THE PARADOX OF ELIZABETHAN REVENGE

FROM HORESTES TO HAMLET

ANTON CHARLES ARULANANDAM

MASTER OF ARTS - HONOURS

1995

THE UNVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

THE PARADOX OF ELIZABETHAN REVENGE

FROM HORESTES TO HAMLET

CONTENTS

Acknowledgement Page 2

List of Illustrations Page 3

Abstract Page 4

Introduction Page 5

Chapter One Page 33

Chapter Two Page 55

Chapter Three Page 75

Chapter Four · Page 93

Chapter Five Page 112

Conclusion Page 142

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to my Supervisor, Dr. Richard

Medelaine, and Co-Supervisor, Professor Mary Chan, who not only

awakened my serious interest in the drama of the English Renaissance,

but tolerated and encouraged this graduate student in the preparation of

this thesis. I also wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Bruce Johnson,

Professor Michael Hollington, Associate Professor Roslyn Haynes and

Associate Professor Peter Alexander, Head, School of English, the staff

of the School of English and my colleagues, Pauline Byrnes and Brian

Couch, and my wife, Edith, for their assistance and encouragement. A

significant debt is owed to the numerous critics mentioned in the

footnotes and Bibliography for their scholarly discourse on the revenge

genre.

Anton C. Arulanandam 2 December 1995.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Gratefully Acknowledged

The Revenge of Orestes

From Boccaccio's De Mulieribus Claris, Ulm, 1473, fol.xxxv verso, p. 32.

The Murder of Horatio in The Spanish Tragedie

From the edition of 1633, p. 54.

The Revenge of Titus Andronicus

From The Lamentable and Tragical History of Titus Andronicus, a ballad ( British Museum, Huth 50 - 69). p. 74.

( By kind courtesy of

Willard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1963, ps. 263, 393 & 397).

ABSTRACT

THE PARADOX OF ELIZABETHAN REVENGE From Horestes to Hamlet

The thesis investigates the legitimacy of revenge m five different

Elizabethan plays in which revenge is paradoxically transformed into

justice. The search for justice becomes a search for the legitimacy of

revenge on the part of the victim. My discussion is centred on the victim's

search for the legitimacy of revenge in a society in which the avenger has

no personal authority to carry out his vendetta because the power is vested

in the sovereign. The sovereign was considered the legitimate authority on

earth as the sovereign was believed to derive the authority from God

himself according to the Divine Right of kings or queens. Given the

nature of the sovereigns who usurp their powers, I seek to demonstrate

that revenge constitutes a vicious metaphor for the social conflict between

the legitimate authority and the individual such as Hieronimo or Titus,

who takes the law and justice illegally into his own hands. Although there

is the Biblical injunction against taking revenge (Romans 12 : 19),

culturally revenge was still considered a moral duty in the Elizabethan

scheme of order. Paradoxically in Hamlet, the Prince is perceived both as

the villain and the victim in coming to grips with the legitimacy of his

sacred duty to avenge his father's death. Yet a killing motivated by

revenge was, under Elizabethan law, regarded as murder. Revenge was

also condemned as a sin by the ecclesiastical authorities who regarded

vengeance, justice and mercy as belonging to God. This injunction against

revenge provided a further basis for conflict in plays which examine the

nature and possibility of revenge and retribution. Paradoxically, cruelty is

counted justice in Titus Andronicus. For those plays which have a pagan

setting such as Horestes, The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus, a

conflict is set up between the legitimising of revenge by social code

within the plays and the plays' wider implications for their Christian

audiences. A cruel paradox is developed in The Merchant of Venice, as

Antonio mercilessly exacts revenge on Shylock in the semblance of

offering mercy to him in a reversal of roles. In conclusion, the paradox of

revenge exposes the controversial search for interpretation between the

quest for justice and the need for reconciliation rather than malice.

THE PARADOX OF ELIZABETHAN REVENGE

From Horestes to Hamlet

INTRODUCTION

The search for the legitimacy of revenge leads to contradictory responses

in the English Renaissance plays as they propound paradoxes. In the

Elizabethan sense, a paradox implies a notion contrary to received opinion

or rational explanation. 1 This thesis investigates the legitimacy of revenge

in five different plays in which revenge is paradoxically transformed into

justice in the case of the protagonist. Legitimacy is defined as the

condition of being in accordance with law or principle; conformity to rule

or principle, or to sound reasoning.2 To search for justice is to search for

legitimacy, as the quest embodies puzzling ambiguities and contradictory

viewpoints apropos the Biblical injunction against private vengeance.

Justice is a lawful concept but the volition and achievement of revenge is

a crime punishable by law. The contradiction arises because the

sovereigns assume that they are God's appointed agents who derive

legitimate authority from God. The avenger has no personal authority to

carry out his or her vendetta because the power is vested in the sovereign.

The consequences of this contradiction are manifested in the development

of revenge in the five different plays considered - Horestes (1567), The

Spanish Tragedy (1587), Titus Andronicus 1594?), The Merchant of

Venice (1597) and Hamlet (1601) in which the Elizabethan audiences

1 • See footnote by Harold Jenkins in Hamlet, The Arden Edition of The Works of William Shakespeare, ed. Harold Jenkins, Methuen, London and New York, 1982, p. 282. For further discussion on paradox, please seep. 7 & the Chapter on Hamlet, p 113. 2 . Oxford English Dictionary.

could identify with lawlessness and obviously find emotional satisfaction

in retribution and poetic justice.

Poetic justice implies appropriate reward and punishment, but in real

life, it seldom occurs that good deeds are rewarded in just measure and

evil deeds fittingly punished. Such an outcome also suggests the classical

notion of a just Nemesis. Not only is retribution exacting just desert or

appropriate recompense for evil extorted, but it entails divine reward or

punishment assigned to the offender. There is hardly any distinction

between the two concepts - revenge and retribution.3 Advocates of

punishment for criminal offences prefer the usage of the word,

'retribution', that connotes the consolation of euphemism, although it is

synonymous with 'revenge'. To revenge is to satisfy oneself with

retaliation or to take vengeance or exact retribution for an offence against

the avenger. The word revenge meant not only personal retaliation for an

injury, but legal justice and God's judgments.4 In considering the moral

responsibility for retribution, the dilemma hinges on whether a man or

woman can be held responsible for committing a crime ordered by the

sovereign, and whether the punishment of the subject can be justified for

that crime ? The process of retribution implies that the universe is

governed by moral law and order, and that any transgression ensures the

punishment of the guilty accordingly.5 While the concept of retribution

. In sixteenth-century English usage, revenge and vengeance had meanings roughly equivalent to the modem retribution or punishment. On the sixteenth-century meanings, see Ronald Broude, "Revenge and Revenge Tragedy in Renaissance England", Renaissance Quarterly, 28, 1975, p. 40 - 42. Also see Mary Mroz, Divine Vengeance, Catholic University Press, Washington D. C., 1941. In modem usage, vengeance is redressing the balance by an offender's being made to suffer more or less equivalent to his offence while revenge is the satisfying of the offended party's resentment by the same means. See H.W.Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), Second edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968, p. 43 - 4. 4 . See Ronald S. Broude, 'Revenge and Revenge Tragedy in Renaissance England', Renaissance 'fuarterly 28, 1975, p. 38 -58 .

. See 'The Suppressed Edition of A Mirror for Magistrates', ed. Lily B.Campbell, Huntington Library Bulletin IV, 1934, p. 102. The complexity of retribution is revealed in A Mirror for Magistrates (1559) in which John, Earl of Worcester, admits that God may punish such a man as

5

does present a moral dilemma of what is just and unjust to the Elizabethan

audiences, the plays offer also the exploration of the theatrical dynamics

of the emotional experience itself, whether it be one of despair, or

damnation.

Though the vengeance of God might operate through the fortunes of

the battlefield, the process of retribution is seldom portrayed as a direct

process of justice followed by divine judgment and punishment. The

Biblical viewpoint of God's inevitable vengeance for sin provided the

cultural bases for most playwrights of the Renaissance. Nevertheless the

notion of the Divine Right of kings provides a religious and political

ground both for the prohibition of private revenge and the sanction of

public revenge. This duality is reinforced by Lily Campbell who observes

that, 'an usurper seizes the throne; God avenges his sin upon the heir

through the agency of another usurper, whose sin is again avenged upon

the third heir'. 6 The Elizabethan plays thus expose the contemporary

inadequacies of the legal system - the frustrations and the blindness of

justice as it operates in the Renaissance culture. By 1558, when Queen

Elizabeth I ascended the English throne, the spirit of the Renaissance

infused the playwrights with a renewed interest in classical drama, notably

the Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence, and specifically Seneca (4

B.C. - A.D. 65), whose plays are marked by sensationalistic violence.

These playwrights provided models for the young dramatists of the time

such as Sackville and Norton, Thomas Kyd and Shakespeare to produce

plays that belong to the so-called Elizabethan revenge-genre.7 Nowhere is

well as the king who commanded the crime. Also cited J.M.R.Margeson, The Origins of English Tragedy, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967, p. 72-74. 6 . Lily B. Campbell, Shakespeare's "Histories": Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy, Huntington Library Publications, Berkeley, 1947, p. 122. 7 . As shown in the non-Senecan play, Horestes, Seneca's direct influence on the great Elizabethan plays is probably slighter than his advocates have suggested. It is not the intention of this thesis to embark on a debate on the controversy on Seneca's influence. But it is pointless to deny any

6

this more evident than in the plays dealing with retribution 1,1sually

perpetrated in the name of justice. The search for legitimacy introduces a

paradox that leads to contradictory characters' responses to plays which

deal with the struggle to achieve revenge in societies where public justice

proves unattainable.

It is necessary at this point to indicate limits of the term paradox as

used here, for the temptation is to use the term loosely, as a synonym for

dilemma that merely resembles or overlaps it. In the Elizabethan usage, a

paradox implies a statement or tenet contrary to received opinion that

preempts a proposition seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, and yet

explicable as expressing a truth. In contrast to paradox, a dilemma

denotes a form of argument or a situation in which two or more

alternatives or propositions are presented, each of which is indicated to

have consequences for the one who must choose. What is more, a

dilemma is not interchangeable with paradox as dilemma implies the need

to make a choice between legitimate alternatives which are equally

unfavourable. Dilemma entails 'a position of doubt or perplexity 1590' and

implies a 'hypothetical syllogism having one premiss conjunctive and the

other disjunctive' (OED). To define a paradox is a self-defeating exercise

resulting in self-contradiction. Like dilemmas, paradoxes became

problematic for the logicians during the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries ; the term meant an 'argument contrary to common opinion or

expectation, often contrary to truth'. 8 Hamlet was 'trapped in an ethical

dilemma - a dilemma, to put it simply between what he believed and what

Senecan influence on the Elizabethan drama as Seneca's English translations were available during the sixteenth century. See Clarence W.Mendell's Our Seneca, New Haven, Connecticut, 1941, repr. 1968. 8 . Rosalie Colie, Paradoxia Epidemica : The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox, Princeton University Press, 1966, p. 398. Colie defines paradox in the context of Renaissance literature as inducing a state of psychological ambivalence. Also cited by Richard Horwich in Shakespeare's Dilemmas, Peter Lang, New York, 1988, p. 8.

7

he felt'. 9 Hamlet's dilemma is that he is both 'scourge and minister', and

that he must reconcile honour and dignity in choosing a single course of

action between alternatives in his search for justice. The underlying

assumption is that the Elizabethan audiences were divided on the issue of

the legitimacy of revenge. Although Elizabethan legal authorities were

firm in their condemnation of private revenge, Francis Bacon recognises

that 'the most tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is

no law to remedy'. 10

The paradox of revenge involves moral dimensions about the

relationship between justice and revenge. The distinction between just and

unjust forms of revenge underpins the notion that public revenge may

become a private vendetta, and a private revenge may be transformed into

a public revenge. 11 In the Elizabethan culture, revenge was considered

necessary for the eternal rest and honour of the murdered victim and

hence Hamlet was called upon to perform a 'dread' (sacred) duty. 12 In

believing that vengeance belonged only to God, or to the agent of God

through whom He effected justice, the Elizabethan theocrats were

upholding the legitimacy of the Tudors. Yet there existed a contrary

tradition in favour of revenge under certain circumstances. 13 The

9 . Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, California, 1967, p. 4. 10 . Francis Bacon, 'Of Revenge', in The Essays of Lord Bacon, (1597), ed. Frederick Warne, London, 1889, p. 8. Bacon does not express total condemnation of vengeance. Although all revenges may be equal before the law, Bacon recognises distinctions. 11 . Lily B. Campbell is of the opinion that 'to the prince or magistrate, therefore, was intrusted by God the execution of justice which in the discussions of revenge was called public revenge'. See 'Theories of Revenge in Renaissance England', Modern Philology, Vol. 28, page 289, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, February 1931. 12 • See Lily Campbell, 'Theories of Revenge in Renaissance England', Modern Philology, Vol. 28, f:" 201, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, February 1931. 3 • For further discussion see Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587-1642,

Princeton, 1940, p. 40. Even though the Elizabethans firmly believed the laws of God to forbid private revenge, it was considered a tradition and a legal duty for a heir to revenge his father's murder. Bowers argues that revengers such as Hieronimo and Titus turned from sympathetic 'wrong heroes to bloody maniacs whose revenge might have been left to God ... and death was the only solution'.

8

contradiction between the legal revenge code and the confusion deduced

from feudal tradition constrained the Elizabethans to have mixed feelings

towards the revenger. Conversely, the contradictory feelings among the

Elizabethan audiences stand in marked contrast to the disapproving

attitude they had toward revenge. As a paradoxist, Hamlet must be aware

of the distinction between 'to be' and 'not to be' when he speculates about

death and suicide. The moral dimensions of justice, revenge, mercy and

law do not always coexist. The paradox is that in law, the absence of just

revenge poses as great a threat to both freedom and order as revenge gone

wild. The strength of this is underlined by the fact that the moral aspects

of vengeance will be more likely to establish the truth about the conflict

than exacting retributive justice. Religion and law, although servmg

different social purposes and themselves replete with the ethical

contradictions that fashion our uses of revenge, have nevertheless

manifested a certain degree of pragmatism in their efforts to encompass

the unavoidable tension between vindictive and compassionate impulses.

So important was the conundrum of revenge in the sixteenth and

seventeenth century teaching that the theme of God's revenge for sin was

usually cited as an injunction against revenge, "Vengeance is Mine, I will

repay". 14 How that legitimacy of legalised revenge may be interpreted

between divine justice and human justice creates confusion. It is not

surprising that the plays of the Elizabethan Renaissance express 'a

considerable range' of attitudes toward revenge. 15 And the question of

responsibility lies at the heart of the confusion over the relationship

between revenge and justice. Whether there is a moral justification for a

14 . Romans 12: 19, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Std. Version, Oxford, 1973 & 1977. 15 . For further discussion see Ronald S. Broude, 'Revenge and Revenge Tragedy in Renaissance England', Renaissance Quarterly 28, 1975, p. 56.

9

form of legalized revenge or not is a contentious issue. Different cultures

accorded varying degrees of legitimacy to the vindictive impulses giving

rise to the assumption that underlies the restraints of the justice system as

well as the moral boundaries separating legitimate from illegitimate

expressions of the vindictive impulse.

The parameters considered in this introduction include the influence of

Greek and Roman drama on the English Renaissance, the issues of pagan

and Christian setting in the construction of moral dilemma, the

emergence of revenge traditions, the development of the legitimacy of

revenge, the reasons for the choice of five different plays, and finally the

vexed question of Elizabethan attitudes to revenge in relation to the

Senecan Stoical and Christian stances. The social outlook and the culture

of violence prevalent during the Elizabethan period made it possible for

the emerging playwrights such as John Pickeryng, Thomas Kyd and

William Shakespeare to strike a responsive chord with their audiences

with plays about revenge. Not only do the different plays considered in

this thesis reflect the Renaissance ambiguities and cultural incongruencies

between divine and human justice in relation to moral dilemma, but it is

now considered the Elizabethan audiences probably viewed the plays

emblematically as symbolic configurations. The playwrights, who for the

occasion become the representatives of the Elizabethan culture in a wider

context, demonstrate manifestations of the social and religious

disintegrations which fuelled the cultural differences and attitudes

concerning the moral nature of man or woman. Conflict arose when the

kings (or queens, and in this case Queen Elizabeth) with Divine Rights

usurped their powers to indulge in private vendetta on their subjects.

Accepting the idea of vengeance as a 'sacred duty', the Elizabethans

virtually endorse murderous revenge. The concept of 'revenge convention'

10

implies that the vengeful murder is a crime and should be dealt with under

the law. 16

My assumption is that the Elizabethan audiences brought these

attitudes to the theatre and that their response to the Elizabethan plays was

affected by them. Eleanor Prosser lists twenty-one revenge tragedies

written between 1561 and 1607 that involve the search for legitimacy. 17

For example, in Horestes, the Vice-Revenge is also personified as Justice.

In The Spanish Tragedy, Hieronimo seeks the justice of Hades, whereas

Hamlet uses a play within a play in search of truth. Hamlet depicts the

revenger's plight sympathetically, making the desire for revenge appear

reasonable. In a sense the protagonist in a revenge plot becomes enmired

in evil for he or she does not necessarily initiate the catastrophic events

that lead to the acts of violence and damnation that follow. The legal term

for claiming one's right, 'vindicare', became a matter of grave concern for

the maintenance of law and order. 18 The popularity of plays about

revenge suggests that the passions of anger and hate were marketable

merchandise among the Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights who

apparently delighted in invoking divine judgment on avengers bent on

human retribution. An illustration of the vindictive power of the

Elizabethan culture is the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1571.

Queen Elizabeth's authorisation of the execution of Mary was regarded by

Roman Catholics as an unlawful act of private revenge rather than as the

lawful public duty of a sovereign. Paradoxically, law and justice are

subverted into the very violence which dislocates social order. Even in the

twentieth century, the media continue to sensationalise revenge killings

1 . For further discussion see E.E. Stoll, Hamlet : An Historical and Comparative Study, New York, 1968, 1st edition, 1919, p. 55. 17 . See Hamlet and Revenge, Second Edition, Stanford University Press, 1967, p. 44-46. 18 . For further discussion on 'vindicare' see Villy Sorenson, Seneca - The Humanist At The Court Of Nero, (Trans.) Glyn Jones, Canongate, 1984, p. 39.

11

just as Seneca did in the time of Nero. 19 Nevertheless, the fact that

revenge itself is condemned by the majority of the Elizabethans suggests

that the search for legitimacy is worthy of an investigation.

