergy, to
superintend the monastic foundations, and in general to watch that
every detail of the ecclesiastical establishment was duly regarded
and maintained. In their peculiar synods they could frame canons of
discipline, to be enforced in the several dioceses. They were the
receivers-general of all ecclesiastical revenue, which they distributed
to the inferior clergy under their government, according to certain
specified regulations; providing out of the common fund for the due
maintenance of the priests, the buildings, and minor accessories
required for decent celebration of the rites of religion.[895]
But the most important of their functions was that which is
technically called iurisdictio fori interni, their jurisdiction in matters of
conscience, their dealing with the motives and feelings, rather than
the acts of men. This—which practically they exercised through the
several presbyters who were, for the general convenience, dispersed
over the face of the country,—was the true source of their power,
and measure of their social influence. Positive law deals only with
the actions of men, and then only when they are perfected or
completed: religion regulates the inward impulses from which those
actions spring, and its authority extends both before and beyond
them: intention, not act, is its proper province. But the secret
intentions and motives of men are known perfectly to God alone; the
man himself may, and often does possess but an indistinct and
fallacious notion of his own impulses; and as it is in these, rather
than in the acts which are their results, that the essence of guilt lies,
the Christian was taught to unbosom himself to one of more
experienced and disciplined feelings;—one whose profession was to
console the distracted sinner, and who, on genuine repentance, was
empowered to announce the glad tidings of reconciliation with God.
Confession of sins was the mode pointed out by the founder of the
church, to obtain the blessings of almighty mercy; but how were the
ignorant, the obstinate, or the despairing to know the right manner
of such confession? How could they know in what form confession
was effectually to be made to God? How could they, plunged in sin
and foulness, dare to approach the source of all purity and holiness?
What hope could the grovelling outcast have of being admitted to
the throne of his glorious King, even for the purpose of renouncing
his state of rebellion and apostasy? But the glorious King was a
merciful sovereign, who had commissioned certain of his servants,
reconciled sinners themselves, to be intermediaries between his own
majesty and the terror-stricken offender: they had been sent forth
armed with full power to receive the submission which the guilty
feared to offer to Himself in person, furnished with instructions as to
the exact mode in which the satisfactory propitiation was to be
made. These commissioners were the especial body of the clergy,—
the successors and representatives of the Levitical Priests under the
Law,—the offerers of the sacrifices,—to whom the spirit of God had
been exclusively communicated in the ceremony of their ordination,
and who thereby became possessors of the divine authority, to bind
and loose, to forgive sins on earth and in the world to come. The
clergy therefore undertook to direct the suffering and heart-broken
outlaw to the throne of peace. Again, as the merely human preacher
of atonement possessed of himself no means of ascertaining the
genuineness of repentance, a system of penances was established
which might serve as a test of the penitent’s earnestness: and too
soon a miserable error grew up that, by submitting to self-inflicted
punishments, the sinner might diminish the weight of the penalties
which he had earned in a future state. But he might exceed or fall
short of the just measure, if not duly weighed and apportioned by
those who were in possession of the divine will in that respect: men
had even without their own knowledge become holy and justified by
their works of self-abasement and humiliation and charity: such men
might exceed the necessary limit of penance and mortification:—
happily for the sinner and the saint, the priest had a code of
instructions at hand by which the difficulties in all cases could be
readily adjusted.
These codes of instructions, known by the names of
Confessionalia, Poenitentialia, Modus imponendi Poenitentiam, and
the like, were compiled by the bishops, to whom the iurisdictio fori
interni was exclusively competent, as soon as the episcopal system
became firmly settled. The presbyter exercised it only as the bishop’s
vicar, when it became inconvenient for the penitent to visit a distant
cathedral or metropolis. The episcopal right was open to every
bishop: each one might, if he dared, embody his own ideas on the
subject in a code, which would derive its authority from conformity
to the recognised customs of the church, the personal reputation of
its author, and the general acceptance by his episcopal peers
throughout the world. The differing circumstances of differing states
of society required skilful adaptation of general rules; and therefore
any bishop who felt in his conscience that he was qualified for the
task, might bring the light of his wisdom to the consideration of this
weighty matter, and make such regulations as to himself seemed
good, for the management of his own diocese,—certain that, if the
blessing of God rested upon his endeavours, his views would be
widely circulated and adopted by his neighbours. There is perhaps
no more melancholy evidence in existence of the vanity and
worthlessness of human endeavours than the celebrated works
which thus arose in various parts of Europe; and nothing can
demonstrate more strikingly the folly and wickedness of squaring
and shaping the unlimited mercy of God by the rule and measure of
mere human intelligence. With the contents of these Poenitentials
we have of course not here to deal; but I am bound to say that I
know of no more fatal sources of antichristian error, no more
miserable records of the debasement and degradation of human
intellect, no more frightful proofs of the absence of genuine religion.
It was the evil tendency of those barbarous early ages not to be
satisfied with the simple promises of divine mercy, and faith was
clouded and confused by the crowd of incongruous images which
were raised between itself and its all-glorious object. At one time
terrified by the consciousness of sin, at another deluded by the
cheap hope of ceremonial justification, the human race eagerly
rushed to multiply the means of salvation, and franticly rejoiced in
the establishment of a host of mediators between themselves and
their crucified Redeemer, between the frightened but unconverted
sinner, and his offended Lord and Maker. The pure Word of God was
not then, as it now is, accessible to every reader; and those whose
duty it was to proclaim what the mass of men could not obtain
access to themselves, had erred into a devious labyrinth of
traditions, through which the weary wayfarer circled and circled in
endless, objectless gyrations, at every turn more distant only from
the goal he pursued. Pure and good were no doubt the objects
sought by Cummian, and Theodore and Ælfríc, and pious the spirit in
which they wrought; but the foundation of their house was upon
sand, and when the rains fell and the tempests roared around it
vanished in a moment from before the sight of God and man, never
to be reconstructed, even until the closing of the ages.
The sources of revenue by which the bishops supported their
temporal power will be considered in a subsequent chapter: it is
enough that we find them to have been amply endowed with fitting
