ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author seeks to turn from the generalities to two revenge plays of the time: John Marston's Antonio's Revenge, and The Revenger's Tragedy. Jacobean revenge tragedy, as is generally known, took its dramatic form from the theatrical experiments of Kyd in the fifteen-eighties. William Shakespeare indeed made Hamlet the most complex of his characters; but even in the more typical revenge plays, concerned rather with attitude than personality, the revenger is made up of twisted strands. It is usual to dismiss the Italian setting of the typical revenge play as a never-never-land of the northern imagination. Published in 1601 as part two of Antonio and Mellida, Antonio's Revenge has little in common with the earlier play except for the reappearance of some of the characters. Antonio's Revenge shows none of the subtlety and speculative range of Shakespeare's play, but it has positive virtues of its own.