The Elizabethans also came under the influence of the Greek and the

Roman playwrights. For the Greek dramatists such as Aeschylus 525 -

456 B.C., Euripides 484 - 407 B.C. and the Roman Seneca 4 B.C.- A.D.

65, revenge was a compelling metaphor for the social tension between the

powerful and the powerless in a pagan setting, whereas the Elizabethans

were concerned with the legitimacy of vengeance as they believed that to

revenge was to rebel against God. The earliest recorded instance of

revenge tragedy is The Oresteia 458 B.C. of Aeschylus.20 Although

Pickeryng's sources for Horestes are Caxton's, seven characters are

enlisted from the Orestes legend.21 In The Spanish Tragedy, Hieronimo

quotes directly from Seneca to show the Roman influence. 22 It is of great

cultural significance that an accurate picture of the Roman customs is

reflected in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus with its pagan setting in

contrast to Hamlet's Christian setting. Both plays derive themes from

Seneca's Thyestes. 23 The Merchant of Venice, comedy though it is, may

19 • It is on record that Seneca and his wife committed suicide on the orders of Nero. See J.W.Cunliffe, The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy, London, 1893; Also Clarence W. Mendell, Our Seneca, New Haven, Connecticut, 1941. A sensational case in the twentieth century is the issue of an open death warrant on writer Salman Rushdie in retaliation for alleged defamatory writings. 20 . See The Oresteia, translated by Robert Fagles, Penguin Books, 1966, repr. 1977, p.14 21 . The seven legendary figures that show the classical influence are Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Egistus, ldumeus, Nestor, Menelaus and Hermione, ibid. 22 . Seneca's plays, which were adopted from the Greek drama, were written to be read, but Elizabethans accepted them as stage plays. His plays such as Hercules Furens, Medea, Troades, Phaedra, Agamemnon, Oedipus, Hercules Oetaeus, Phoenissae and Thyestes contained little or no action in the true sense of the word. The illusion of action was evoked by words, and the whole emphasis was focussed on to the diction. See Seneca : His Tenne Tragedies, ed. Thomas Newton, 1581, 1927; repr. Bloomington, Ind., 1964. This edition comprises two volumes bound as one, separately paginated. Seneca, Tragoedia, ed. Otto Zwierlein, Oxford Classical Texts, 1986. Also John Hazel Smith, 'Seneca's Tragedies', Rord 10, 1967, p. 49 -74. The influence of Seneca will be dealt later in this Introduction. 23 . For further discussion on Roman customs see T.J. B. Spencer, 'Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Romans', Shakespeare Studies, JO, 1955, p. 27-38.

12

be seen not only as a problem play like so many other Shakespearian

plays, but as 'the most scandalously problematic of Shakespeare's plays',24

partly because of the issues it raises of usury, of the instrumentality of

stage law and of anti-Semitism in the Christian state of Venice.

To make the paradox of the Elizabethan revenge clearer, we need to

discuss the term 'revenge drama' at this point. In essence 'revenge drama'

is the blanket term that refers to a body of plays, both comedies and

tragedies, that were written between 1561 and 1642. This introduction is

not concerned with the details of all the processes and dramatic devices by

which Greek revenge drama developed.25 Sir Philip Sidney praises

Gorboduc (1561) written by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville as the

first English revenge tragedy, 'full of stately speeches and well sounding

Phrases, clyming to the height of Seneca his stile'.26 Of Gorboduc, Miola

notes that 'in high Senecan style Ferrex swears that he is not a Senecan

revenger'.27 The exclusion of the play Gorboduc from this thesis is based

on the assumption that not only was there no sympathy for the queen for

the murder of her only surviving son, but most importantly the motive for

the people's rebellion against the king and queen was more political than

vengeful. During the Renaissance, the Elizabethan revenge genre took the

. For further discussion see Lawrence Danson, The Harmonies of 'The Merchant of Venice', Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1978, p. 2. 25 . Aristotle stated that both Comedy and Tragedy began as improvisations but that while the nobler singers went the way of the dithyramb and became tragedians, the singers of the base produced Comedy, which originated from the phallic songs. But few Elizabethans reached any nearer to Greek tragedy than what is found in Seneca - a Roman. For further discussion see A P. Rossiter's English Drama From Early Times To The Elizabethans, 1950, Hutchinson's University Library, London W.l., p. 19-20. 26 . Quoted in Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith, 1904, repri. London, 1971, p.196 - 7. Cited Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare And Classical Tragedy, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992, p.l, 196 -7. In Gorboduc, Queen Videna revenges the murder of her eldest son Ferrex by stabbing Porrex when he is asleep. The Senecan blood revenge is seen as 'an uncontrolled force that can tear the state apart'. See Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, Stanford University Press, California, 1967, p. 41. See H. Schmidt, 'Seneca's Influence upon Gorboduc', Modern Language Notes, Vol. II, 1887, p. 28. 27 • See Act Il.i.14-21 Gorboduc, Cited Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy -The Influence of Seneca, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992, p. l l.

13

Senecan model along with the Roman Stoic's influence which is evident

in the body of drama between 1580 and 1630. The revenge-for-murder

theme, so popular in Elizabethan drama and exemplified by Kyd's The

Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Hamlet, is also

attributed to the influence of Seneca. I have restricted the selection of

plays to an interlude, a comedy and three tragedies about revenge in order

to focus on the different Senecan and non-Senecan modes. Despite John

Pickeryng's Horestes (1567), Thomas Kyd is credited with firmly

establishing the English revenge genre with The Spanish Tragedy (1587).

In this respect, it has to be emphasised that Hamlet is a play about revenge

rather than strictly a revenge tragedy.28 A tendency has developed among

recent critics to push the origins of English revenge tragedy beyond Kyd

to Pickeryng, 29 who took a combination of the Tudor morality tradition

and a Greek analogue to explore the ambiguities of vices and virtues in

Horestes.

The reasons for the choice of my topic - The Paradox of Elizabethan

Revenge - and the limitations of my choice of plays from Horestes to

Hamlet are varied. First, neither revenge comedy nor revenge tragedy is

dominated by one Elizabethan playwright. Normally research on

Renaissance revenge and justice requires a critical number of plays during

the Elizabethan period between 1561 to 1603. Hence my choice of a

group of plays where neither the peculiarities of a single revenger nor the

operations of the Elizabethan legal system would obscure the

contradictions in the revenge genre. But to concentrate on the themes of a

particular play would be to restrict and constrict other primary concerns of

the thesis such as the legitimacy or illegitimacy of revenge and justice.

2 • This aspect of Hamlet will be addressed later in the Chapter on Hamlet. 29 . See Charles Hallett and Elaine Hallett, The Revenger's Madness, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 1980, p. 24 7.

14

Second, there has been such scholarly agreement about the literary scope

of revenge genre that I do not have to present any extraordinary claim for

it's thematic coherence. Finally, each play develops the implications of

revenge differently : regicide, patricide, fratricide, matricide, filicide,

homicide, suicide and problems of legitimacy and responsibility arise

variously. These issues must be proffered and verified by the plays. It is

one of the paradoxes of revenge that it should provide the satisfaction of a

sense of meaning from the range of uncertainty or doubt of the sequence

of actions. The thrust of the inquiry is to reveal the ways judgment can

and must be interpreted in our search for the legitimacy of revenge.

The reasons for the inclusion of Horestes (1567) in the First Chapter

are several. First, John Pickeryng, who progresses from play tradition to

interlude tradition,30 emerges as one of the progenitors of the English

revenge genre which shows simultaneously the justification of 'legalised

revenge' as a form of punishment, but spells out the dilemma of

dispensing justice. Like Hamlet, Horestes finds it laid upon him to right a

grievous wrong, the murder of his father, and to become an instrument of

divine justice. The difference is that Hamlet, who becomes the object of

revenge after the slaying of Polonius, dies by the sword. Horestes

survives. Second, using the different dramatic modes of songs and

allegorical techniques of morality plays, Pickeryng analyses the

dichotomy of crime and punishment that was to confront the likes of

Hieronimo and Hamlet.

30 . An interlude is a drama of about a thousand lines, known for its brevity and wit, classical in subject and intended to delight and instruct selective audiences at state banquets for about and hour and a half during the Tudor era. On the derivation of the word, see E.K. Chambers, Medieval Stage, Vol.ii. Oxford, 1903, p. 181-183. The term first to be used in a dramatic sense in connection with the fragmentary Interludium de Clerico et Puella was printed from a British Museum MS by W. Heuser, Anglia xxx, 1907, 306ff. Quoted C.F. Tucker Brooke, The Tudor Drama, Houghton Mifflin Co., The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1911, p. 70.

15

In a sense, Horestes is a politically controversial play, controversial

because it uses a combination of the Greek analogue and Tudor Morality

tradition, presumably to satirise the reign of Mary Queen of Scots.31 It is

on record that in the British parliament of 1572 Mary was compared to

Clytemnestra as a 'killer of her husband and adultress' .32 While Sir Philip

Sidney praises Gorboduc (1562) as the first English revenge tragedy

based on the Senecan tradition, a case can be made for Horestes as the

early progenitor of the genre, using a non-Senecan approach.33 Pickeryng

could hardly be criticised for not giving much thought to the Senecan

notion of the tragic element; he is rather satirising and reproducing a

historical play.34 My contention is that Pickeryng's intentions were that a

murderer like Clytemnestra should be brought to justice to give legitimacy

to Horestes' moral dilemma. Philip Edwards argues that 'Pickeryng is the

pioneer of Elizabethan revenge-tragedy : he begins not only the genre but

also the great question of the avenger's justification : the question which

is only answered with confidence in the pages of critics'.35 If we accept

Edwards' hypothesis, then Horestes' search for the legitimacy of revenge

leads us to question the paradox of 'law of gods and man' (line 422) to get

justice. It is my contention that Pickeryng initiates the English revenge

genre in Horestes without Senecan dependence, whereas the first English

tragedy, Gorboduc, shows its kinship, using Senecan devices such as the

division of the play into five acts, the use of chorus, bloodletting and

. For further discussion, see James E. Philips, 'A Revaluation of Horestes, 1567', Huntington Library Quarterly, 18, 1955, p. 234. 32 . See James E. Philips, Images of A Queen, Berkely and Los Angeles, 1964, p. 46., Quoted by David Bevington, 1968, p. 152. 33 . For further discussion, see the Introduction on Gorboduc, G. Gregory Smith, ed., Elizabethan Critical Essays, Vol./. (1904), repr. London, 1971, p. 196-7. 34

. See The Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G.C. Macaulay, Oxford, 1900, I: 277-86, and William Caxton, The Recuyell of The Historyes ofTroye, c.1475 by Raoul Lefevre, ed. H. Oskar Sommer, 2: p. 680-87. 35 • See Philip Edwards, Thomas Kyd and Early Elizabethan Tragedy, Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1966, p.17.

16

murder.36 Thirdly, Pickeryng's personifications of the Vice figure as

Courage, Truth, Revenge and Patience in the interlude initiate a novel

dimension to the revenge motif. That Pickeryng consistently condemned

revenge itself is evident in the hybrid nature of the full title of the play - A

Newe Enterlude of Vice Conteyninge, the Historye of Horestes with the

cruel/ revengement of his Fathers death, upon his natural/ Mother, with

the emphasis on 'the cruel/ revengement'. Prosser says that the play is

often cited as 'proof of establishing a theatrical tradition justifying

revenge'. 37 Lastly, the issues of justice and revenge contradict one another

in a complex mirroring of human conflict in the interlude's pagan setting

which is almost certainly a vehicle for Tudor propaganda in shaping the

Tudor view of history. In effect, the play brings together the three literary

forms - the vice, interlude and history to satirise the royal conflicts of a

Tudor Queen. 38

In Horestes, the search for legitimacy leads not only to the

condemnation of revenge but also to the endorsement of revenge.

Although the interlude is concerned with patricide, matricide and regicide,

the extraordinary feature of the play is that Horestes himself escapes

retribution. In his conflict between love for his murdered father and duty

to the State, Horestes becomes the 'other' against whom popular support

36 . See H. Schmidt, 'Seneca's Influence upon Gorboduc', Modern Language Notes, II, 1887, p. 62; J.W.Cunliffe, The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy, London, 1893, p. 50. Other appraisals of Seneca's influence are in F.L.Lucas, Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy, London, 1933, and H. B. Charlton, The Senecan Tradition, Manchester, 1946. The influences on Elizabethan revenge drama can be traced back to the Greek tragedies which were adapted by Seneca. 37 . Cited Eleanor Prosser, 1967, p. 42 - 44. Further discussions are embodied in the Chapter on Horestes. 38 . For further discussion, see A.P.Rossiter, English Drama From Early Times To The Elizabethans, Hutchinson's University Library, 1950, p. 140, also p. 1 13-117. Rossiter argues that from the dramatic viewpoint, we observe that the rights and wrongs of rule are demonstrated by 'using' history, taking events which serve that purpose and ignoring the rest. The allusiveness in allegoric 'disguisings' also provides a link between plays and politics, and by extension history. For example, the 'ambidextrous' vices in other interludes written between 1560 and 1570, and in particular, Republica (1553), link Hypocrisy, the Devil's Son, in equivocating villainy. p. 125.

17

may be legitimately invoked. Hence the legitimate authority is shifted

from Horestes to the 'Councell' that undertakes 'legalised revenge' to

convict Egistus and Clytemnestra. The position of Pickeryng's Horestes

within this genre is in some ways ambiguous. Some critics such as

Prosser9 and Cunliffe40 find the play crude, and I consider crudeness as

good grounds for the play's inclusion, whereas Bevington argues that the

play was too crude to be performed at Court.41 Whether the interlude

achieves its tragic moral dimension is not at issue here, but the scholarly

justification for considering John Pickeryng one of the progenitors of the

revenge genre has been extensively analysed and debated by critics.42

Horestes follows the Interlude tradition of about a thousand lines, with a

Vice appearing in it to comment on and interfere in the action.43 While the

play is derived from Caxton's Recuyell of The Historyes ofTroye (c.1475),

the dependence of Horestes upon Caxton's Recuyell has been analysed by

Frederich Brie,44 and by Willard Farnham.45 Whether the play is simply a

dramatisation of the classical Orestes legend or not, there are obvious

39 . See Prosser, 1967, p. 44.

40 . See Cunliffe, 1912, p. lxx. 41 . For further discussion see, From Mankind To Marlowe, Harvard, 1962, p. 61. 42 . For further discussion see C.F.Tucker Brooke, The Tudor Drama, New York, 1911, p.139; Willard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy, Berkeley, 1936, p. 258 - 63; A. P. Rossiter, English Drama From Early Times To Elizabeth, London, 1950, p.140-1; Bernard Spivack, Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil, New York, 1958, p. 279 - 84; P. Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, Stanford, 1973, p. 41-44; J. W. Cunliffe, ed., Early English Classical Tragedies, Oxford, 1912, xx; David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1968, p. 150 -154; Robert S. Knapp, 'Horestes : The Uses of Revenge', ELH 40, 1973, p. 205 -20; Ronald S. Broude, 'Vindicta filia temporis :Three English Forerunners of the Elizabethan Revenge Play', JEGP 72, 1973, p. 494 -97; P. Happe, 'Tragic Themes in Three Tudor Moralities', Studies in English Literature 5, 1965: p.207 - 27; Charles and Elaine Hallett, The Revenger's Madness, The University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln & London, 1980, p. 247 - 54. 43 . Cited Marie Axton, ed. Three Tudor Classical Interludes, D. S. Brewer, Rowman & Littlefield, 1982, References are to facsimile reprint in Old English Drama, Students' Facsimile Edition, Tudor Facsimile Texts, ed. J. S. Farmer, 1910, Cited James E. Philips, 'A Revaluation of Horestes' (1567), Huntington Library Quarterly, 1955, 18, p. 234. The Interlude survives in a crudely printed quarto, published in London by William Griffith in 1567 entitled, A Newe Enterlude of Vice Conteyninge, the Historye of Horestes, with the cruel[ revengment of his Fathers death, vpon his one natural/ Mother, by John Pikeryin. 44 . Frederich Brie, 'Horestes von John Pickeryng', Englisch StudienXLV/, 1912, p. 66. 45 • Willard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1963, p. 259 - 60.

18

parallels between the political situation dramatised in Horestes and the

sensational events that were taking shape in Scotland in the life of Mary

Queen of Scots in the very year the play was printed and performed at

Court around July 14, 1567. My contention is John Pickeryng, who was

Speaker of the House and Lord Keeper in Queen Elizabeth's Government,

and an ardent foe of Mary Stuart, intended to allegorise the political

intrigue of a Tudor Queen.46 James Philips who disagrees on this point

suggests that 'the play set forth in dramatic terms the fundamental

question of political theory and practice which news of these events raised

in England, where a Queen highly sensitive about her own sovereignty

was on the throne'.47 Horestes might be considered as a classical 'history

play' in the sense that Lily Campbell has shown Shakespeare's English

History plays to be a 'mirror serving a special purpose in elucidating a

political problem of Elizabeth's day and . .. bringing to bear upon this

problem the accepted political philosophy of the Tudor'.48 The play, as

Tucker Brooke says, is 'the highest point attained by the transitional

interlude in the development of dramatic unity and tragic purpose.'49

What is significant is that Pickeryng achieves a sense of legitimacy by

shifting the onus of revenge from Horestes to the Councell. It is clearly

possible that Pickeryng's play helped to shape the future of English

revenge genre as it was developed by later playwrights such as Thomas

Kyd and William Shakespeare. From this brief discussion, it is evident

that there is ample justification for the inclusion of this much neglected

play in this thesis despite the absence of the Senecan features of the genre

as exemplified in The Spanish Tragedy.

. See David Bevington, The Tudor Drama and Politics, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1968, p. 150 - 154. 47 . J.E. Philips, 1955, p. 230. 48 . Lily B. Campbell, Shakespeare's "Histories": Mirrors of Elizabethbn Policy, Huntington Library Publications, San Marino, California, 1947, p. 125; Cited J.E. Philips, 1955, p. 230. 49 . For further opinions see C. F. Tucker Brooke, The Tudor Drama, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1911, p. 118 -229.

19

At the heart of The Spanish Tragedy (1587) lies the oxymoronic nature

of divine and human justice. The focus is on the illegitimacy of revenge.

In this non-Christian play, the Christian injunction against private revenge

is evident in Hieronimo's appeal 'Vindicta mihi' (Ill.xiii.I). 50 As a

sympathetic figure, Hieronimo feels obligated to seek revenge for his son

murdered by a political cabal from a Court permeated by corruption and

deception. The play's poignant search for legitimacy, interweaving the

conflict between civility and cruelty, revenge and restraint, reason and

madness, justice and barbarism, stakes a good claim for inclusion in this

thesis. On one level Hieronimo is presented as a fully justified hero in

pursuit of his legitimate duty of revenge with the sanction of the gods and

the sympathy of the audience, while on a different level, we see him as a

Stoic who is transformed into a villain. Like Titus Andronicus and

Othello, Hieronimo is driven to a desire for revenge that entails a violation

of all that is best in him. To Hieronimo, the act of injustice is so agonising

that it demands retribution as he believes that punishment should fit the

crime. He cries out against the heavens for refusing to act but The Spanish

Tragedy finally demonstrates the cruelty and suffering of a character

driven beyond the limits of his endurance.

Although it is not the process of retribution that counts in the play, the

play raises self-conscious concerns about the roles of law and justice.

Hieronimo is led to defy both society and the heavens in his search for

legitimation. The function of law is to maintain order and at the same time

to remove personal animus from the process of exacting retribution.51 In

. All references are to Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. Philip Edwards, The Revels Plays, Methuen, London, 1959. 51 . Susan Jacoby argues that it is 'the removal of private animus, not the absence of vengeance, that distinguishes the rule of law from the rule of passion'. See Wild Justice : The Evolution of Revenge, New York, 1983, p.115.

20

the scheme of things, the law is designed to control the dangerous and

destructive passion of revenge. This point is reinforced by Francis Bacon's

definition of revenge as 'a kind of wild justice'.52 But the workings of

Elizabethan legal institutions contradict what has been referred to as the

'irrational but powerful feeling that private individuals cannot be blamed

for taking vengeance into their own hands'. 53 The contradictory image of

vengeance is manifested in the paradox that an administrator of justice

like Hieronimo develops into a righteous avenger, who wavers between

suicide and revenge, and finally takes the law and justice wrongfully into

his own hands in order to legitimise his act of revenge. While the

revenger's actions may clear away the corruption that has obstructed his

search for justice, Hieronimo's unlawful revenge paradoxically reinforces

the legitimacy of the sovereign. The Spanish Tragedy is so sensational as

a tragic medium for Senecan blood letting, melodrama and rhetoric that it

has made a significant contribution to the development of the history of

English drama. 54 If Pickeryng emerges as one of the progenitors in the

long line of revenge plays, then it was Thomas Kyd who firmly

established the Senecan genre of revenge tragedy in Renaissance England

with The Spanish Tragedy.