means, in every part of Europe. During the Anglosaxon period,
poverty and self-denial were not the characteristics of the class,
however they may have distinguished certain members of the body.
Nor will the philosophical enquirer see cause for regret in this: far
more will he rejoice in the establishment of any system which tends
to draw closer the bonds of intercourse between the clerical and lay
members of the church, which leads to the identification of their
worldly as well as their eternal interests, and unites them in one
harmonious work of praise and thanksgiving, one active service of
worship and charity and love, before the face of Him in whom they
are united as one holy priesthood. It is the separation of the clergy
from the laity, as a class, to which the world owes so many ages of
misery and error; and to the comparative union of both orders in the
church, we may perhaps attribute the general quiet which, in these
respects, characterized the Anglosaxon polity. On these points of
separation I shall also have something to say hereafter; but for the
present one more subject alone remains to be treated of in this
chapter, the last but not least remarkable function of the episcopal
authority and power. By far the most important point of the public
ecclesiastical jurisdiction,—for the iurisdictio fori interni is quite
another thing,—lay in the questions of marriage, which were
especially reserved for the bishop’s cognizance. The prohibitions
which the clergy enforced were obviously unknown to the strict
Teutonic law, which permitted considerable licence in these respects.
From Tacitus we learn that a sort of polygamy was not unknown on
the part of the princes; it was probably looked upon as a useful
mode of increasing the alliances of the tribe[896],—the only
conceivable ground on which it could have been allowed by a race
so strict in the observance of marriage. We do not know within what
degrees the Germans permitted unions which the Roman clergy
considered incestuous, but we do know that Gregory considered a
relaxation of the strict rule necessary to the success of Augustine in
Britain; that he gave the missionary positive instructions upon the
subject, and, when blamed by his episcopal brother of Messina for
this concession, justified his course by the danger which he
apprehended for his plan of conversion, if the prejudices of the
Saxons on so vital a point were too hastily shocked[897]. From these
directions of Gregory we learn not only that the marriage of first
cousins was common, but—what is much more surprising—that the
marriage with a father’s widow was so likewise. Nor can we doubt
this, when we not only find recorded cases of its occurrence, but
when we have a Teutonic king distinctly affirming it to be the legal
custom of his people: in the sixth century Ermengisl king of the Varni
can say, “Let Radiger my son marry his step-mother, even as our
national custom permits[898];” and therefore when we find Beda
speaking of a similar marriage, and declaring Eádbald to have been
“fornicatione pollutus tali qualem nec inter gentes auditam Apostolus
testatur, ita ut uxorem patris haberet[899],” or Asser on another such
occasion saying that it was “contra Dei interdictum, et Christianorum
dignitatem, nec non et contra omnium Paganorum consuetudinem,”
we can only suppose that they either did not know, or that they
deemed it advisable not to recognise, the ancient heathen practice.
In both the cases referred to, the obvious scandal was put a stop
to by the separation of the parties[900],—Eádbald being evidently led
to this step by superstitious fears, rather than submitting to an
episcopal authority exercised by Laurentius. It is certainly strange in
the case of Æðelbald, if there really were a separation, that we hear
nothing of the interference of the Church to produce so important an
event.
We learn that by degrees the time arrived at which the clergy
thought themselves strong enough to insist upon a stricter
observance of the canonical prohibitions, and various instances are
on record where their intervention is mentioned, to separate persons
too nearly connected by blood. It is probable that many more of
these are intended than we actually know; for unhappily the
monkish writers are over-fond of using strong expressions both of
praise and blame, and not rarely fling pellex scortum and concubina
at the heads of women who were for all that, legally speaking, very
honest wives. One celebrated case has obtained a worldwide
reputation,—that of Eádwig, the details of whose unhappy fate will
probably for ever remain a mystery. Political calculations, and
unreconciled national jealousies were in all probability the
mainsprings of the events of his troublous life; but that which lends
it all its romance—his separation from Ælfgyfu—was the act of a
prelate determined upon upholding the ecclesiastical law of
marriage. It is to be regretted that we do not know the exact degree
of relationship between the royal victims. It may have been too
close, in the eyes of the stricter clergy; yet we cannot close our eyes
to the fact that it was long acquiesced in by the English nobles; nor,
had Eádwig shown himself more pliant to the pretensions of
Dúnstán, might we ever have heard of it at all. History, deprived of
all its materials, will here fail to do even late justice to the sufferers;
but it will not fail to stamp with its enduring brand the brutal
conduct of their persecutors[901]. However conscientious may have
been the intentions of archbishop Oda, it is to be lamented that a
stain of barbarous cruelty attaches to his memory, for the part he
took in this transaction. It he found it inevitable, after two years of
wedded life further to humiliate his already humbled sovereign, by
insisting upon the removal of his young consort, it was not necessary
to disfigure her with hot searing-irons, or on her return from exile to
put her to a cruel death. The asceticism of the savage churchman
seems here to have been embittered by even less worthy
considerations.
The history of mediæval Europe show’s with what awful effect this
tremendous power was wielded by unscrupulous popes and prelates,
whenever it suited their purposes not to connive at marriages which,
according to their teaching, were incestuous. But amidst the striking
cases on record—the cases of kings and nobles—we look in vain for
a true measure of the misery which these prohibitions must have
entailed upon the humbler members of society, who possessed
neither the influence to compel nor the wealth to purchase
dispensations from an arbitrary and oppressive rule. The sense and
feeling of mankind at once revolt against restrictions for which
neither the law of God, nor the dictates of nature supply excuse, and
which resting upon a complicated calculation of affinity, were often
the means of betraying the innocent and ignorant into a condition of
endless wretchedness. But they were invaluable engines of
extortion, and instruments of malice; they led to the intervention of
the priest with the family, in the most intolerable form; they
furnished weapons which could be used with almost irresistible
effect against those whom nothing could reach but the tears perhaps
and broken heart of a beloved companion. And therefore they were
steadily upheld till the great day of retribution came, which involved
so many traditions of superstition and error, so many engines of
oppression and fraud, in one common and undistinguishing ruin: τὰ
πρὶν δὲ πελώρια νῦν ἀϊστοῖ—things mighty indeed have perished
away from the world; but thrice blessed was the day which left us
free and unshackled to pursue the noblest and purest impulses of
our human nature.
 833. Hüllmann, ‘Origine de l’organisation de l’Eglise au Moyen Age,’ p.
30.

