ABSTRACT
In both The Revenger’s Tragedy and The Duchess of Malfi, the notion of service, both true and false, is interrogated and deconstructed through an intensely sexualized discourse which plays upon notions of whoredom and a cynical eroticization of service which underlies Renaissance attitudes toward it. The eroticization is occasionally exposed in these tragedies, but it is more often simply implied. There is another tragedy, however, in which the eroticization of service is purposefully acknowledged, in which the satirist character employs sexually descriptive language not only to castigate vice and express personal frustration, but also to sexualize a particular target for the purpose of degradation. In Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling, the satirist character DeFlores uses sexually descriptive language to reduce his target and expose its weaknesses for a specific purpose. At the same time, the self-loathing and repudiation we have seen previously remains undiminished. The question, however, is why. What is the condition in Renaissance society which engenders this use of language?