In Titus Andronicus (1594), 55 Shakespeare's first revenge tragedy, the

protagonist's act of violence precedes his transformation into a victim, the

character becoming directly responsible for his tragedy.56 Paradoxically

2 . Francis Bacon, 'Of Revenge', 1625 in A.S. Gaye, ed., The Essays of Francis Bacon, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1911, p. 27-9. 53 . For further discussion see Ann Barton, Introduction to Hamlet, edited by T. J.B. Spencer, New Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1980, p. 12. 54 • See T. Mc Alinden, English Renaissance Tragedy, Macmillan, 1986, p. 5 5 - 81. 55 . All references are to The New Cambridge Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, ed. by Alan Hughes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994. 56 . For use of the terms villain and victim in reference to Elizabethan character types, see J. M. R. Margeson in The Origins of English Tragedy, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967, p. 128- 156; Also see John Seldon Whale, Victor and Victim, Cambridge, 1960, p. 181 for concepts of victor­victim. These concepts will be dealt with later in the plays.

21

Senecan Stoicism gives way to Senecan sensationalism. The latter is

unparalleled in Titus Andronicus, which abounds with a dozen deaths. In

Titus Andronicus, the searching examination of revenge hinges on the

motives of Titus, Tamora and Aaron. Titus plunges from a 'noble Roman'

to a cruel revenger in his quest for revenge. Paradoxically, cruelty is

counted justice. The search for justice generates the play's underlying

passion for retribution as Titus spurns the Roman law in order to embark

on an illegitimate spree of rough justice. In the two Senecan plays, The

Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus, the desire for private revenge

manifests itself late in the action, after the failure of the plea for public

redress, and after the revenger has been desperately driven to seek an

antidote to legitimise his private action. Not only do the two plays deal

with homicide, but they challenge the mistaken code of honour of the

fathers who avenge their siblings' murder. In destroying their opponents

illegitimately, both Hieronimo and Titus destroy their Stoical judgment of

their own legitimacy. Their action proves that private execution is

illegitimate and paradoxically their search for justice results in revenge.

Like Seneca's Thyestes, Titus Andronicus not only exceeds the accepted

bounds of human dignity but climaxes in the ghastly banquet of dead

offspring. Through his extended pursuit of revenge, the tragic Titus dies in

the act of taking it. Such action leaves no room for change of character.

Like Medea,57 like Clytemnestra in Horestes, Titus ignores the saner

counsel of reason and moderation and embarks on a passion of ritualised

slaughter and sacrifice. Thus it would seem relevant to include a chapter

on Shakespeare's first experiment with a revenge tragedy, Titus

. Medea's horrible passion for revenge for the infidelity of Jason is to kill her own children. The punishment shows itself twice as wicked as the crime. See Euripides, Medea And Other Plays, translated with an Introduction by Philip Vellacott, Penguin Books, England, I 964, 1984, p. 7 - 8.

22

Andronicus, where the protagonist seems intent on both exploitation and

dehumanisation. 58

In Shakespeare's comedy, The Merchant of Venice (1597), 59 Shylock's

revenge is motivated not by any desire for law and justice, but solely by

malice to commit a legalised murder. Ironically justice and mercy are

opposed in the play as Shylock is defeated on his own terms of law and

justice. What is at issue is whether the demands of justice can be

reconciled legitimately with the demands of compassion. The inclusion of

The Merchant of Venice enhances the scope of the genre of revenge.

Although the play is somewhat problematic, the play's inclusion explores

the paradox of justice and mercy in contrast to the rest of the chosen texts.

The play is unique as it instroduces the notion of epikeia - that is law

tempered with mercy. For example, in Horestes, law and justice take

precedence over mercy, whereas in The Merchant of Venice, Shylock's

revenge is conceived more from malice than duty as he uses law as a mask

for malice. In the search for legitimacy, this Elizabethan drama mingles

the comic and the tragic on generic grounds to proclaim the paradox that

both the Christian and the Jew are equally possessed by the spirit of

revenge. The play's force lies in its ultimate moral concern over Shylock's

real motives for exacting revenge lawfully on Antonio. Ben Jonson rightly

maintains the essential seriousness in both genres: 'The parts of a

Comedie are the same with a Tragedie, and the end is partly the same.

For, they both delight, and teach ... '60 In this context, The Merchant of

. For example, Titus is tricked into the loss of his hand; his son-in-law, Bassianus, has been killed; Lavinia has been ravished and mutilated, and what is more the horrific banquet scene has Titus appearing as a cook with a baked pie of both Chiron and Demetrius ! For further aspects of dehumanisation see Fredson Bowers, 1940, p. 110-118. 59 . All references are to The Merchant of Venice, The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare, ed. John Russell Brown, London, Methuen, Harvard University Press, Cambridge & Mass., 1955 & 1961. 60 . See Ben Jonson, Timber, or Discoveries, Quoted W. Moelwyn Merchant, Comedy, Methuen, 1972, p. 3; See also David C. McPherson, Shakespeare, Jonson and The Myth of Venice, Newark:

23

Venice differs from the other chosen texts on being a Comedy, and in not

replicating a revenge undertaken in response to Senecan blood-letting, for

it teaches the virtue of mercy over malice. In his treatment, Shakespeare

fashions Shylock into a grotesque object of derision, much to the

amusement of the Elizabethan audiences that thrived on racial and ethnic

humour, as is also evident in Titus Andronicus and Othello. Many

elements blend together in The Merchant of Venice - usury, law and

justice, revenge and mercy, religion and tolerance. Shylock's revenge is

motivated not by any desire for justice but solely by malice, and that itself

is villainous in intent. In a reversal of roles, Shylock is defeated on his

own insistence in law and justice and is compelled to become a Christian

with the possibility of receiving mercy.61 Generically, the paradoxical

aspects of malice and mercy as applied to both Jew and Christian justify

the choice of a comedy in this thesis.

If Shakespeare's first attempt at the genre is Titus Andronicus, then

he raises the genre to its highest level with Hamlet (1601). He may have

been influenced by Kyd's Ur-Hamlet, a play not extant. The reason for

including Hamlet in the last chapter is that the play effectively dramatises

the search for the legitimacy of revenge in the context of regicide,

homicide, suicide and fratricide in a Christian setting. No other play has

drawn more attention than this in which Shakespeare's use of the

Revenge Ghost grips the audience with a powerful opening, sets the tragic

tone, reveals a crime and calls for revenge. Like Thyestes's ghost,

University of Delaware Press, London and Toronto, 1992, p. 51- 68. McPherson argues that the play seems less a fairy tale or conventional New Comedy and more a story of the contemporary world, p. 58. 61 . Portia's plea is reminiscent of Isabella's plea in another Shakespearian play, Measure for Measure. In each instance the appeal for mercy comes from a woman. Isabella's plea epitomises the deep-laid foundations of Elizabethan thought upon justice and mercy. Mercy must temper justice in human society if the world of men is to resemble the spiritual world of which it seeks to be the faint and imperfect image. Under the justice of God all men must stand condemned for sin and their life lies in His mercy, which is infinite. See C.J. Sisson, Shakespeare's Tragic Justice, Methuen, London, 1963, p. 2 .

24

Hamlet's ghost demands retribution for a past crime. Not only is Hamlet

concerned with both Stoic wisdom and Christian heroism, but the play

also challenges the legitimacy of private revenge and poetic justice.62 If

this introduction is to serve its purpose, we may not limit ourselves only

to the search for the legitimacy of revenge but extend the search to the

Elizabethan concept of justice as the expression of order in the cosmos. It

may be disconcerting to find that this problem of justice, both human and

divine, emerges in Shakespeare's greatest masterpiece, Hamlet. It is

disconcerting because whether or not some plays such as The Spanish

Tragedy and Hamlet were accepted by their audiences as representing

justifiable vengeance, it is presumed that the most justified revengers,

such as Hieronimo and Hamlet, seem to have been the most popular.63

The play is disturbing because Shakespeare's dramatic treatment of the

poignant problem of justice reflects the mysteries of law and order in the

universe. In stressing the reading of Hamlet as a play about revenge and

the process of justice, we see that Hamlet attempts to grapple with the

legitimacy of revenge because Claudius' accession to the throne indicates

a manifestation of illegitimate power. Laertes' situation parallels that of

Hamlet, and ironically it is the development of Laertes' revenge that

induces Hamlet to act. The paradox of Elizabethan revenge is that not

only are order and harmony possible, but peace and justice are restored at

the end by a legitimate ruler, as demonstrated also in The Spanish

2 . For Dryden, the tenn 'poetic justice' meant the appropriate punishment for wickedness and this notion has developed into the more complex aspect of punishment or reward which is peculiarly appropriate in the ideal world of creative fiction as compared with the real world of statute law, which satisfies the fastidiousness of aesthetic judgment. In the narrow sense, poetic justice refers to the tangled events that comprise the catastrophe in Hamlet, in respect of the downfall of Hamlet's antagonist, Claudius. For further discussion on poetic justice, see C.J. Sisson, Shakespeare's Tragic Justice, Methuen, London, 1963, p. 4- 7. 63 . Susan Jacoby maintains that 'the Elizabethan disapproval of revenge was directed less toward the impulse itself than toward the social consequences of its violent expression'. See Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge, Harper and Row, New York, 1983, p. 45-46. For references to Hamlet, see Donald J. McGinn, Shakespeare's Influence on the Drama of His Age Studied in "Hamlet", Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N.J., 1938; Reprint, Octagon Books, New York, 1965.

25

Tragedy and Titus Andronicus. 64 Although the problem of human and

divine justice seems to haunt these plays, yet each play, from Horestes to

Hamlet, tends to posit an individual expression of the revenge motive and

enacts its own ethical evaluation ofrevenge and of the revenger.

As the paradox of revenge rests on the notion of self-justification, the

Elizabethans were tom between a belief in divine vengeance and legal

justice. Historically the Principle of Retaliation for crimes is clear even in

the Code of Hammurabi 1728 -1686 BC.65 In order to delineate the

critical approach adopted for this discussion, we need to focus on the

controversial aspects of Elizabethan attitudes to revenge. It is

controversial because we cannot know with certainty how the

Elizabethans responded to a particular character or revenge action in the

sixteenth century. In the historical context, A.C. Bradley's position on the

character-centred criticism implying a didactic role for Renaissance

literature is relevant to the discussion on Elizabethan attitudes: "The

centre of the tragedy, therefore, may be said with equal truth to lie in the

actions, issuing from character, or in character from action".66 In the

context of Bradley's assumption the notion of determinate character or

64 See Norman T. Pratt, Seneca's Drama, Chapell Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Pratt suggests a transformation from Greek tragedy, representing 'disorder in nature', to Shakespeare, representing 'nature in disorder'. In the latter, the forces of chaos are purged and moral order emerges at the end. He argues that this change has already occurred in Seneca, who held out the possibility of moral order through the rational faculty's control of the irrational, but this order was only on the individual and not the political level. For the triumph of order in the court, see Stephen Orgel, The Jonsonian Masque, Columbia University Press, New York, 1980, and The Illusion of Power, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1975; Also cited Wendy Griswold, 1991, p. 92. 65 . See Roger Whiting, Crime and Punishment, Stanley Publishers, 1992, p. 7. The stele placed in the Temple of Shamah at Sippar is in the Louvre Museum. In The Code of Hammurabi written on a stele, 'A life for a life' is laid down, though a distinction is made between murder and manslaughter that denotes accidental killing. Even the Mosaic Law (1300 BC), Torah, which is attributed to the Law of God, forbade killing, as stipulated in the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill'. Homer's story of the Trojan war (700 BC) depicts vengeance as a tribal function. The introduction of the idea of Christian forgiveness and mercy was primarily intended to reduce the amount of personal vengeance in the Anglo-Saxon times. 66 • See A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, Macmillan, London, 1957, p. 7.

26

rather the contradiction within the character could influence either way the

attitudes of the Elizabethans towards private revenge.

Whether the Renaissance audiences approved or disapproved of

revenge remains an on-going debate. Of special significance to this

discussion is the Biblical injunction against vengeance.67 The Biblical

command against private revenge personifies a pledge of divine

intervention as a prohibition of human retribution. Not only do the

Biblical commands reverberate throughout Elizabethan drama, the words

are directly quoted by Hieronimo - Vindicta mihi - in the non-Christian

play, The Spanish Tragedy (III.xiii.I). This suggests that the orthodox

condemnation of vengeance, despite its persistence, was not the only

attitude to revenge held at the time. The religious view was that the

revenger endangers his or her own soul through malice and murder, while

the revenger is damned for ever without the possibility of redemption.

Despite the orthodox view that revenge was sinful, my assumption is that

Elizabethans felt an element of emotional sympathy for the passion of

private vendetta. In the absence of divine action, civil authorities have

been cited as legitimate representatives to enforce law and justice. Laws

are thus designed not to weed out the impulse towards revenge but to

contain it in a fitting manner consistent with the smooth running of an

orderly society. In determining the role of retribution in a community, the

consistent aim of punishment is no less important than the process by

which it is enforced. The death penalty represents a form of legalised

vengeance but so is any lesser punishment. The metaphor of life-as-drama

between appearance and reality, acting and action, leads to the search for

the interpretation of legitimacy. The attitude of most Elizabethan

. Romans 12: 19. Also cited Deuteronomy 32: 35, Vengeance is mine, and recompense ... for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly; and Hebrews 10:30, Cited The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Std version, Oxford, 1973.

27

moralists and preachers is one of condemnation, as pointed out by

Eleanor Prosser: " ... Elizabethan moralists condemned revenge as illegal,

blasphemous, immoral, irrational, unnatural, and unhealthy - not to

mention unsafe".68 Helen Gardner69 and Robert Omstein70 rightly argue

that the official condemnation of those popular attitudes is no guide in

determining either the playwright's intention or the audience's response.

Interpreting the historical evidence is problematic enough, as it is difficult

to know what Kyd's or Shakespeare's views of revenge may have been,

unless they can be inferred from the plays of the period. Even then,

enunciating what is implied in the plays may not necessarily accord with

historical interpretation.

We can examine evidence about general attitudes towards revenge

in the early or late sixteenth century and try to discover the conflicts and

contradictions which would elucidate our reading of the plays. It is my

assumption that Renaissance audiences tended to accept revenge as a form

of justice and as an appropriate form of divine retribution upon the

revenger. Although the concept of revenge was out of line with the

dominant ethical system, Christianity, it existed in terms of theatrical

experience, and of society's instinctive attachment to the revenge code. To

say that the majority of orthodox opinion favoured passive resistance over

revenge in the historical context of the revenge drama is to risk being

reductive and inflexibly historicist. Raymond Williams' observation that

there will be elements of 'dominant, residual and emergent ideologies in

. See Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, Stanford, 1967, p. 10. Prosser describes the Elizabethans' predicament as a dilemma. Of Hamlet, most critics still hold that the average Elizabethan believed that a son was morally bound to revenge his father's death. It is suggested that the popular revenge play arose in a theatrical tradition that appealed to popular, not official attitudes. ibid., p. 4. 69 . See Helen Gardner, The Business of Criticism, Oxford, 1959, p. 36; Robert Ornstein, The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy, Madison, Wisconsin, 1960, p. 15-16. 70 . For further discussion see R. Ornstein, The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy, Madison, Wisconsin, 1960, p. 15-16.

28

any one period of time' 71 challenges the conventional view that there was

one 'Elizabethan world picture', the debatable point made by

E.M.W.Tillyard.72 Just as contemporary attitudes to revenge differ

according to different cultural and religious background, so any reference

to the 'average Elizabethans' implies merely a summation of attitudes and

opinions. Just as the contemporary attitudes change with the times so does

our vision of the Elizabethans.73 J.W. Lever has suggested that recent

approaches to Shakespeare criticism, in particular, have recognised the

playwright's thought and art are inseparable.74 At the very least, to say that

moralists spoke out against revenge is to reinforce the point that the issue

of revenge was an important topic not only to the moralists but also to the

average Elizabethans who were preoccupied with the subject. 75 In

summary, it is evident that the attitude of the Elizabethans towards

revenge is one of puzzling ambiguities.

When the burden of revenge is assigned to lawful authority,

victims have the emotional satisfaction of witnessing their assailants'

punishment, but society is protected from the violent crimes of unchecked

revengers, and revengers themselves are safeguarded from a burden that

frequently proves too great for the gentle side of human nature. The moral

dilemma assumes different forms in different plays, and/or takes different

emphases : Hieronimo's predicament, Hamlet's procrastination, Shylock's

71 . Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977, p. 121-7. 72 . See The Elizabethan World Picture, London. 1943; Also Shakespeare's Problem Plays, London, 1964; Cited Michael Hattaway, Hamlet, Macmillan, 1987, p. 32. 73 . See Helen Gardner, The Business of Criticism, Oxford, 1959, p. 33. She observes that the conception of the Elizabethans had undergone regular changes in the past hundred years. In the latter part of the sixteenth century, the Elizabethans were God-fearing, Protestant, and patriotic. Since then they have variously been Italianate and much less manly and God-fearing; subtle, sensual and sceptical; and then later they were obsessed with the idea of hierarchy, crypto­Catholics and heirs to the Middle Ages. 74 . See J. W. Lever, 'Shakespeare and the Ideas of his Time', Shakespeare Survey 29, 1976, p. 79-91. The suggestion is also made by Lever that when it comes to dramatic criticism, the focus should be extended to a more flexible historicism. 75 • The preoccupation of the age is debated by Bowers in Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1940, p. 23. Envy was perhaps the greatest Elizabethan vice that induced the passion of revenge, p. 22.

29

malice and Aaron's cunning. In a reversal of roles in The Merchant of

Venice, when Antonio offers to return half of Shylock's goods provided he

'presently become a Christian', he may appear to speak of mercy, but the

cruel paradox is that he mercilessly exacts revenge. It is also paradoxical

that Hamlet's act of vengeance against Claudius constitutes a crime

against the state. Paradoxically the Gods who restored Horestes to his

kingdom are not there to save either Hieronimo or Hamlet from an

untimely death. Not only do the plays testify to the dramaturgical power

and the intrinsic value of the revenge genre, but the paradox of revenge

exposes the dichotomy between the need for justice and the need for

reconciliation rather than retaliation as revealed in the development of

Elizabethan drama.

I could not have done my part without the aid of numerous critics'

scholarly discourse on legal, cultural, psychological and religious aspects

of revenge drama. I gratefully acknowledge my intellectual indebtedness

to them in the Bibliography. Their painstakingly laid groundwork enabled

me to approach the puzzling inconsistencies and ambiguities of the search

for the legitimacy of revenge and justice.

30

THE REVENGE OF ORESTES f:-cm I3occ::iccio's De ,,1tiiiail·t1s Cfa ... is, r .173.

CHAPTER ONE

HORESTES (1567) - THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH

REVENGE TRAGEDY ?

Who offended the love of God, and eke mans love with willing hart,

Must by (that) love have punnishment as dutey due for his desart.

For me therfor to punnish hear, as law of gods and man doth wil,

Is not a crime, though that I do, as thou dost saie, my mother kil.

... Horestes 420 - 423 1

John Pickeryng's Horestes is presumably the first Elizabethan interlude to

challenge the legitimacy of revenge in relation to justice. The character of

Horestes and the function of the Vice-figure are deeply involved in the

questioning of the legitimacy of justice which underlies the main conflict

of the play. My argument is that the search for justice becomes a search

for the legitimacy of revenge as Horestes believes that he is carrying out

the 'law of gods and man' (Horestes 422). The paradox lies in the puzzling

ambiguities of divine and human justice in the pagan play which has

wider implications for its Christian audiences. A hesitant Horestes is

urged on by a Vice-figure who hides his true nature - Revenge - behind

the disguise of Courage to avenge his father's murder by his mother,

Clytemnestra, and her paramour, Egistus. Even Dame Nature's plea for

mercy to avoid the cruelty of matricide fails to move Horestes. Horestes,

like Hamlet, sets out in search of 'truth' (1180) to dispense justice in the

form of 'dew punnishment' (1183) for regicide and patricide.

