Ironic tragedy : a study in Jacobean revenge drama
Ironic tragedy : a study in Jacobean revenge drama
My thesis attempts to show that certain Jacobean revenge tragedies which have aroused a good deal of critical dissension are best considered as 'ironic' tragedies, intending a quite different emotional effect from that produced by Aristotelian tragedy. These plays, which owe much to the morality tradition, are detached and didactic, frequently using the techniques of comedy and satire. The genre originates with Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, which has many ironic ,characteristics but still permits its audience to sympathize with its hero.Later plays, such as Antonio's Revenge and The Revenger's Tragedy, take a more detached attitude towards their protagonists, and in The Revenger's Tragedy this detachment is carried so far as to make its catastrophe almost satiric farce. This tendency comes to its logical conclusion in The Atheist's Tragedy which, by emphasising the Christian stoicism of its hero and by reducing the death of its villain protagonist to a ritualised farce, achieves a unique form of tragi-comic ethical drama. In the second decade of the seventeenth century revenge tragedy began to degenerate into a plot formula. The Maid's Tragedy retains traces of an ironic framework but most later plays show little interest in the potentialities of the theme. Webster and Middleron, however, used it to its fullest and subtlest effect. The White Devil is a revenge play in which there is no hero and in which the theme of the inevitable self-destruction of evil is carried to its extreme. Webster's irony is seldom explicit and is conveyed by the patterning of scenes, the subtle use of imagery and the ruthless exposure of the many layers of dissimulation in each protagonist. Women Beware Women is equally concerned with the retribution infirings on itself; its peculiar achievement is in its combination of realistic dialogue and characterization with a highly ritualized structure which universalizes the particular tragedy. In these last revenge plays the heavenly dimension so evident in early revenge tragedy has almost disappeared and we are left with a tragedy of despair.
University of Southampton
1976
Woolrych, Susan Anne
(1976)
Ironic tragedy : a study in Jacobean revenge drama.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
My thesis attempts to show that certain Jacobean revenge tragedies which have aroused a good deal of critical dissension are best considered as 'ironic' tragedies, intending a quite different emotional effect from that produced by Aristotelian tragedy. These plays, which owe much to the morality tradition, are detached and didactic, frequently using the techniques of comedy and satire. The genre originates with Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, which has many ironic ,characteristics but still permits its audience to sympathize with its hero.Later plays, such as Antonio's Revenge and The Revenger's Tragedy, take a more detached attitude towards their protagonists, and in The Revenger's Tragedy this detachment is carried so far as to make its catastrophe almost satiric farce. This tendency comes to its logical conclusion in The Atheist's Tragedy which, by emphasising the Christian stoicism of its hero and by reducing the death of its villain protagonist to a ritualised farce, achieves a unique form of tragi-comic ethical drama. In the second decade of the seventeenth century revenge tragedy began to degenerate into a plot formula. The Maid's Tragedy retains traces of an ironic framework but most later plays show little interest in the potentialities of the theme. Webster and Middleron, however, used it to its fullest and subtlest effect. The White Devil is a revenge play in which there is no hero and in which the theme of the inevitable self-destruction of evil is carried to its extreme. Webster's irony is seldom explicit and is conveyed by the patterning of scenes, the subtle use of imagery and the ruthless exposure of the many layers of dissimulation in each protagonist. Women Beware Women is equally concerned with the retribution infirings on itself; its peculiar achievement is in its combination of realistic dialogue and characterization with a highly ritualized structure which universalizes the particular tragedy. In these last revenge plays the heavenly dimension so evident in early revenge tragedy has almost disappeared and we are left with a tragedy of despair.
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Published date: 1976
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Local EPrints ID: 462859
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/462859
PURE UUID: ba887de4-840c-49cb-a8b5-383361ea9aa9
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Date deposited: 04 Jul 2022 20:17
Last modified: 04 Jul 2022 20:17
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Author:
Susan Anne Woolrych
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