834. This was strongly asserted by Romanus against Cyprian, and never
lost sight of by the Roman controversialists, whatever opposition it
encountered in other churches. But while Rome really was the first city of
the world, it was consonant to the analogy of the other episcopal relations
that her prelate should claim the primacy. The founding it either on St.
Peter’s peculiar principality, or on pretended decrees of the Roman
emperors, was quite a different thing, and an afterthought.

835. But, as yet, no independence. Pope Paschal in 823, being accused

by the Romans of participation in various homicides, Hluduuig sent his
Missi,—Adalung a presbyter and abbot, and Hunfrid duke of Rhætia (or
Coire) to investigate the affair. Paschal appeared before them, and cleared
himself by oath. “Qui supradictus Pontifex cum iuramento purificavit se in
Lateranensi patriarchio coram supradictis legatis et populo Romano, cum
episcopis 34, et presbyteris et diaconibus quinque.” Thegan. Vit. Hludov.
Imp. Pertz, ii. 597.

836. No sooner was Charlemagne crowned as emperor by Leo III. (Dec.

20th, 800) than he caused an oath of fidelity to be administered to all his
subjects who were above the age of twelve years. See on this subject
Dönniges, p. 2, etc. He thus obtained all the rights of the ancient
emperors over the church and the Roman provincials, in addition to the
powers as a German king, which in his vigorous hands assumed a
consistency and compass unknown to his predecessors. Charlemagne
required all the aid of the Pope against the great Frankish families, who
might have given him a mayor of the palace, as they had given his own
progenitors to the Merwingian kings. The following important passage will
show in what spirit he considered the imperial authority which he had
assumed, “A.D. 802. Eo anno demoravit domnus Caesar Carolus apud
Aquis palatium quietus cum Francis sine hoste; sed recordatus
misericordiae suae de pauperibus, qui in regno suo erant et iustitias suas
pleniter [h]abere non poterant, noluit de infra palatio pauperiores vassos
suos transmittere ad iustitias faciendum propter munera, sed elegit in
regno suo archiepiscopos et reliquos episcopos et abbates cum ducibus et
comitibus, qui iam opus non [h]abebant super innocentes munera
accipere, et ipsos misit per universum regnum suum, ut ecclesiis, viduis et
orfanis et pauperibus, et cuncto populo iustitiam facerent. Et mense
Octimbrio congregavit universalem synodum in iam nominato loco, et ibi
fecit episcopis cum presbyteris seu diaconibus relegi universos canones
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