~11 references are to John Pickeryng's Horestes, in Three Tudor Classical Interludes, ed. Marie Axton, first published by D.S. Brewer, (Cambridge), Rowman and Littlefield, U.S.A., 1982.

The unusually long title that Pickeryng uses, A New Enterlude of Vice

Conteyninge, The Historye of Horestes with the Cruell Revengment of his

Fathers death, vpon his Natural/ Mother, epitomises its hybrid nature

since the historical theme of regicide and matricide forms the play's

storyline in six out of the thirteen scenes, and comes from Lydgate's Troy

Book. 2 The emphasis on the words, 'Cruell Revengment', reflects

Pickeryng's condemnation of revenge. Disputes over the legitimacy of the

legal systems and the form of political power which they yielded marked

the Tudor era. It could be claimed that it was Pickeryng's intention to

present in dramatic terms the ideological conflicts of the period :

significantly Pickeryng included a homage to the Queen at the end of the

interlude:

For your gentle pacience we geve you thankes, hartely;

And therefore, our dewtey weyed, let us all praye

For Elyzabeth our Quene, whose gratious majestie

May rayne over us in helth for aye; (Dewtey, 1192-5).

This inquiry is based on the assumption that Pickeryng not only sets

out to satirise a political allegory of a Monarch, in this case Mary Queen

of Scots, but also presents a dilemma of revenge in a pagan setting,

justifying the action of Horestes. In doing so Pickeryng becomes one of

the progenitors of the English Revenge tragedy blending the morality

tradition with the classical analogue.3 Fredson Bowers suggests that the

'classical story of revenge in John Pickeryng's Horestes is so medievalized

2~ee Karen Maxwell Merritt, 'The Source of John Pickeryng's Horestes', RES XXIII. 1972, p. 255 -266. The play will be referred to as Horestes in this thesis. 3 • See Bernard Spivack, Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil, Columbia University Press, New York, 1958, p. 279.

34

that it loses all significance except as a basis for comedy and pageantry' .4

Charles and Elaine Hallet maintain the opinion that 'Pickeryng gives little

real thought to the experience of the revenge passion' ,5 Peter Mercer

contends that 'Horestes does concern itself directly with revenge - with,

indeed, the most compelling of all myths of revenge'. 6 Although

vengeance is urged upon a hesitant Horestes by a Vice-figure who hides

his true nature, Revenge, behind the disguise of Courage, the Vice is not

exactly the Machiavellian kind. Just as Hamlet was haunted by the

Revenge Ghost's appearance, Horestes is faced with one question, what

shall he do about Clytemnestra ? Should he show mercy ? Being a

religious man, Horestes would not want to act without waiting for the

elusive divine intervention. Obviously Horestes is misled in supposing

that the gods have made him their 'scourge and minister' as in Hamlet

(III.iv.177). When Horestes is faced with Menelaus' threats of a counter

revenge for the death of his sister, Clytemnestra, Horestes' justification is

that the Gods commanded him to do so. Horestes has the support of both

King Idumeus and Nestor. The king's approval implies divine sanction ;

the assumption is that Horestes' action is never in doubt.

The search for legitimacy is further suggested by the legal and political

references found in the play. Although Horestes analyses the motives of

Horestes' revenge on Clytemnestra, it abounds with political allusions

satirising the reign of Mary Queen of Scots, as already discussed in the

Introduction. Pickeryng seems not to have been attempting to allegorise

the actual events that took place in Scotland, but instead to have been

putting forth in dramatic mode the legal and political issues which news

~edson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1597-1642, Princeton, NJ 1940, p. 65. 5 . The Revenger's Madness, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 1980, p. 247. 6 . Hamlet and the Acting Of Revenge, Macmillan Press, London, 1987, p. 250.

35

of these events raised in England where a Queen highly sensitive about

her own sovereignty was on the throne. Whatever views are espoused by

some critics, I assume that Pickeryng was dealing not only with the

cruelty of revenge but with regicide. This was a touchy subject for the

Tudors, and was to touch the Stuarts a good deal closer still. In such a

political context, the revenger assumes the role of malcontent.7

Bevington observes that at the time Horestes was acted at Court during

the year-end revels of 1567, Mary Queen of Scots had been forced to

depose herself in favour of her infant son James. The political implication

points to the notion that Mary was also widely suspected of complicity in

the death of her husband, Darnley, in order that she might marry the Earl

of Bothwell. Presumably, Pickeryng satirizes the sordid triangle that

resembles that of Horestes, in which Queen Clytemnestra kills her

husband Agamemnon to live with her paramour Egistus. Such a play

would have found favour with Queen Elizabeth's ministers who supported

the Scottish nobles against Mary. A similar observation has been made by

James Philips. 8 In this respect Horestes might be considered a classical

'history play' like Titus Andronicus in the sense that Lily B. Campbell has

shown Shakespeare's history plays to be.9 Ballads began to appear in

1567 justifying the action against Mary and showing that Mary should be

deposed. It is something of a coincidence that fifteen years before the

execution of Mary in 1587, Richard Gallys created a sensation in the

7~avid Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1968, p. 150. 8 • See James Philips, 'A Revaluation of Horestes 1567', H L Q., 1955, 18: p. 227 - 244. 9 • As we have seen there is justification for the use of material in the treatment of legendary characters from history, with a moral theme as a carry-over. Such materials are evident in Cambises and Horestes which are early examples of the process. Alfred Harbage calls them biographical plays. See Shakespeare's Rival Traditions, New York, 1965, p. 65. The plays are sufficiently famous to arouse the curiosity of Elizabethan audiences. See Lily B. Campbell, Divine Poetry and Drama in Sixteenth Century England, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1959. Cited James Philips, 1955, p. 23, ibid. Also see footnote 39 in The Introduction to this thesis.

36

Parliament of 1572 in comparing Mary to Clytemnestra as 'killer of her

husband and an adultress'. 10 In the play, Clytemnestra evokes her son's

condemnation as an 'adultress dame' (175 & 405). Nevertheless the

classical ethos provides a disguise for satirical and political purpose in

Horestes which deals with the threat posed to England's crown by regicide

in Scotland, evoking the royal conflict through a subtle classical analogue.

Pickeryng's own pro-Elizabethan stance also points to the play's

dramatisation at one remove of the murder of Henry Stuart, King of

Scots, and of Mary's callous marriage with the Earl of Bothwell. 11 Also in

the same year, 1567, a Scottish politician and ballad writer, Robert

Semphill, used the Orestes story to allegorise the dilemma of Murray and

the Scottish government. A play of Orestes, possibly but not necessarily

Pickeryng's, was performed before Queen Elizabeth in the winter of 1567

- 68; it linked Orestes' revenge and the tragedy of the King of Scots. 12

In blending a political history with an interlude, Pickeryng uses the

personified abstractions of the Vice to satirise the dilemma of Horestes.

The character and function of the Vice as inciter of revenge is pivotal to

the search for the legitimacy of revenge. That is to suggest that the

contradictory role of the Vice is manifested both as evil and as virtuous as

a 'messenger of the gods' (197). Not only is the estimation of the Vice's

own legitimacy a problem in the play, but it also causes puzzling

ambiguities. What is puzzling is that when Horestes asks the gods if he

should avenge his father's murder, the Vice, on overhearing, pretends to

10 . See James Philips, Images of A Queen, The University of California Press, Berkeley, 1964, p. 46, Quoted by Bevington 1968, p. 152. 11 . See J.E. Philips, 'A Revaluation of Horestes 1567', H L Q., 1955, 18: p. 227 - 44. 12 . See Revels accounts for Elizabeth I from 14 July 1567 to 3 March 1577 - 8, Documents

Relating To The Revels In the Time of Queen Elizabeth, ed. Albert Feuillerat, Louvain, 1908, p.119. The author of Horestes, John Pickeryng, is identified with Sir John Puckeryng (1544 -1596) of Lincoln's Inn ( 1559), Speaker of the House of Commons ( 1584 - 87) and Lord Keeper ( 1592 - 96) under Queen Elizabeth I.

37

be the 'messenger of the gods' in sanctioning the revenge. However, the

Vice's role as evil motivator of revenge remains unchanged throughout.

The Vice becomes the 'otherself of Horestes because the words 'By me'

(line 193) alludes to Revenge:

By me (thy mind) ther wrathful dome shalbe performd in dede

Therefore, Horestes, marke me well, and forward do procede

For to reveng thy fathers death, for this they all have ment;

Which thing for to demonstrat, lo, to the they have me sent. (193 - 196).

Not only is the Vice personified as Patience (92), Revenge (1038),

Courage (207), Duty (1171), Dame Nature (408), Fame (839), and Truth

(1167 epilogue), but it assumes the subversive nature of revenge. At the

end of the play, Revenge remains a Vice, but Horestes emerges virtuous

as he is deemed not guilty of matricide by King Idumeus. Hence the role

of the Vice needs further elucidation in the context of early morality plays

such as Cambises, Play of Love and Sir Clyomon and Sir C/amyde, to

draw the distinction between the conventional Vice and the role of the

Vice in Horestes.

In Cambises (1561), Thomas Preston makes the Vice named

Ambidexter an expression of character as well as of function. Also

identified in the play are two killers allegorically named Murder and

Cruelty. 13 Similarly Pickeryng uses the personifications of Revenge and

Courage to make his point in Horestes. In the morality tradition, they have

rr-:-See Martin Wiggins, Journeyman In Murder 'The Assassin in English Renaissance Drama',

Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991, p. 29, 'One cannot murder without cruelty, that is but one can exercise cruelty without committing murder ; in personifying the abstractions, Preston has turned the principle into a question of status'. See also Thomas Preston, Cambises, in Joseph Adams, Quincy ed., Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas, 1924.

38

a dual application. First, unlike individuals, personified abstractions are

ineffective as dramatic characters until their identities are communicated

to the audiences on their first appearance. Second, a sense of immediacy is

not reinforced in the play by the use of personifications rather than

individuals. As Martin Wiggins rightly points out the Elizabethan

audiences are never forced to integrate morality with mimesis. 14 Just as

Cambises employs Murder, not a murderer, Pickeryng employs Revenge

and not a revenger. 15 Concerning the origin and nature of the Vice in the

Moralities much controversy has raged. Cushman denies the general

belief that the character was originally a buffoon. 16 The early Interludes

to include Vices as merrymakers are evident in Heywood's Play of Love

(1533) and Play of the Wether (1534). According to the sixteenth century

conventions, the figure of the Vice, which is distinct from the clown and

the fool, is not derived from that of the devil but rather from the Seven

Deadly sins and that 'Vice' was the actor's name for the strongest role

from their standpoint on the side of evil. 17 It is not possible to provide a

definitive gloss on the term, Vice, as Randle Cotgrave translates the

French mime as 'a vice, fool, jester, scoffer' and John Florio translates the

Italian mimo as 'a jester, a vice in a play'. 18 In Horestes, Pickeryng

personifies the Vice in the contradictory roles of Patience, Courage and

Revenge.

~iggins, 1991, p.31. 15 • See David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. I 968, p.158-9; John W. Cunliffe ed. Early English Classical Tragedies, Oxford, 1912. Quoted by Peter Mercer, Hamlet and The Acting of Revenge, Macmillan Press, London, 1987, p. 251. 16 • For further comparison between the devil and the Vice, see L.W. Cushman, The Devil and the Vice in the English Dramatic Literature before Shakespeare, Frank Cass and Co. Ltd., London, 1970, repr. 1990, p.70. 17 . See the Edition of Skelton's Magnyfycence, Introduction; Quoted by Olive Mary Busby, Studies in the Development of the Fool in the Elizabethan Drama, Oxford University Press, London, 1923,p. 27. 18 . See Alan C.Dessen, Shakespeare and the late Moral Plays, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, I 986, p. 18. The word, Vice, also implies 'mask' in Italian Literature.

39

The personification of the Vice has links to the resolution of the play's

revenge motifs. The function of the Vice in Horestes is twofold; tempter

first, and deceiver second. The Vice performs as the buffoon of the play,

as personified in the romantic comedy, Sir Clyomon and Sir C/amydes

(1599), in which the Vice puns on his name and serves by turn the two

principal characters, and misleads no one, and, as far as the plot is

concerned it is entirely subordinate. The Vice is satirical only to a limited

extent in Horestes, as shown in the opening scene in his trying to provoke

the rustics. When Horestes summons his troops, the Vice reveals to the

audience for the first time that his true name is 'Revenge', and rejoices at

the human slaughter he is causing. The Vice acts as a mouthpiece to pun

on religious symbols :

Jesus, how coye do you make the same! (874)

To heaven? or to hell? to purgatorye ? ... (881)

I wyll go with the, I sweare by Saynt Marey. (884).

This is an ironic reference to Mary Magdalene by the Vice,

juxtapositioning hell and heaven with sinner and saint. 19 In Horestes, the

expression, the Vice, is consistently used throughout in the title, the list of

players, and rubric. Cushman contends that 'in so far as the extant plays

can warrant a conclusion, this much is certain, that the term, the Vice, is

not original in any play before Horestes'. 20 In the later Renaissance times,

1~See Marie Axton ed. Three Tudor Classical Interludes, First published by D.S. Brewer (Cambridge 1982), Rowman and Littlefield, USA., 1982, p. 220n. 20 . L.W. Cushman, 1990, p. 67. Cushman's assumption needs further investigation as the term,Vice, was also used as 'mask' in early Roman literature. T.E. Allison modified Cushman's assumption by arguing that the Vices derived not from the major sins but minor vices which had comic characteristics. See 'The Paternoster Play and the Origin of the Vices', PMLA 39, 1924, p. 789 - 804. Recent scholarship suggests the influence of the folk traditions of the fool and Lord of Misrule; see Francis Hugh Mares, "The Origin of the Figure called 'The Vice' in Tudor Drama",

40

the black lthimor and Mephistopheles in Marlowe's Dr Faustus, Aaron

and Jago in Shakespeare's Othello, Edmund in King Lear, Richard in

Richard III, Antonio in The Tempest even Falstaff in Henry the Fourth

appear as typical villains but not in the Vice tradition.

As a dramatic figure, the Vice possesses great versatility and

flexibility in Horestes. The Vice as Revenge opens the action, and warns

the audience not to take the rebel's part. The Vice, which is personified as

Revenge alias Courage, sets two rustics at loggerheads by malicious tale­

bearing and then beats them both up. In effect, the Vice is a blend of

clown and allegoric figure throughout the play. He is the tempter in the

mind when Horestes wavers over his unnatural revenge on his mother.

And at the close of the play, Revenge appears as a knave out of work, but

confident that the vengefulness of women will soon restore him to service.

The choric figure of Revenge in the later play, The Spanish Tragedy, may

also belong to the morality tradition because Hieronimo's cause is so

desperate that even Revenge and the ghost of Don Andrea 'heighten the

sense of revenge as a sacred duty'. 21 But Horestes, like Hamlet, is made

to doubt whether he should avenge his father's death. Ironically Hamlet

refers to Claudius as 'a vice of kings' (III. iv. 99) thus stressing the

paradox of a king who is both a villain and clown, a grotesque figure in

stark contrast to his majestic predecessor.22 Unlike Hamlet, Horestes

turns to the gods for guidance. When Horestes is hesitant, the Vice gets

his opportunity to announce that he comes as a messenger of the gods to

Huntington Library Quarterly 22, 1958, p.11-29. Also see G.K. Hunter, The English Drama, 1485 - 1585, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1969. Several scholars emphasize the dramatic functions of the Vice as a trickster and flamboyant figure of unpredictability. This could be applied to Claudius in Hamlet. See footnote 24. 21 • See C.V.Boyer, The Villain as Hero in Elizabethan Tragedy, and Rusell, New York, 1964, p. 100. 22 . William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins, The Arden Shakespeare Edition, Methuen,

London, 1984,p.325n.

41

foretell that Horestes must avenge his father's death. Further, the Vice

convinces Horestes of the legitimacy of such action by saying that he

himself was present at the Divine Councell where the declaration of law

was made that justice should be dispensed for Clytemnestra's crime of

regicide. The search for the legitimacy of revenge generates the conflict

between the powers of good as a 'messenger of the gods' ( 197), and as the

antithesis of piety and morality because the decree of the gods is an

invention of the Vice.

The dichotomy of divine and human justice generates Horestes'

conflicting attitudes to revenge. Horestes' private revenge becomes a

public revenge as he takes on the role of executioner of justice:

To save lyfe whom law doth slay is not justiyse to do,

Therefore I saye, I wyll not yeld thy hestes to come unto. (436-437).

First, the concepts of law and justice constitute a legitimate value to

Horestes. Second, the idea of justice is plunged in confusion as the search

for the conditions amounts to determining the criteria of what constitutes

legitimacy. An imperfect justice is no substitute for justice. For the

dramatist, Horestes is seen as an instrument of divine justice against his

mother and Egistus. It is certainly not out of context to suggest that the

Elizabethan age was at once struggling to consolidate a secular equivalent

of this, as the law began at last to separate the punishment of crime from

retribution directly to its victim, and to come to terms with the

increasingly influential 'code of honour', which demanded satisfaction for

even the slightest personal affront, as evidenced in the increase in the

practice of duelling during James' reign. Horestes prays to 'gods' for their

'judgment' (407) as he feels that 'to save her (Clytemnestra's) lyfe whom

42

law doth slay, is not justice to do' (436). In this respect Pickeryng's

Horestes poses more questions than presenting answers not only about the

legitimacy of revenge but also about contentious issues of law, justice and

'mercyfull God' (986).23

Does Horestes champion the cause of justice or revenge ? When

Nature pleads with Horestes against matricide, his responses demonstrate

a full consciousness of his position as an executioner of justice. Further

confirmation of the legitimacy of Horestes' justice comes from the

members of the 'Councell' where they claim him as their legitimate king.

No such scene appears in Caxton's version of the story.24 As already

discussed, Peter Mercer contends that Horestes concerns itself directly

with revenge - with Horestes' vengeance on his mother for patricide. 25

Horestes, who demands justice, is tom between his love for his father and

the mixed feelings for his natural mother. In this context, private revenge

becomes a public revenge, which in effect is a substitute for justice; it is

justice for Horestes. That Horestes, like Hieronimo, wants 'just judgment

from gods' ( 407) is reiterated in the play:

Pythagoras doth thincke it, lo, no tyraney to be,

When thatjustiyse is mynestryd as lawe and godes decree ( 432-3).

The play reinforces the notion that justice is what law and Gods

decree. Pythagoras (580 BC) is recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses (XV

60 ff): 'Without Justice, no citie maye longe be inhabited. Be not ashamed

23-:-it is of some significance to the play to observe that the word, God or 'godes' appears sixty­nine times, and 'revenge' thirty-nine times in the play. 24 . Philips, 1955, p. 238 - 9. 25 . Peter Mercer, Hamlet and the Acting of Revenge, Macmillan Press, London, 1987, p. 250. Peter Mercer argues that in striking contrast to the classical restraint aspired to by Sackville and Norton in Gorboduc, Pickeryng acknowledges his debt to the native tradition.

43

to dooe justice : for al that is done without it is tiranny'.26 Nature reminds

Horestes of Oedipus (line 440),27 and gets a response from Pythagoras.

The juxtaposition suggests that the Vice which is figured in the dual roles

of Courage and Revenge will not achieve its task unless Horestes himself

makes the initial choice. Horestes legitimises his action with his

declaration that he is simply carrying out 'the law of gods and law of man'

( 422) to 'revenge the wrong done to my fathers grace' (261 ). It is my

assumption that Horestes does not want to endanger his own soul by

directly involving himself in the act of revenge but his 'intention' (267) to

do justice remains unchanged. A revenger may honestly assume he seeks

justice, but the nature of revenge makes justice impossible as the act of

retribution would inevitably make him as evil as the villain according to

the 'law of gods'. It is claimed by Willard Farnham that in this moral

ambiguity we have seen the laying of 'the foundations for a tragedy that

could show vengeance recoiling upon the righteous revenger'. 28 Horestes

seems not apprehensive about the horror of his intended deed, for he

invokes the Councell's power as the legitimating authority without

showing mercy (Councell 514-7).

The issue of mercy comes under scrutiny in the play. Why is Horestes

hesitant to exercise mercy to his mother ? The critical dilemma posed by

matricide is stated by Horestes at the beginning of the play when he

ponders on the conflicting demands of loyalty and justice, and of pity and

2~Cited William Baldwin, Treatise of Moral/ Phylosophye, 1547 & 1567, Quoted by Marie Axton, Three Tudor Interludes, 1982, see p. 214n . 27 . Maxwell suggests that Pickeryng knew the legend of Oedipus who unwittingly killed his father, Laius, King of Thebes, and married his mother, Jocasta. When the truth was discovered, Jocasta hanged herself and Oedipus put out his eyes. Pickeryng makes reference to Oedipus later in the play 'Edyppus fate, and as Nero' who slew his mother Agrippina. It is suggested that both references are notorious examples of unnaturalness. See Three Tudor Classical Interludes, edited Marie Axton, 1982, pages 214 and 218. 28 . The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1963, p. 261.

44

retribution. The tragic issue introduces into the play the notion of epiekeia

- that is, law tempered with mercy as in The Merchant of Venice. Justice is

not tempered with mercy in Horestes. Horestes is unmoved and adheres

to the letter of the 'law of gods and man' ( 422). Can God be both just and

merciful ? The paradox is that Horestes has to uphold the Rule of Law in

contrast to mercy. The eminent Victorian judge, James F. Stephen,

maintains that criminal law is a civilised and efficient way to allow

victims to get legitimate revenge consistently with the maintenance of

public order.29 When the Vice in his role of Nature pleads with Horestes

to spare the life of his mother, he denies her plea for mercy:

Have mercy, sonne, and quight remitte this faute of mine, I praye.

Be mercyfull, Horestes myne, and do not me denaye. ( 799-800).

Although Horestes may be seen as an unwitting sinner over his

decision to revenge, he believes he cannot escape from his mission of

justice. Justice requires that criminals like Clytemnestra and Egistus must

suffer retributive punishment. Clearly, Horestes' action is legitimate in

seeking 'legalised revenge' (public revenge) which fulfils his legal

obligation to the state. It proves that criminals are not above the law and

must face the consequences of the law. Showing clemency to a criminal

also places the equity of the law into question. Mercy grounded in love

and compassion seems inconsistent with justice; for to treat the villains

with mercy may involve giving them less than just deserts, as reiterated

~or further discussion on criminal law and revenge, see A History of the Criminal Law of England, Macmillan Press, London, 1883, Vol II. p. 81 - 2. Apparently the laws were applicable in the sixteenth century.

45

by Horestes : Must by (that) love have punnishment as dutey due for his

desart' (421).30

In Horestes, law and justice eventually take precedence over mercy.

This reinforces Horestes' insistence on the legitimacy and superiority of

justice over the emotional plea for clemency. Paradoxically law is on the

side of 'legalised' revenge. The ambiguity lies in the notion that the Vice

carries out Horestes' command rather than Horestes his. Not only is the

Vice closely associated with the enforcement of earthly and divine law but

he is also responsible for the final act of revenge. Here lies the puzzling

ambiguity. The implementation of Elizabethan law is fundamental to the

dispensation of justice in the play because the law specifically forbids

vengeance for personal injury.31 In spite of the fact that justice was the

prerogative of the Elizabethan state, and the law tried to be as inflexible as

possible in order to give the relatives a reliable system of justice,

nevertheless, the act of revenge had scarcely declined in Elizabethan

times.32 In the context of the Renaissance, to avenge is to violate both

divine and human law, but Horestes, as an instrument of divine justice,

seeks justice by invoking the 'law of gods and man' to avenge his father's

death. Under Elizabethan law, Clytemnestra and Egistus cannot avoid the

death penalty for regicide. Pickeryng's play probably reminds the

30 • Marie Axton, Three Tudor Interludes, 1982, line 421. See Jeffrie G. Murphy & Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. l 64, for further discussions on mercy and forgiveness. 31 . Under Elizabethan law, murder is defined as the act of a person of sound memory and of the age of discretion who unlawfully kills another within the realm with malice forethought, either expressed by the party, or implied by the law, so that the person wounded or hurt dies of the injury within a year and a day. See The Third Part of The Institutes of the Law of England, London, 1797, caps. IOI, 105. Cited Bowers, 1940. 32 • Wendy Griswold suggests that part of the enduring interest in revenge tragedy, for the 'genre's secure position in the English literary canon, lies in its striking, elaborate, and manifold representations of the archetype of horror'. Revenge tragedies survived well until the closure of theatres by Parliament in 1642. See Renaissance Revivals, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1986, p. 77 - l 00.

46

Elizabethan audiences that Clytemnestra has forfeited her right to

Horestes' mercy and respect by the foul murder of her king and husband,

Agamemnon, and Horestes feels obliged to put down any natural feelings

of clemency he might have toward her. The implication of the action is

that the mother stands condemned and is beyond redemption for regicide.

He has her imprisoned rather than executed immediately, while he quells

the threats posed by the army of Egistus. Horestes' private revenge

becomes a public revenge. When Horestes is assigned the role of divinely

appointed judge his revenge achieves a sense of legitimacy.

Although Idumeus and his Councell both sanction the confrontation

against Clytemnestra's forces, Horestes is forced into a moral

predicament. In leading his men to battle, he seeks the help of the gods

hoping that his 'courage' will not fail him. In answer to his plea, the pagan

gods respond, unlike the gods in The Spanish Tragedy. But Horestes

rejects the Vice-Nature's opposition to matricide by insisting that the 'law

of gods and man' demand blood for blood. David Bevington has observed

that Horestes' character is 'cleansed by the transfer of his avenging nature

to an allegorical abstraction'.33 Eleanor Prosser doubts, however, that the

Elizabethan audiences would see this distinction. Pickeryng resorts to

theatrical dynamics to enhance the dramatic aspects of the allegorical

abstractions. Helped by Idumeus, Horestes brings an army and captures

his mother in battle; his heart then does show some remorse, which hurts

the Vice. However, Horestes orders that Egistus be hanged immediately

for his crimes - a scene accomplished in full view of the Court audiences.

By showing the death on stage, the dramatic action lends itself to a high

pitch of theatrical excitement. Clytemnestra is then brought out to see her

rr:see From "Mankind" To Marlowe, Cambridge, Mass., 1962, p. 179.

47

lover's corpse and sentenced to death by Horestes and herded off by

another creation of Pickeryng, Revenge, who must carry out the

judgement. Horestes has the mother executed at the instigation of

Revenge, which reflects the true function of the character 'demanding

blood for blood'. Had the playwright intended otherwise, he could have

created a figure called 'justice' to serve as Horestes' executioner instead of

the Vice.34 At the trial, Menelaus' protests against the murder of his sister,

Clytemnestra, are ignored. In presenting the interlude, Pickeryng's

negative attitude to the cruelty of revenge is established in the action of

Horestes, who justifies his stand by saying that the Gods persuaded him to

commit the act. This has the sanction of Idumeus and Nestor, who accept

Horestes as a worthy king free from guilt of matricide. Indeed, King

Idumeus, acting on the advice of the Councell, sees 'nothing ill' (268) in

Horestes 'to revenge the wrong done to his fathers grace' ( 261 ). The

puzzling ambiguity is that Horestes' revenge is no longer a private revenge

but becomes a public revenge, and by extension legitimate justice on

Egistus and Clytemnestra, 'who offended the love of God, and eke mans

love with willing hart' (420). Pickeryng adopts the classical line in

Horestes in making the deities absolve the hero of his crime and hence the

revenger is rid of his guilt. This is in stark contrast to Kyd's Hieronimo

and Shakespeare's Hamlet, whose lives are destroyed in their line of

revenge action.

The tragic development of Horestes amounts to vengeance rebounding

upon the avenger, exacting some measure of justice and retribution inspite

of the fact that the deed was accomplished with divine sanction. But

Pickeryng falls short of developing the interlude into full-fledged revenge

~For further discussion see Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, Stanford University Press, 1967, p.

43.

48

tragedy as Horestes emerges triwnphant being influenced by the

personifications of Truth and Duty. Such a transformation has caused

some consternation among critics such as Prosser and Bevington. Eleanor

Prosser suggests that the connection between the homiletic applause of

Truth and Duty and the revenge action (prohibited by the Biblical

Injunction Roman 12 :19) is so 'catachrestic that she must dismiss

Pickeryng as either a bad playwright or a confused moralist'.35 By and

large, Horestes epitomises both extremities of a contradiction so crudely

that the interlude reveals not only the ambivalent attitudes of the

Elizabethans towards vengeance and retribution, but also the Senecan

reinterpretation of the conflict between God and the universe in the social

order. Underlying this contest was the issue whether common law which

had grown up over the centuries was more powerful than the law

exercised by the king through his own Court. In effect, Horestes satirises

the cultural and political tensions in Elizabethan society. Little wonder

that the revenge plays which had such overwhelming appeal to the

troubling Elizabethan populace reflected the weaknesses in the legal

system.

It is suggested by E.B.de Chickera that Pickeryng succwnbs to

dramatic expediency in ending the play with the musings of the Vice, and

in sub-titling the play : A New Enterlude of Vice. E.B.de Chickera is of

the opinion that the Vice is lying and suggests that Horestes actually

decides on revenge only when King Idwneus, as God's representative, and

his Council approve, thus implying divine sanction. Therefore it follows

that Horestes' revenge is now no longer a private revenge but a public

3~See Hamlet and Revenge, Stanford, 1967, p. 44. ibid.

49

revenge on Egistus and Clytemnestra. 36 In the search for interpretation, it

would appear that there are puzzling ambiguities. Not only are the gods

depicted as vengeful but they also delegate private avengers as their

instruments of vengeance. This implies divine sanction needed to the

moral justification of Horestes' revenge in the play. It follows that divine

revenge is recognised as a legal principle to serve the purposes of justice

to the Christian audiences. What is implied is that a religious orthodoxy is

incompatible with revenge tragedy. The seemingly paradoxical conclusion

is that revenge is against God's law, but that revenge belongs to an

Elizabethan world which is religiously committed. On the contrary, one

way of resolving this paradoxical view is to suggest that it is the

incomplete nature of the religious commitment which makes for the

passion of revenge. It is to the protagonist that the incompleteness

belongs, but the religious consciousness of the Elizabethan audiences

must be such that the protagonist's incompleteness does not present itself

as mere ignorance. Not only does this reflect the inadequacy of the legal

system to redress the wrongs, but the revenge commanded by the gods in

Horestes serves the purposes of justice more than the law does. This also

exposes the Elizabethan convention of the monarchy attempting to

establish itself as the sole arbiter of justice by substituting law for the

legitimation of revenge. Whether revenge is justifiable or not seems a

paradox. If either Hieronimo or Hamlet is deemed to be a justified

revenger, it is because neither of them is able to obtain justice through the

normal legal channels. Yet the contradictory aspect of divine revenge

certainly proves a sticking point in the moral debate in plays such as

Horestes, The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet. As already implied by David

Bevington, Horestes's 'character is cleansed by the transfer of his avenging

3~See E.B.de Chickera, "Horestes' Revenge - Another Interpretation", Notes and Queries, n.s., VI, 1959, p. 190.

50

nature to an allegorical abstraction'. 37 Pickeryng conveniently transfers

the unpleasant tasks to the Vice, whose impulses of 'cruell revengement'

must be compensated by the saner counsel of Nature. What begins as a

private revenge, becomes a public revenge because Horestes would

'wyllingly obaye ... the gods commaund' (973-4).

Pickeryng resolves the play in a most unexpected and subtle fashion,

culminating in a wedding celebration and legitimate political accord.

Though Menelaus has reservations about matricide, he is reconciled to

give his daughter's hand in marriage to his nephew, Horestes. The dual

function of the Vice as Revenge is reinforced here as Horestes is

persuaded by a tempter, like the Ghost in Hamlet, to believe that a certain

course of action is just. The Vice as Revenge attends to the execution of

Clytemnestra. Pickeryng makes the unhappy Vice leave the play dressed

like a pilgrim, hoping that the malice of women will always find a place

for him. As a true Stoic, Horestes does not resort to 'an eye for an eye' in

seeking private revenge, but legitimises his action with divine sanction

that seems somewhat ironic considering the fact that the decree of the

Gods is another invention by the Vice.

Most critics have done an injustice by ignoring Pickeryng as one of

the early pioneers of Elizabethan revenge tragedy. Although there is no

mention of Seneca, the plot of 'a revenge for a father' makes its first

appearance in the English drama in Horestes. 38 Not only does Pickeryng

deserve credit for not imitating the blood and thunder advocated by

Seneca, his contribution to the revenge genre is spelt out by Philip

3~rom "Mankind" To Marlowe, Cambridge, Mass., 1962, p. 178 - 82. 38 . For further discussion see Ashley H.Thomdike, Tragedy, Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1908, p. 65.

51

Edwards: 'This play, by Pickeryng, is the play where Hamlet starts, and it

is not even mentioned in the standard work on Elizabethan revenge­

tragedy .. . Horestes is the first play built round an examination of revenge

as pleasure or duty or sin'.39 If there is a problem in the play, it is to be

found in the crudeness of the revenge motif. Paradoxically this aspect of

crudeness enhances the theatrical dynamics of the play as it hinges on the

avenger's justification, for twice in the play, Horestes rests his case on the

notion of /ex talionis, whereby punishment resembles offence committed,

in kind and degree. Although sympathy with Horestes never disappears,

he escapes the retribution which is threatened at one point in the play by

being crowned by Truth and Duty. Paradoxically, Pickeryng's play is

more of a triumph for social peace than for the culture of Senecan

bloodletting. Whether there is a political allusion in the play or not,

Pickeryng's moral attitude to the cruelty of revenge and his adherence to

legal justice seems an appropriate starting point for the search for the

legitimacy of revenge.

3~ Philip Edwards, Thomas Kyd and Early Elizabethan Tragedy, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1966, p. 15 - 17.

52

'' '' THE 1v!URDER OF HORATIO IN THE SPANISH TRAGEDIE

From the edition of 1633.

CHAPTER TWO

THE SEARCH FOR JUSTICE IN THE SPANISH TRAGEDY

This way or that way? Soft and fair, not so:

For ifl hang or kill myself, let's know

Who will revenge Horatio's murder then ?

No, no! fie no! pardon me, I'll none of that:

He flings away the dagger and halter,

(IIl.xii.16-19). 1

If Horestes and Hamlet bestow on the literary world the retribution of a

father's death by a son, The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus

embody the revenge of a son's death by a frantic father. The lines quoted

above from Act III, epitomise Hieronimo's dilemma between revenge and

suicide. He opts for life to attempt to identify the murderers of his son,

Horatio, and also to try to secure justice from the King of Spain. By

throwing away the dagger and halter in the above scene, Hieronimo is

discarding the stock 'properties' of a would-be suicide for a probable crime

of homicide. At the heart of the play lies the paradoxical contrast between

the pagan setting represented by Prosperine and Hades, and the Christian

images of Hell and Heaven. What makes Hieronimo act the 'way' he does

is that he is probably tom between his respect for the law and his

hesitation about suicide before he seeks blood revenge for Horatio's death.

In the soliloquy, 'Vindicta mihi' (III.xiii.1-44), pondering his mission as an

avenger, the protagonist begins with the Biblical injunction against private

revenge, but in an apparent contradiction, he prides himself as one whom

. All references are to the Second edition, Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. J.R.Mulryne, Second edition, A.& C. Black, London, 1989, (First edition Ernest Benn Ltd., London, 1970).

the devils drive. Indeed Hieronimo's rejection of the Christian attitude

towards vengeance triggers him to an active course of pagan revenge. I

am going to argue that Hieronimo's search for divine and human justice

leads to a paradox because there can be no reconciling the expectations of

divine justice with the compulsion to pagan revenge. Paradoxically, the

search for justice results in revenge as he tries to equate one deed of

horror with another.

To respond to the search for justice in The Spanish Tragedy, it is

necessary to explore the merits of two hypotheses. First, if we accept that

Hieronimo is a Stoic-turned-sinner, and if Christianity is seen as

underpinning the ethos of the play, then Hieronimo stands condemned for

the violation of the code against private revenge, in the context of his own

'Vindicta mihi' soliloquy. Conversely, not only is Hieronimo's cause

legitimate but justified under the circumstances in a society where divine

or human justice seems unattainable. When an administrator of justice like

Hieronimo protests at the heaven's seeming indifference to justice, he is

articulating his powerlessness at the failure of an established human

institution such as the court of Spain to recognise and to bring to account

his son's murderers : 'And cry aloud for justice through the court'

(111.vii.70). Hieronimo's initial impulse is to seek legal redress through the

legitimate channels; only if he is hindered will he take the law into his

own hands. What is at issue is the credibility of the King's court that

perpetuates the dominant system of justice, because power is vested in the

sovereign. The play demonstrates the immense suffering and the

destructive human impulse of a revenger, who was not a villain, but

driven beyond the limits of his endurance in his desperate search to

accomplish his direful revenge. Given the nature of his suffering and the

denial of legal redress, Hieronimo believes that he is the agent of

56

heavenly retribution, and therefore he feels that revenge can only be

exacted at the right moment (III.xiii.128) with proof and deliberation.

In order to investigate the hypotheses, we shall need to assess the

arguments presented by influential critics. Concerning the moral status of

Hieronimo, Fredson Bowers is of the opinion that when Hieronimo rejects

the Biblical injunction, 'Vindicta mihi', to pursue a goal of Machiavellian

vengeance, he becomes a villain who 'immediately lost the absolute

admiration of his audience' and was as a result, 'forced to commit suicide

to satisfy the stem doctrine that murder, no matter what the motive, was

never successful'.2 Unlike Fredson Bowers, Ejner Jensen argues that

Hieronimo is judged according to a non-Christian concept of justice that

rewards him with an apotheosis in the Elysian Fields at the end of the

play.3 It is implied by Charles Boyer that Hieronimo's cause is legitimate,

because no legal redress is available and because Revenge and the Ghost

of Andrea 'heighten the sense of revenge as a sacred duty'.4 In opposing

Boyer's assumption, Bowers suggests that by the end of the play

Hieronimo's Machiavellian and Italianate actions would have made the

Elizabethan audiences view him as a villain.5 Hieronimo's portrayal of

the role of villain in the playlet to revenge his son's murder is significant

for our understanding of his vindication according to a code of pagan

justice. In identifying the playlet with the play, Hieronimo's

accomplishment of private vengeance fulfils Revenge's prophecy. While

Eleanor Prosser sees ambiguity as a more significant problem in Kyd's

The Spanish Tragedy than Pickeryng's Horestes, some critics consider

. Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587-1642, Princeton, NJ., 1940, p. 80- 82. 3· Ejner Jensen, "Kyd's Spanish Tragedy : The Play Explains Itself', JEGP, 64 (1965), p. 7-16. See William Empson, 'The Spanish Tragedy', Nimbus 3, (1956), p. 16-19, rpt. in Elizabethan

Drama : Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. R J. Kaufmann, Oxford University Press, New York, 1961, p. 60- 80. 4 . See The Villain As Hero Jn Elizabethan Tragedy, Russell & Russell, New York, 1964, p. I 00. 5 . See Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, Princeton, N J., 1940, p. 65 - 83.

57

Hieronimo as a justified hero, pursuing his sacred duty of revenge

overseen by a ghost, with the sanction of the gods and the sympathy of the

audience, while others see him as a Stoic who turns villain.6 Hieronimo's

motive for revenge is spelt out by him to Isabella, 'For in revenge my

heart would find relief (II.v.40). In a tragic situation we cannot see any

harmless way out of the conflict, because a reconciliation of the opposing

forces would require Hieronimo to abandon the Stoic principle he stands

for as a judge, and thereby sacrifice his integrity for homicide and

suicide. 7 He substitutes one method of pursuing justice - the rule of law -

with another - the search for personal vengeance.

The search for the legitimacy of justice in The Spanish Tragedy is

sustained by four revenge plots which are intertwined. The Ghost of

Andrea, guided by his mentor, Revenge, pursues vengeance for his death

in battle at the hands of Balthazar and his friends, and resorts to seeking

retribution for the slaying of Andrea, the lover of Bel-imperia. Although

Balthazar and Lorenzo conspire to exact revenge on Horatio, for coveting

Bel-imperia's love, Hieronimo's cry for justice results in the main revenge

plot as he learns from Bel-imperia and other sources of the hanging of his

son in the orchard. But Hieronimo is tom between the pagan activity and

the Christian passivity towards revenge, as his belief, that heaven will

punish Horatio's murderers, appears to be a mere illusion. He is mindful

of the fact that private revenge is something evil sent from hell, and he

does not resort to it until neither heaven nor the King will bestow him

justice, but both seem deaf to his plea. As his faith in divine justice wanes,

. See Hamlet And Revenge, Stanford University Press, California 1967, p. 44. 7 . Most Roman writers advocated suicide in certain circumstances, but Christian dogma condemned suicide as a manifestation of the ultimate sin of despair. Since the play is modelled on Senecan lines, the coincidence of Hieronimo's and Isabella's suicide cannot be ruled out because both Seneca and his wife committed suicide on the orders of Nero. For further discussion see Seneca, His Tenne Tragedies, ed., Thomas Newton (1581), Bloomington, Indiana University Press, Indiana, 1927, repr. 1964.

58

he places more allegiance to an active pursuit of pagan revenge roused by

his reading of Seneca's copy of Agamemnon : 'per see/era semper

sceleribus tutum est iter' - 'The safe path for crime is always through

crime' (III.xiii.6). 8

In both The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet, the catalyst that triggers the

course of revenge is the Ghost, in contrast to the Vice figure in Horestes. 9

In the development of The Spanish Tragedy, the Ghost of Andrea and

Revenge condone Hieronimo's pursuit of revenge. What is implied in The

Spanish Tragedy is the limitation of awareness of Revenge in the dual

roles of participant and audience. In the culminating revenge play let, Kyd

shows the 'actors in th' accursed tragedy' (IIl.vii.41) by having Andrea and

Revenge as an audience watching Hieronimo unmasking himself, as he

appeals to the pagan gods not to allow murder to go unpunished in his

movement beyond legal atonement. Correspondingly, this is a shift in the

overall tone of the play from the crudity of revenge in Horestes to the

gravity of revenge in The Spanish Tragedy. Hieronimo's attempts to

achieve justice in a Christian court are thwarted by Lorenzo's deception

and cunning to cover up his murder of Horatio. In his failed attempts to

get at the King, and at the seeming failure of heaven's justice, Hieronimo

assumes the role of judge and executioner himself. Thomas Kyd, by

extending the figure of Revenge outside the play proper, makes the

8. This line is spoken by Clytemnestra to justify killing her husband, Agamemnon, whom she has already wronged, before he can retaliate for the wrong. Hieronimo is of the opinion that since his enemies, like Clytemnestra, will follow their murder of Horatio with more crimes, it necessitates him to 'strike, and strike home' (III.xiii.?). For further discussion, see Peter B. Murray, Thomas Kyd, Twayne Publishers, New York, 1969, p. 125.

9. Kyd's encounter with John Pickeryng, the Head of the Privy Council, and author of Horestes, is of historical significance. Whether Kyd was aware of Pickeryng's first revenge Interlude is a matter of speculation. On May 11, 1593, Kyd was arrested on suspicion of certain libels probably directed against the foreigners living in London, and was imprisoned for possession of 'vile hereticall Conceiptes denyinge the deity of Jhesus Christe o Savio', Cited Arthur Freeman, Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967, p. 26.

59

protagonist, Hieronimo, bear the full responsibility for his act of

retribution. By the end of the play Kyd has made Andrea appear to be the

ghost of blood revenge. Paradoxically it is through Hieronimo's

vengeance that Andrea's death is avenged.

What is of particular interest to us is the development of the play's

revenge motifs that emphasise the justification for pagan revenge as a

means to justice. Is Hieronimo's cause justified under the circumstances ?

This can be investigated by the turn of events in the play. The fourth scene

of Act 1 not only brings together Bel-imperia and Horatio for the first

time but also demonstrates the dishonourable way Balthazar brought

about Andrea's death and the manner in which Horatio 'plucked the scarf

off his (Andrea's) arm' (l.iv.21). When Horatio wears the scarf, he

becomes visually Andrea's representative. Ironically, the scarf also serves

as an emblematic link between the twin revenges, for Andrea and Horatio,

as Hieronimo is motivated to revenge when he takes the 'handkerchief

from Horatio's body : 'See'st thou this handkerchief besmeared with blood

?/ It shall not from me till I take revenge' (II.v.51-2). Bel-imperia's love

for Horatio seems very unpredictable and unmotivated, but it is vital in

connecting the two revenges to the ongoing search for justice that entails

the dichotomy of rewards and punishments :

But how can love find harbour in my breast,

Till I revenge the death of my beloved ?

Yes, second love shall further my revenge.

I'll love Horatio, my Andrea's friend,

The more to spite the prince that wrought his end (1.iv.64-8).

60

The motive for Lorenzo's revenge is spelt out by the Portuguese Prince

Balthazar because Bel-imperia's choice of her 'second love' (l.v.66) has

antagonised the aristocratic pride of both Lorenzo and Balthazar:

'Ambitious villain, how his boldness grows !' (Il.ii.41). Not only is

Lorenzo resentful at his displacement of the status of military honour by a

'Marshal's son' (11.i. 79), but Lorenzo is outraged by the discovery that the

upstart, Horatio, is secretly undermining a prospective union between his

sister and the Portuguese Prince. What delays Hieronimo is the marriage

contract between Spain and Portugal in the third scene that will make

legal redress nearly, if not, wholly difficult for him because the court of

Spain is ruled by a just king, whereas the Portuguese Court is ruled by a

Viceroy who is the very image of 'melancholy' (l.iii.12) and injustice.

Like Revenge, Lorenzo enjoys his cunning, and is eventually destroyed

because he cannot resist his own cunning when it dawns on him that

Serberine and Pedringano, who are accomplices in the murder of Horatio,

might betray him to Hieronimo. Ironically it is because of their deaths at

the hands of Lorenzo that Hieronimo learns of Lorenzo's guilt. Given the

circumstances, Hieronimo has a just cause to seek legal redress, but there

can be no justification for him to take the law into his own hands. But

when legal redress is not forthcoming the dilemma for Hieronimo is, 'Who

will revenge Horatio's murder?' (111.xii.18).

Hieronimo's quest for justice is tied up not only with the delay in

finding clues to Horatio's murderers as 'murder cannot be hid' (ll.v.57),

but also to seek justice from the King. We are faced with a confounded

Hieronimo, who feels that Pedringano's incriminating letter (111.vii.14),

revealing that Lorenzo and Balthazar murdered Horatio, is sufficient to

convince him of heaven's interest injustice. Filled with suspicions of Bel­

imperia's motives, he realises 'That Bel-imperia's letter was not feigned'

61

(III.vii.50), and only when the avenue to the legal system is closed to him

does Hieronimo pursue his 'revenging threats' (111.vii.73). His predicament

is that he believes he must delay till the arrival of the appointed time for

heavenly retribution. In eventually sharing the vindictiveness of Bel­

imperia, Lorenzo, Balthazar and the Duke, the spirit of retribution appears

to manifest in Hieronimo's conscience after a delay that is as soul

searching as Hamlet's. Because he is retaliating against Horatio's murder,

Hieronimo's cause carries a sense of legitimacy in avenging Andrea's

death, thus fulfilling the decree of Revenge.

To understand the puzzling ambiguities of Hieronimo's dilemma, we

must investigate the oxymoronic nature of divine and human justice.

What is puzzling is that in The Spanish Tragedy, not only does Hieronimo

emerge as the key factor in the two elements of justice and the law, but he

becomes the paradoxical embodiment of the revenge drama. Since 'justice

will not be found on earth' (IIl.xiii.107-108), Hieronimo transforms from

a Stoic into a sinner in taking the law into his own hands. To violate the

law is to thwart the system of justice, that entails a universal value of

equality in the established order. Although the conflict between the villain

and the victim exposes the contradiction between the necessities of law

and justice, each side is convinced that justice will triumph. The seeming

failure of Spanish courts to bring to justice Horatio's murderers calls into

question the indifference of the King as well as the inadequacy of the

legal system to ensure the consistent provision of justice:

I find the place impregnable; and they

Resist my woes, and give my words no way (III. vii. 13-18).

62

Arguably Hieronimo's quest for natural justice seems a solitary cry of love

and sorrow - love for the lost son and sorrow for the denial of earthly

justice.

What is represented in The Spanish Tragedy is the inner conflict

between human and divine justice, in which two antithetical worlds are

presented - one harmonious, divinely ordered and authoritarian, and the

other unjust, chaotic, disordered. Unlike Hamlet, Hieronimo expresses his

anguish that heaven is deaf to his 'woes' (III.vii.I), and that urges his quest

for justice in the guise of revenge deconstructing the antithesis of good

and evil, right and wrong. 10 To remind us, Kyd makes Revenge and

Andrea constant spectators of the action in 'soliciting their (actors') souls'

(III.xv.20). In their interaction at the end of each Act, the ghost of Andrea

extols human ignorance and impatience, whereas the indifference of

Revenge to the human toll of suffering in the unfolding revenge action

merely reflects his knowledge that the demands of divine justice will

finally be realised:

Behold, Andrea, for an instance how

Revenge hath slept, and then imagine thou

What 'tis to be subject to destiny (IIl.xv.26-28).

Ironically, Revenge remains detached from Hieronimo's notion of divine

justice. It would appear that Hieronimo's revenge is an act of justice in

accord with the Mosaic code, 11 but if we presume to judge Hieronimo, it

is on the grounds that his revenge is a violation of the Biblical injunction,

. For further discussion see Catherine Belsey, The Subject Of Tragedy, Methuen, London, 1985,

Pi .1 ~~-is view is argued by S.F.Johnson in 'The Spanish Tragedy, or Babylon Revisited' in Essays

on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honour of Hardin Craig, ed., R. Hosley, University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1962, p. 23 - 36.

63

'Vindicta mihi', reservmg vengeance only to God, but not to man,

reminding himself that 'mortal men may not appoint their time' (111.xiii.5).

In this un-Christian play, when the Christian injunction against private

revenge is generated in Hieronimo's soliloquy,12 the Biblical line of

reasoning must probably make us realise that we, like Hieronimo, are

compelled to act as the instruments of God's will in opting to err in our

value judgments. In the context of Christian and pagan perspectives, we

see on the one hand a Christian world in which the characters seek

heavenly justice, while on the other hand, Revenge appears to guide the

destiny of the action in the pagan underworld in which the revelation of

the judgments demonstrate the essential orderliness of divine justice. The

structure of the play tends to obscure the line between sympathy and

condemnation by presenting the protagonist's plight in a most empathetic

light, by emphasising the way in which Hieronimo is driven to revenge by

injustice, not to injustice by revenge. 13 Thus the search for divine and

human justice leads to a paradox because there can be no reconciling the

expectations of divine justice with the compulsion to pagan revenge.

Should Hieronimo be condemned for the violation of the code against

private revenge? As an administrator of justice, Hieronimo must know

that there can be no legal justification for private revenge which is an

illegitimate deed. But the Pedringano saga reinforces the theme of public

justice in other ways. For instance, where the prosecution of Pedringano's

guilt is a matter of administrative routine, Hieronimo himself has to be

convinced of the true identity of Horatio's murderers before he can pass

sentence. Retribution comes in the form of due justice from Hieronimo,

12 . See 'The Spanish Tragedy', Nimbus III, 1956, p. 16-29, Also reprinted in Elizabethan Drama: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed., Ralph J. Kaufmann, N.Y., Oxford U.P., 1961. 13 . See Arthur Freeman, Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems, Oxford, 1967, p. 84.

64

who demonstrates a sense of loyalty to his position and is steadfast in his

cautious attitude to legal revenge:

... while I sit as judge,

Be satisfied, and the law discharg'd;

And though myself cannot receive the like,

Yet will I see that others have their right. (IIl.vi.35-38)

The fact that the law applies effectively in Pedringano's case does not

appease Hieronimo; rather it raises his consciousness of his own inability,

to secure legal redress for himself. In the figure of the boy with the box

who stares mockingly at what Pedringano assumes to be a letter of

pardon, we identify a 'cynical emblem of man's hope for justice'. 14 But in

a touch of dramatic irony, Hieronimo, who attended the hanging of

Pedringano as Knight Marshal of Spain, is unaware that he is witnessing

the execution of one of his son's assailants. Although Hieronimo's access

to legal atonement is slow, he does not hasten to accuse the royal family

because he has the evidence of Bel-imperia's letter written in blood. There

is the element of frustration that Hieronimo, as an officer of the law,

should have to hand out sentences but cannot bring to justice those

accomplices who plotted the murder of his son as expressed in his

frustration : 'neither gods nor men be just to me' ( 111.vi.10).

Is Hieronimo a villain or a victim ? Although Hieronimo appears as a

Stoic turned revenger, his villainy is something that has been imposed on

him by injustice in order to work out his subtle vengeance. Nothing can

justify the murder of Horatio by Lorenzo, but we question the justification

of seeking revenge for either Andrea or Horatio's death for that matter .

. See G.K.Hunter, 'Ironies of Justice in The Spanish Tragedy', Renaissance Drama 8, 1983, p. 9.

65

But Balthazar and Lorenzo are so vicious in their Machiavellian intrigues

that they must be condemned for concealing their murderous exploits. On

the other hand, in seeking to destroy Lorenzo, Hieronimo becomes the

very image of Lorenzo the villain - thus fulfilling Seneca's maxim that 'the

safe path for crime is always through crime' (111.xiii.6). But this line of

reasoning complicates our judgment of Hieronimo as a Stoic. In

appearance he mistakenly believes that he has the blessing of heaven to

punish evil men, but in reality, he will become a villain in the same

Machiavellian mould as Aaron or Lorenzo: 'I will revenge his death'

(111.xiii.20). When a distressed man fights for law and order in a corrupt

society, his mission to seek justice is not different from the vindictive

urges of his own human heart. In citing Clarence Boyer's view of 'the

villain as hero', Eleanor Prosser argues that Hieronimo ends as a villain

who would most probably have been condemned by the Elizabethan

audiences for his murderous act of vengeance. 15 But Hieronimo's role of

villain is fundamental to our understanding of his vindication according to

a code of pagan justice. While there is no sympathy for Hieronimo for

killing the innocent Duke of Castile, he subverts many of the Stoic

precepts that he has stood for as a concerned father and as an upholder of

law and justice.

Hieronimo's 'Vindicta mihi' soliloquy marks the turning point of the

play as Hieronimo thereafter not only abandons heaven's justice for

earthly justice in the guise of revenge, but conceals his malice behind a

mask of affection. But if we accept that Hades is the source of merciless

justice in the pagan dimension of the play, then Hieronimo does violate

the Biblical injunction against private revenge, thus impelling himself

. Eleanor Prosser, in Hamlet and Revenge, Stanford University Press, California, 1967, p. 52. See also Clarence Boyer in The Villain as Hero in Elizabethan Tragedy, Russell and Russell, New York, 1964, p. 32 - 40.

66

towards the pagan code of vengeance as a villain. There can be no

reconciling the contradictions despite the Duke's attempts to initiate a

conciliation between Hieronimo and Lorenzo. Paradoxically, the exaction

of merciless justice does not measure up to either the Christian precepts or

the pagan code. Although Hieronimo strives to achieve justice in a

Christian court where justice has been overshadowed by the likes of

Lorenzo, he rejects the Christian scruples and succumbs to the pagan

deities that rule the play world. Not only does Hieronimo associate his

retaliation against Lorenzo and Balthazar with the 'fall of Babylon'

(IV.i.195),16 but such a reference only reinforces his action by the Old

Testament code of Vengeance which shows similarities with pagan

justice. Tom by the conflict, Hieronimo resolves his dilemma between

justice and revenge by appealing to Hades for a pagan code of justice 'for

just revenge against the murderers' (III.xiii.143). But to speak of

Hieronimo as a "mad" revenging villain is perhaps to discount his other

humanitarian roles as a concerned father and able administrator of law. In

these terms, Hieronimo can be seen as a victim in avenging his son's

murder by killing the vicious Balthazar and Lorenzo, but he would

probably be judged as a good man turned villain in killing the Duke of

Castile, who is tainted by having fathered the villainous Lorenzo.

Paradoxically, Hieronimo's obsession for justice had blinded him to

destroy an innocent man who is also the father ofBel-imperia.

The issue of Hieronimo's madness is linked to the notion of injustice

in the play. In both The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus, it is made

clear that the protagonist must become mad before he undertakes private

revenge. But Hieronimo's pretext of madness, which is a consequence of

. Elizabethans thought of Babylon as symbolising Rome, and would therefore associate the reference with the King of Spain, in their eyes a representative of the Pope. See Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. J.R. Mulryne, London, 1970 & 1989, p. I !On.

67

the loss of his son and the injustice, passes into real melancholy. The

device of madness is given full expression in the scene where Hieronimo

destroys the documents of Don Bazulto and other petitioners (III.xiii.127-

8). The extremity of Hieronimo's 'grief (III.xiii.162) causes him to

mistake the old man to be Horatio returned to spur his irresolution to

vengeance. The figure of Don Bazulto acts as a foil to Hieronimo as he

mirrors his own grief (III.xiii. 162). But the futility of neither legal redress

nor heavenly justice leaves him with the two evils of suicide and

homicide. Isabella is driven by insanity to suicide because she is

convinced that Hieronimo has neglected his vengeful duty. Despite the

first scene of Act IV, where Bel-imperia upbraids Hieronimo for delaying

his plan of revenge, there is no cause to doubt, as does Andrea, that

Hieronimo has let the action slide. On the contrary he keeps the issue of

revenge very much alive in his heart in feigning madness. As implied by

Donna Hamilton, Hieronimo develops into the very image of the

Renaissance artist who uses art to imitate nature and to exercise control of

his own affairs. 17 In the play, Hieronimo appears to take control as

'author and actor in this tragedy' (IV.iv.146) through which he fulfils his

personal vengeance with hopeless fatalism. Hieronimo must discharge the

heavy burden of retribution himself or be crushed by the forces of evil in a

world that lacks any legitimate avenue of transforming revenge into

justice. The King does not realise that he denies justice to Hieronimo, as

he is engrossed in his own affairs of the state, just as Hieronimo is

preoccupied with matters of the judiciary. Despite Lorenzo's attempts to

discredit Hieronimo by reference to his 'extreme pride' (IIl.xii.85), the

King is tolerant of Hieronimo's supposed madness. Under threat of

violence, Hieronimo succumbs to suicide in obedience to conceal his

. For further discussion, see 'The Spanish Tragedy: A Speaking Picture', ELR 4, 1974,

p. 203 - 217.

68

secret 'vow' (IV.iv.188). What exactly he is withholding remains obscure,

as his long soliloquy (IV.iv.73 -152) has disclosed everything about the

plot and the counter plot which we ourselves are aware of. It is my

contention that Hieronimo, by denying himself the power of speech, is

demonstrating to a confused world the daunting power of the unspoken

word which is related to his madness. Paradoxically, Hieronimo

represents the instrument of pagan justice as well as the agent of human

revenge. Yet his role as the agent of divine justice seems clear, and from

this perspective he cannot be condemned for an action preordained and

endorsed by a controlling mythology concerned only with the punishment

of murder. It must be recognised that paradoxically, the revenge action is

set in motion from the opening scene, and therefore Hieronimo is not fully

responsible for his actions including madness caused by grief and

profound injustice, as he is only an instrument of a predetermined justice

decreed by the play's resolution and the pagan gods. That brings us to the

question of Elizabethan attitudes towards revenge as discussed in the

Introduction.

Our knowledge of Elizabethan theatre audiences is very much based

on speculation as the general tendency is to assess the past through the

present. To the Elizabethan audiences, the issue of an eye for an eye was a

burning topic that raised the consciousness of the masses as to their

attitudes to the revenger. Philip Edwards reflects that 'Hieronimo may still

be a sympathetic hero in spite of Elizabethan indignation against private

revenge ... the play is not written to advocate a system of ethics, or to

oppose one'. 18 On the one hand, Hieronimo has our sympathies in wanting

to retaliate instantly for the murder of his sibling. But on the other hand,

Elizabethan law and moral codes abhor violent retaliation in favour of

. Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, The Revels Plays, Methuen, London, 1959, p. lix -Ix.

69

reconciliation and forgiveness. In the opening segment of the play, the

Viceroy's complaint about Fortune is indicative of contemporary attitudes

to the notions of justice and retribution:

Alexandro : That were a breach to common law of arms.

Viceroy: They reek no laws that meditate revenge.

Alexandro: His ransom's worth will stay from foul revenge. ( I.iii 47-9.

Presumably, contemporary audiences deemed revenge an acceptable ,

indeed appropriate form of justice. Although private vengeance would

seem to be a fitting repayment for wrongs suffered, it serves to exacerbate

them. In all probability, Hieronimo's desperate decision to take the law

into his own hands as a last resort would have been condemned on

rational grounds by the Elizabethan audiences as Elizabethan law forbade

vengeance for personal injury. 19 But even orthodox theorists expressed a

certain sympathy for private vengeance, at least when the law was unable

to dispense justice effectively. It is implied by Francis Bacon 'the most

tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law to

punish; else a man's enemy is still before hand, and it is two for one'.20 In

the play, Kyd has explored the consequences of vengeance on the

individual in a system of justice without law, and law without justice.

Two examples of the law in action include the Portuguese sub-plot in

which Alexandro is saved in the nick of time and Viluppo executed.

Ironically Pedringano pays for the murder of Serberine by the evil

machinations of Lorenzo. In Hieronimo's case, the notion of personal

vengeance can hardly be squared with the respect for public law which the

revenger tries for so long to uphold. 21 In the process, Hieronimo

. Romans 12, 'Vengeance is Mine, so says the Lord, I will repay'. 20 . Quoted F. Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587- 1642, Princeton, NJ., 1940, p. 36. 21 . See Arthur Freeman Ibid., p. 93.

70

contributes to his own unheroic fatalism, caught up in a retributive action

in an enveloping conflict between the system of justice and law. As

sympathies change sides, the Elizabethan audiences' attitudes towards

revenge remain divided.

The theme of retribution becomes part of a dramatically oriented

response to the implications of justice and law, extending to the sufferings

and anguish of those whose grievances the law will not redress because of

a corrupt court. Hieronimo's decision to avenge his son's murder is arrived

at after resorting to several alternatives between suicide and revenge. His

futile attempt to communicate with the King, and Lorenzo's interference,

emphasise the desperate dilemma of the wronged man. Ben Jonson, who

is purported to have written the 'Additions' to The Spanish Tragedy,

shows how the ambivalent aspects of law can be interpreted into 'a meere

ingine, to take ... life by a pretext of justice'. His vision of the ideal man is

described as one who 'do's nothing but by law'.22 What concerns

Hieronimo is the process by which the twin manifestations of law and

justice are usurped by the power structure symbolised by the King. The

unfolding of events proves the subordination of law to the political power

of the King and the destructive effects on the populace which is enmired

in the culture of violence. It follows that atrocities committed in the play

can be attributed to the workings of injustice and disorder consequent on

misrule. Such a notion reinforces the belief that Elizabethan tragedy was

more concerned with the fate of the individual than with that of society. In

the conventional sense, Hieronimo is as much the victim of a corrupt

kingdom as the kingdom is a victim of the individual. Before he is

transformed by Horatio's murder, Hieronimo is depicted as the Stoical

. Ben Jonson, Sejanus III, 245-6, and Cati/ine, V, 221, Quoted by Thomas E. McAlindon, English Renaissance Tragedy, Macmillan, London, 1986, p. 36.

71

embodiment of a model father and a loving husband, a man of law

renowned for his energetic but profound pursuit of equity as a 'gentleman'

(III.xiii.94). But paradoxically, in the process of countering murder with

just revenge, Hieronimo fulfils the code of pagan justice disregarding the

process of reconciliation. In the classical Renaissance tradition, Thomas

Kyd likens Hieronimo to Orpheus (IV.v.23)23 who dies in a vain attempt

to overcome discord with concord; unlike Hieronimo, he remains a true

Stoic to the end. In using the myth, Kyd satirises the Orphic paradigm

emblematically in delineating Hieronimo as a distressed human being

who finally succumbs to suicide. Bel-imperia and Isabella suffer a similar

fate ; their action points to the annihilation of the royal lines of both

Portugal and Spain.24

Hieronimo, as a forerunner of Shakespearian revengers such as Titus

Andronicus, Brutus and Othello, is the protagonist in a tragedy where

society and the individual paradoxically become each other's victims due

to the incompatibility of revenge and reconciliation. The cultural

ramifications of violence and cruelty, manifested in the context of the

search for justice, are forcefully represented in The Spanish Tragedy, and

even more forcefully in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus .

. In the Metamorphoses, Ovid records the magical power of Orpheus's words and music to pacify the beats and move even the trees to attend to him. However, the loss of Orpheus's wife for a second time undermines his own faith in existence, and futility of change and death. 24 . For discussion of the motifs see Francis Yates, 'Queen Elizabeth As Astrea', JWCI JO, 1947, p. 27 - 82 and her monograph, Astrea :The Imperial Theme of the Sixteenth Century, Routledge Kegan Paul, London, 1975. Also Cited by Frank R. Ardolino in, Thomas Kyd's Mystery Play, Peter Lang, N.Y., 1985, p. 117.

72

THE REVENGE OF TITUS AN"'DRONICUS

From Tlze Lamentable and Tragical History of Titus .Andronicu_r, a ballad.

CHAPTER THREE

THE PARADOX OF CRUELTY IN TITUS ANDRONICUS

Tamora : Why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus ?

Titus: Not I; 'twas Chiron and Demetrius:

They ravished her and cut away her tongue:

And they, 'twas they, that did her all this wrong (5.3.54 - 57).1

In lashing out at the despicable act of cruelty of his daughter's rape and

dismemberment at the hands of Chiron and Demetrius, Titus plunges from

a noble Roman warrior to a cruel revenger in search of justice, from a

public stance to a personal one. Ironically, he himself becomes the object

of revenge. My argument has the premise that vengeance and justice are

not represented as antipodes but as amplitudes of the moral dilemma that

offers a paradox of cruelty. It is paradoxical because the injustice of rape

becomes the means by which we are invited to experience the nature of

revenge and counter revenges in such a society. The revenge plot of Titus

Andronicus provides ample scope for horrendous deeds of cruelty

including filicide. Not only is cruelty counted justice, but it is also an

intensification of revenge. Two strands of evidence are suggested for my

argument. First, the complacent hypocrisy with which the victim, Titus, as

well as the villains, Tamora, Saturninus, Aaron, Chiron and Demetrius,

precipitate their violent cruelty for expediency. Second, the tendency to

revenge appears more cruel and extensive than the crime that provoked it.

To experience cruelty is to feel pain or suffering as encountered by Titus,

who refers to himself as 'this feeble ruin' (3.1.205), and Lavinia through

. All quotations and references are to the The New Cambridge Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, edited by Alan Hughes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994.

her mutilation is likewise shown to the audiences as ruined.2 Titus's

sufferings are also revealed in his plea for just retribution for the unlawful

execution of his two 'condemned sons' (3.1.8), Quintus and Martius, who

are referred to as 'two ancient ruins' (3 .1.17), for the alleged murder of

Bassianus. In the play's development of revenge, sympathy changes sides.

We are tempted to be more indulgent towards Titus for his propensity to

violence in contrast with the savagery of Chiron, Demetrius and Aaron.

This is not to construe that Titus is, like Hieronimo or Hamlet, a good

man who is conditioned by his sense of 'piety' ( 1.1.115)3 to kill his own

son, Mutius, and daughter, Lavinia, without any hesitation. Titus's

religious offering of Alar bus triggers Tamora's 'sharp revenge' ( 1.1.13 7)

against him for what she perceives as a cruel act of a hearties~ tyrant, and

thus provides an archetype for the metaphors of the 'double hunt' (2.3.19)

of Lavinia and Bassianus by Chiron and Demetrius. The paradox of

cruelty sets the revenge plot in motion and what ensues is an extremity of

fourteen senseless killings.4 Ironically, the word, 'honour', is used to

legitimise and perpetuate cruel acts of revenge.

In order to develop my argument, it is necessary to focus on the

revenge motives of Titus, Tamora and Aaron. Faced with rival claims to

the crown, Titus, as the people's choice, declines the Empery because of

his 'age and feebleness' (1.1.188), while Saturninus's brother, Bassianus,

. Ruin infers the downfall or decay of a person; dishonour for a woman, degradation resulting from this. In the context of the play, ruin refers not only to the mutilation of Titus' hand by Aaron but also by extension to Lavinia's mutilation by Chiron and Demetrius. See The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, London, 1973, Repr. 1980. 'The Vice called Crueltie is contrary to mercye'. Eliot.

3 . Marcus refers to Titus as 'Pius' (1.1.23) implying that Titus is religious, patriotic and just by nature. Myers notes that the primary ingredient of Roman 'piety' was obedience to and humility before one's father as patriarchal head of the family. Mutius attempts the most extreme impiety by physically opposing himself to the will of his father whose identity as a Roman is vital to Titus's family honour. For further discussions see Jeffrey Rayner Myers, Shakespeare's Mannerist Canon, Peter Lang, New York, 1989, p. 121. 4 . In Titus Andronicus, Saturninus, Bassianus, Titus, Mutius, Demetrius, Chiron, Tamora, Lavinia, and the nurse die on stage; Quintus. Martius, Alarbus, Aaron, and the clown die off stage. In The Spanish Tragedy, eight often deaths occur on stage. Of the eight deaths in Hamlet, five occur on stage.

76

accepts the idea of rule by public consent to commit his 'cause in balance

to be weigh'd' (1.1.55) reinforcing the notion of justice in the play. But

Titus is out of step with the times in refusing the responsibility of the

empery, particularly in his wishful conviction that every Roman shares his

warrior's notion of pride and honour. Distinguished by his forty years of

military service, Titus strikes us as the embodiment of Romanitas. 5 In the

lines, 'Thou art a Roman; be not barbarous' (1.1.378), Marcus articulates

the paradox that results when an excess of Roman virtue becomes a vice,

because Titus's subordination to the code of military honour begins to

destroy his family as well as Rome itself.6 Titus's wounded pride blinds

him to his own sense of brutality, so that those he loves dearly such as

Mutius and Lavinia become victims of filicide. Since his passions have no

rational course of conduct, they are not subject to rational control in the

Stoic manner; but they are rooted in complexity, subject to strict laws of

cause and effect ( 3.1.229-242).7 Titus's cold blooded murder of his son,

Mutius, for his opposition to Lavinia's proposal of marriage to Saturninus,

then the denial of a proper burial to Mutius in the family tomb, and finally

the ultimate fulfilment of revenge in the Thyestan banquet illustrate not

only his lack of compassion but the vulnerability of this cruel, reactionary

general as he helps to unleash the 'wilderness of tigers' (3.1.54) that m

tum will prey upon him and the Andronici clan.

. According to Robert Miola, Romanitas is defined as a 'military code of honour that encompasses the virtues of pride, courage, constancy, integrity, service, and self-sacrifice'. Titus exhibits virtues admired by both the citizens and the theatre audience in that he places his country first before his family with his sacrifice of twenty-four sons and a daughter at the end of the play. See Shakespeare's Rome, Cambridge, 1983, p. 50. Jeffrey Myers makes the point that Titus sees himself as a descendant of Priam, the Trojan King, as one to whom honour and duty as a Roman are more important than life itself. The allusion to 'Pius' Andronicus (1.1.23) reinforces the religious and patriotic emphasis in a strong Roman family bond as opposed to the adulterous Gothic family of Tamora. For further discussion see Jeffrey Rayner Myers, Shakespeare's Mannerist Canon, Peter Lang, New York & Paris, 1989, p. 119- 120. 6 . See Robert Miola, Shakespeare's Rome, Cambridge, 1983, p. 50. 7. See The New Cambridge Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, ed. Alan Hughes, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 99n.

77

At the heart of Tamora's motive for revenge is Titus's rejection of her

plea to spare the life of her first-born son, Alarbus, whose religious

sacrifice presumably sparks her hatred to excessive violence of cruelty. In

the line of duty Titus's son, Lucius, proposes the ritual slaughter of one of

the captured prisoners, Alarbus, as a token of the mandatory religious

offering to those sons killed in the war. Such 'cruel irreligious piety'

(1.1.130) seems, however, shrouded with hypocrisy, partly because of the

hastiness with which the sons of Titus plan to 'hew his limbs' ( 1.1.129)

and bum the entrails to 'feed the sacrificing fire' (1.1.144). Although Titus

sanctions the human sacrifice, he does not participate in a ritual that may

have seemed barbaric to the Elizabethan audiences. Titus not only acts

within the code of Roman honour and piety, but he presumably feels that

Alarbus has been glorified by the religious offering. In rejecting Tamora's

plea for 'mercy' (1.1.119) to spare her first born, Titus appears adamant

about his mandatory sacrifice, and he incurs her malice that results in the

reckless requital of revenge killings. As John Cox holds, 'To blame Titus

for what he suffers as a result of ordering Alarbus's death is equivalent to

blaming Seneca for following Nero's order to kill himself.'8 Tamora's

grievances on the Roman Empery's cruel treatment of the Roman captives,

the Goths, in its imperial conquests are legitimate. Nevertheless, her

vengeance on Titus cannot be justified because his action is not a

premeditated revenge killing like Hieronimo's but a legitimate human

sacrifice that is committed under the Roman code of honour and tradition.

Despite the cultural diversity, it cannot be deemed as an act of enmity and

personal injustice against the Goths as it seems to Tamora. It is Titus's

rigid adherence to the Roman tradition that triggers Tamora's revenge as

demonstrated in her reasoning with her son, Demetrius, 'Revenge it as you

. John D. Cox, Shakespeare and the Dramaturgy of Power, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1989, p. 174.

78

love your mother's life / Or be ye not henceforth called my children'

(2.3.114-15). Tamora sets the scene for her revenge in exploiting her

unholy alliance with the Emperor, Saturninus, who hurts Titus by

marrying an enemy Queen, thereby violating his pledge to marry Lavinia.

What Titus does not anticipate is that the new Emperor's intentions of

marriage to Tamora would thwart Lavinia's prospects of becoming an

empress. Titus's bitter disappointment is aptly expressed in his sentiments:

'These words are razors to my wounded heart' (1.1.314).

The second aim of Tamora is to solicit the power of Saturninus, for her

'villainy and vengeance' (2.1.121) to undermine institutionalised justice on

the Andronici clan. The evil design of Tamora is demonstrated in her

complacent hypocrisy in encouraging her sons to sexually assault Lavinia

while she herself seeks sexual satisfaction in forming an adulterous liaison

with Aaron, 'the barbarous Moor' (2.3. 78). Saturninus's findings that the

four surviving sons of Titus had aided his brother, Bassianus, to elope

with Lavinia provide one of the biggest strands in Tamora's web.

Saturninus's dislike for the Andronici family has already been spelt out by

him in his condemnation of them as 'traitorous haughty sons' (1.1.303).

Although Titus refuses to acknowledge the fact that he is indirectly

responsible for Tamora's new status as the empress, he feels optimistic

that her character will be transformed with her elevated status in the

Roman Empire (1.1.394-398). In appearance, Tamora epitomises the

desire to foster amity, but in reality, she embodies the Machiavellian vices

of a dissembler to destroy the Roman Empery in a conspiracy of

consequences unknown to Saturninus. For instance, she spares little time

in cunningly scheming, abetted by Saturninus, 'to massacre them all'

( 1.1..450) - an obvious reference 'to the cruel father (Titus) and his

traitorous sons' (1.1.452). It is ironic that Saturninus, who initiates the

79

'Roman hunting' (2.2.19), is apparently unaware of the magnitude of the

far-reaching revenges and counter-revenges that would follow the

aftermath of the 'hunt'. Given the above circumstances, we find Tamora's

revenge on the Andronici family hard to justify.

Of particular interest to the development of revenge is the illegitimate

liaison between Aaron and Tamora. Her clandestine adultery with her

accomplice, Aaron, coupled with his cunning 'policy and stratagem'

(2.1.104) is reminiscent of Clytemnestra and Egistus in Horestes. Aaron's

brazen but vulgar repartee to Chiron, 'Villain, I have done thy mother'

(4.2.76), emphasises the startling nature of his sexuality. The injuries he

inflicts are horrible - they are not merely pretence as are those inflicted by

the Vice-personifications in Horestes. Not only does Aaron show his

contempt for the gods (5.1.79) but he is the very embodiment of the

Machiavellian Vice in stark contrast to the Vice figure in Horestes.

Whatever grudge he holds against the Andronici can come only from his

early defeat and capture because there is hardly any direct motive for his

revenge. Like Iago, Aaron's misplaced sense of power and the threat he

poses find expression in his cruel rhetoric :

Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,

Blood and revenge are hammering in my head,

Hark, Tamora, the empress of my soul,

Which never hopes more heaven than rests in thee,

This is the day of doom for Bassianus;

His Philomel must lose her tongue to-day,

Thy sons make pillage of her chastity,

And wash their hands in Bassianus' blood (2.3.38-45).

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As the architect of the metaphoric 'double hunt' (2.3.19), Aaron, in

connivance with Tamora, dominates the action against Titus in inciting

Chiron and Demetrius to kill Bassianus and ravish Lavinia. Aaron has a

certain Machiavellian power to manipulate them with his rhetoric :

'Lucrece was not more chase/Than this Lavinia, Bassianus' love' (2.1.108-

9). 9 Ironically the literal stage hunt in Act 2 blends with the metaphoric

sense of the hunt in Rome's 'wilderness of tigers', alluding to the notion

that 'tigers must prey' (3.1.54-55). The implication here is that humanity

has descended to the lower depths as beasts of prey, and hence the image

of Tamora as 'ravenous tiger' (5.3.194) thirsting for revenge. Aaron takes

natural delight in deception and cruelty. On the one hand, he is more than

willing to cut off Titus's hand with his scimitar, to be despatched to the

Emperor as a bargain for the lives of his two sons who have been falsely

framed for the murder of Bassianus. And on the other hand, Aaron helps

Tamora to manipulate the revenge executions of Quintus and Martius. In a

visual parallel for the political disintegration by destroying Titus's hand,

Aaron has incapacitated Rome itself. The exultation with which the

Emperor returns the hand together with the severed heads of his two sons

to Titus, not only evokes Titus's horrid 'laugh' (3.1.264), but also binds his

conscience to revenge: 'Then which way shall I find Revenge's cave?'

(3.1.269). The accentuation of theatrical dynamics is demonstrated in the

barbaric yet a heart-rending scene when Marcus leaves the stage carrying

one head and Titus the other head with only his remaining hand, and his

handless daughter carrying Titus's disjointed hand between her teeth

(3.1.279-282). Not only are Aaron's barbaric deeds trivialised in his

'extreme laughter' (5.1.113), but Aaron's cruelty is externalised in his

9. Lucrece from Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece ( 1593) has important links with Lavinia. Lucrece who was raped by Tarquin later committed suicide. See A.R. Braunmuller, 'Early Shakespearian tragedy and its contemporary context: cause and emotion in Titus Andronicus, Richard III and The Rape of Lucrece', in Shakespearian Tragedy (Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 20), 1984, p. 97 - 128.

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brutal killing of the innocent victim, the nurse, to secure secrecy and thus

to protect the identity of his child. 10 Her death is emblematic of the world

of the senseless cruelties inflicted by Aaron whose defence of his 'first

born son and heir' (4.2.92) must manifest the dishonour of Rome's

sovereignty. In contrast with Lorenzo and Claudius who had committed

only one murder which was to be revenged by Hieronimo and Hamlet

respectively, the structure of this mere sensational plot dramatises the

blood revenge of Titus for the carnage caused by Aaron, Tamora, Chiron

and Demetrius.

Titus's sense of the need for revenge is linked to the injustice of

Lavinia's rape and the murder of his sons, Quintus and Martius. Titus,

having failed to receive earthly justice from the duly constituted authority,

turns to 'heaven' (4.3.51) in the vain hope that justice can be realised.

Titus despatches arrows up to the Gods, bearing the message, 'Terras

Astraea Reliquit' (4.3.4), but feels compelled to take justice into his

hands. 11 Titus's behaviour in scene three recalls that of Hieronimo in The

Spanish Tragedy :

Though on this earth justice will not be found,

I'll down to hell, and this passion

Knock at the dismal gates of Pluto's court (13.13.108-10). 12

. Of the two people, Cornelia the midwife and the nurse, Aaron is certain only one more murder will ensure secrecy as stipulated to his confidante, Demetrius, 'Send the midwife presently to me .. .' ( 4.3.167-9). The stage directions show Chiron and Demetrius with the Dead Nurse. 11 . According to Ovid, Astraea was the last goddess to depart from the earth during the golden age when men perpetrated acts of violence. If the inference is applied to Titus then the wrongs done to Titus would certainly have been a valid reason for the goddess to have withdrawn from the earth. See F.A.Yates, 'Queen Elizabeth as Astraea' in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes JO, 1947, p. 27-82. See The Arden Edition, ed. J.C Maxwell, 1963, p. 90n. 12. See Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. Philip Edwards, Methuen, London, 1959.

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Just as Hieronimo lost confidence in earthly justice, Titus too seeks the

'gods/To send down justice' (4.3.51-2) to wreak the wrongs. Human

justice is as elusive as divine justice. When Marcus exclaims, 'Revenge

the heavens for old Andronicus!' (4.1.128), he desperately expects divine

retribution as he doubts that the Roman Empery that Titus cherishes will

provide natural justice for the killings because of the Emperor's divided

loyalties and factionalism. This is evident in Saturninus' injunction on the

legitimacy of lawful killing :

... May this be borne as if his traitorous sons,

That died by law, for murder of our brother,

Have by my means been butchered wrongfully? (4.4.52-4).

In these lines, the Emperor distinguishes between the lawful killing of a

human being, and the illegal killing of a person, wherein lies the

distinction between murder, or manslaughter, and a legal execution.13 To

forfeit the claims of justice is to violate the legitimacy of the law. The

Roman law is deceitfully manipulated by Tamora in her new role as

Empress to avenge two of Titus's sons. Hence the subordination of law to

the abuse of power is detrimental to the stability of Rome. Marcus strikes

us as a Stoic when he tries in vain to restrain Titus's passionate motives

for revenge with sound reasoning : 'let reason govern thy lament'

(3 .1.217). What Titus seeks is justice, but he turns to revenge in order to

liberate himself of his 'grief (3.2.78) heaped upon him and his family.

Does he really liberate himself? What is inevitable is that both Tamora

and Titus, who are obsessed with vendetta, are set on the dangerous trail

. Quoted by Ed.W.J.White, Commentaries on the Law of Shakespeare, Second Edition, Fred B. Rothman & Co, Colorado, 1913 & 1987, p. 447. The point should be stressed here that Titus is not identified with Elizabethan law, but Roman law and tradition.

83

of 'wild justice'14 that is defined in terms of revenge. So grievously

distressed is Titus that he is driven to the ultimate in destructive

retribution. In his attempts at liberation Titus becomes lawless in a lawless

Rome, abandoning the Stoical values of reason for the passion of

revenge. The failure of the Emperor to bring to justice the culprits

threatens to destroy not only Rome but also the Emperor himself. First of

all, his discovery of the Empress's two sons as Lavinia's rapists sends

Titus reeling for revenge. Although Saturninus may not appear to have

been a party to either Lavinia's mutilation or the framing of Martius and

Quintus, his dislike of the Andronici family predisposes him to believe

Titus's sons guilty, and so, to forgo an inquiry might uncover the identity

of the true culprits of Bassianus's murder and Lavinia's rape. Second,

Titus, like Hamlet, feigns madness as a cloak for his revenge. Titus, who

can sense the motives of the villains, is not fooled by Tamora's disguise as

Revenge (5.2.73), accompanied by her sons who are ironically named,

Rape and Murder (5.2.82), sent from the underworld to 'right his heinous

wrongs' (5.2.4). Just as Hieronimo tricks Lorenzo into taking part in the

play, Titus lures Rape and Murder to his house, a strategy that paves the

way for his ultimate ritual of revenge. What is consequential is the

dramatic device of madness that presents him with an opportunity in the

climactic 'hour' (5.2.159) for the synthesis of justice and revenge. Titus's

preparation for the ritual slaughter appears more cruel than the crime that

originally provoked it as he paradoxically takes on the role of the judge,

jury and the executioner.

In the play, revenge is tied up paradoxically with the concept of honour

as well as the ritual of horror. With the loss of twenty-four sons, and

. Francis Bacon (1597), 'Of Revenge' in The Essays of Lord Bacon, ed. Frederick Warne, Macmillan, London, 1889, p. 7 - 8.

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Lucius banished, Titus sets out to salvage what remains of his family

'honour', a word that appears ironically some thirty-three times in Act I

alone. Honour and justice are concepts used in the play to legitimise and

perpetuate barbarous acts of retribution, and the horrific indignities

suffered by victims as a consequence of war (1.1.39-45). In effect, the

violation of Lavinia's honour is identified with the violation of Rome and

of all civilised value and these lend irony to the conflict between primitive

and degenerate cruelties. 15 Titus endures to the point that his immense

grief is paradoxically transformed into revenge in the third Act not merely

to overcome his loss but to project its intensity. 16 In an act of barbaric

horror suggestive of the slaughter of animals, Titus gives vent to his cruel

fulfilment of revenge by slitting the throats of Lavinia's rapists, while the

handless mute, Lavinia, connives as an active participant by holding a

basin between her stumps to receive 'the guilty blood' (5.2.181). But in an

interaction of unreconciled contradictions, Marcus makes a belated plea to

the people of Rome to salvage their family honour at the death of Titus,

for the wrongs inflicted on the Andronici family :

Now judge what cause had Titus to revenge

These wrongs unspeakable, past patience,

Or more than any living man could bear (5.3.124-126).

Can an act of filicide be justified as a deed of honour ? In killing his

only daughter it would appear that Titus does not want to prolong her

suffering as he probably sees no future in her existence. Saturninus also

believes that 'the girl should not survive her shame?' (5.3.40). In his

. See Albert Tricomi's discussion in Shakespeare's Early Tragedies, ed. Neil Taylor and Bryan Loughrey, Macmillan, London, 1990, p.109.

16 . See D.J.Palmer, 'The Unspeakable in Pursuit of the Uneatable: Language and Action in Titus

Andronicus', Critical Quarterly, 14, Number 4, 1972, p. 320 -30.

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critical phase of his consciousness Titus feels that the girl should not live

but 'die, die ... and thy shame' (5.3.45) with her, because in Titus's mind,

Lavinia is already a 'feeble ruin' like himself. In his anguish, Titus cites

the precedent of 'Virginius' (5.3.36), who slew his daughter Virginia as

she was 'enforced, stained, and deflowered' (5.3.38) to preserve what he

understood to be her moral dignity .17 The loss of Lavinia's hands means

that she has lost the only means to kill herself, but she must deserve credit

for her ingenious disclosure of her rapists (s.d. 4.1.76). As spelt out by

Marcus, Lavinia was 'ravished and wronged as Philomel was' ( 4.1.52). 18

But does a sense of honour bestow on the father the right to take his

daughter's life? Titus had no qualms about killing his son, Mutius, who

was his pride and 'joy' (1.1.382). As a concerned father, Titus forces upon

himself a standard of morality and concern for justice that is virtually

none but he maintains. Presumably Lavinia must consider herself dead in

spirit because of the sexual violation. She lives only long enough for the

process of justice to be set in motion in the guise of revenge in the typical

military fashion. Titus opts for her death to end her shame and suffering.

Paradoxically the senseless murder is counted as an act of love to which

Lavinia gives her tacit consent for she prefers death to dishonour as spelt

out by her in Act 2 : 'Tis present death I beg' (2.3 .173 ). The emphasis here

is on the Renaissance doctrine of the family honour 'because the girl

should not survive her shame' (2.40), as her 'chastity' (2.3.44) has already

been pillaged. Although Titus's brutal murder may thus appear to be an

honourable but redemptive act, such an act of mercy killing would have

been probably seen as the paradox of cruelty in the Christian context by

. For further discussion see Nicholas Brooke, Shakespeare's Early Tragedies, Methuen, London, 1968, p. 18. 18. Alan Hughes notes the possibility of the story of Philomel in Ovid's Metamorphoses as the secondary source for Titus Andronicus. Another source is Seneca's Thyestes. Philomel revealed the identity of her ravisher by embroidering her story in a tapestry. This was disclosed to her sister, Procne, the wife of the rapist, Tereus. See the Introduction to The New Cambridge Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, ed. Alan Hughes, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 10. See also p. 80n.

86

the Elizabethan audiences. Given the circumstances of the fourteen

killings that rival one another in cruelty and savagery, it is my contention

that the mercy killing of Lavinia is justified within the Roman culture of

the play with its obvious parallel to the slaying of Virginia.

The paradox of cruelty is externalised in the theatrical dynamics of

mutilation, murder and cannibalism that are linked to the legitimacy of

revenge. Like Hamlet, Titus becomes the revenger as well as the object of

revenge. But Titus is implicated in revenge and is committed to go

beyond justice to be eventually doomed by his own fatalism. Six people

are savaged to death on stage in a play abounding with barbaric violence.

The killings of Mutius and Bassianus and the gory deaths of Chiron and

Demetrius, with their throats slit, must produce a visceral impact on the

Elizabethan audiences. The play climaxes with the cruel imagery of a

Thyestan19 'banquet' (5.2.202) that shows the metaphoric extension of the

'hunt' established in Act II. Titus, as the image of the cook-revenger, uses

his 'prey' to fashion the egregious part of the 'devouring spectacle'

(2.3.235) that had earlier claimed the lives of Bassianus, Quintus, and

Martius, and now climaxes in a revenge morality in which both families

paradoxically wind up as prey.20 Titus, who, in Act 3, scene 2, had urged

his family 'to eat no more' (3.2.1) in his banquet, now sets up a feast for

others and feeds upon his revenge, in stark contrast to Marcus's mistaken

expectations that Titus is 'so just that he will not revenge' ( 4.1.128). The

comical image of Titus as a cook becomes a personification of Revenge, a

meaningful signifier in theatricality, just as Tamora had become Revenge

in Act 5. In a horribly climactic scene Titus takes the law into his hands to

. The summoning of Revenge recalls Seneca's apparitions from the underworld as two sons are served up at the banquet in both plays - Seneca's Thyestes and Titus Andronicus. 20 . For further discussion See Alan C. Dessen, Shakespeare in Performance : Titus Andronicus, Manchester University Press, Manchester & New York, 1989, p. 85.

87

commit the most macabre act in which the heads of Chiron and Demetrius

are reduced to blood and paste, and 'baked in a pie' (5.3.59) in a pastry

coffin, to be consumed by the Emperor and their mother, 'the flesh that

she herself hath bred' (5.3.61). As implied by Alan Hughes,21 the

cannibal imagery of the banquet scene in Tambourlaine the Great, Part I

(c.1587), parallels the physical horrors of the climactic banquet in Titus

Andronicus, which brings into focus the cruel motifs linked to images of

feeding, appetites and revenge.

The cruelty of a revenge which culminates in cannibalism must appear

more wicked than the crime that provoked it. Although the Elizabethan

audiences must presumably consider Lucius's 'death for a deadly deed'

(5.3.65) of revenging Saturninus as an act of manslaughter according to

Elizabethan law, the killing bears the justification of revenge for a slain

father in the Roman orientation of the play. The punishment is also seen

as an emblematic image of retribution, like many acts of justice in the

period. To gauge the Elizabethan attitudes toward revenge and rituals of

horror from the play would be a misleading exercise, as Eleanor Prosser

says, 'Few scholars would offer Titus as evidence that Shakespeare and

his audience unquestionably approved of revenge'.22 Not only has

Shakespeare used the Senecan revenge motifs of the genre in the Roman

play to explore the emotional responses of an ethical dilemma to the

predominantly Christian audiences, but the Elizabethan theatre provides

the space for the interaction of cruelty and unreconciled contradictions of

the revenge genre for the dramatist.23 To generalize about how these

. See Christopher Marlowe, Tambourlaine the Great, ed. John D.Jump, London,1967, Part I, 4.4; Quoted Alan Hughes (ed.), The New Cambridge Shakespeare edition, Titus Andronicus, Cambridge, 1994, p. 4. 22 . For further discussion, see Eleanor Prosser in Hamlet and Revenge, Second edition, Stanford University Press, California, 1967, p. 85. 23 . See Peter Brook, The Empty Space, Penguin Books, 1972, p. 96 - 7.

88

dramatists such as Kyd and Shakespeare satisfied the demands of the

audiences is hazardous. Again, what effect the peculiar circumstances of

senasationalism in the theatre had as a whole on the Elizabethan audiences

is hard to speculate. Yet it is the kind of revenge horror motifs that gave

Elizabethan drama a voice. Paradoxically, the revenge motifs of Alarbus's

'lopped' limbs and Lavinia's dismemberment contribute to the vendetta

resulting in a series of literal and metaphorical mutilations, and by

extension a 'headless' Rome, both at the beginning and at the end of the

play until Lucius achieves the empery.

The archetypal metaphor of dismembered hands and lopped limbs is

clearly linked to the synthesis of revenge and justice in the paradox of

cruelty. First, we have Tamora's ineffectual plea to Titus in Act 1, scene

1, and the subsequent lopping of Alarbus's limbs, and then the fate of

Lavinia - 'her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravished' (2.4), a

cruel violation that not only receives an extended reaction from Marcus

but sets off Titus's fixation on revenge for injustice. Second, when Titus

lets Aaron amputate his hand in return for the lives of his two sons, his

implicit trust in what he believes to be a legitimate judgment of the

Roman emperor has been shattered. Severed hands were a common motif

in Renaissance emblems of justice, because the verbal imagery, 'name the

word of hands!' (3.2.33), implies that all action is meaningless.24 Tricomi

finds the words 'hand' and 'head' appear copiously as figures of speech

whose effect is to saturate every aspect of the play with remembered or

foreshadowed horror.25 Titus's reference to his handless state is

. For further discussion see Ann Haaker, 'Non Sine Causa : the Use of Emblematic Method and Iconology in the Thematic Structure of Titus Andronicus', Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, XIII-XIV. 1970 -1, p. 143 - 168. 25 . 'The Aesthetics of Mutilation', in Shakespeare's Early Tragedies, ed. Taylor and Loughrey, Macmillan, London, 1970, p. 100.

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powerfully effective when he faces Tamora as Revenge (5.2.17-22), and,

in grinding Tamora's sons to 'powder small' to act out his revenge. Finally

the theatrical imagery of cruelty climaxes with the killing of Saturninus at

the hands of Lucius. At this point Marcus explicitly seeks to counter the

previous disjunction of hands and parts of the body :

0 let me teach you how to knit again

This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf,

These broken limbs again into one body. (5.3.69-71)

These lines reinforce the profound image of the 'reverent man of Rome'

(5.3.136), Marcus, 'hand in hand' (5.3.135) with the future emperor of

Rome, Lucius, in attempting to resurrect Rome's 'broken limbs into one

body' out of the shattered 'ruins'.

The sensational symbolism of 'martyred signs' (3.2.36) conjures up

images of the fate of Kyd's Hieronimo, as well as Lavinia - tongueless,

handless, and 'Speechless' in a 'dumb action' (3.2.39-40), epitomising the

disruption of harmonious social order in a corrupt society. Titus must seek

revenge for Lavinia as Hieronimo must for Horatio. But the extremity of

Senecan horror of Titus Andronicus reaches new heights of sensationalism

in comparison with The Spanish Tragedy. In Titus Andronicus the

disruption is obvious, and the imagery of mutilation is manifested in the

play's ending in the unkindest act of desecration as Lucius, tainted by

revenge and cruelty, denies Tamora a 'funeral rite' (5.3.195) with a

vindictive order to cast her body 'to beasts and birds to prey' (5.3.197).

The search for legitimacy culminates in the final act of retribution in the

execution of Aaron, thus clearing the way for the regeneration of Rome's

'ruins', lest Rome destroy herself with 'the issue of an irreligious Moor'

90

(5.3.120). In the end, Aaron dies 'repentant' (5.3.190) as a villain, but

Titus dies unrepentant of his own propensity to violence and cruelty rather

than succumb to the notion of mercy and reconciliation. Never does he

achieve a sense of self-knowledge as his revenge is as deceitful as

Tamora's. Titus seems to reflect Hieronimo's soliloquy, 'The safe way for

crimes is through (further) crimes' (111.xiii.6).26 Paradoxically the

barbarous Goths as well as the noble Romans are revealed as equally

guilty of cruelty.

What seems to surface is the paradox of cruelty in the guise of

legitimating justice, because vengeance and justice are not seen as

antipodes but amplitudes of the moral dilemma in the play. Was Titus

blind to a sense of futility ? As a man who is more sinned against than

sinning, the issue is inevitable because Titus does not really come to grips

with his own conscience as he steadfastly hastens to right the 'wrong'

(5.3.57) done to Lavinia. The harmonising of contradictions exacts a

certain degree of cruelty in the guise of retribution. In doing so, Titus's

moral dilemma is resolved in the paradox of cruelty that is seen as not

only righting an injustice but also exacting revenge for the sake of honour.

If Rome's emperor, Saturninus, epitomises the cruelty of a degenerate,

Titus becomes trapped in a dramatic conflict between primitive and

degenerate cruelties which result in the survival of only one of his twenty­

six children at the end of the play. Ironically, Titus does not live to see his

banished son, Lucius, restore law and order as the new Emperor, for Titus

is destroyed by Saturninus, who in turn is justly killed by Lucius in the

escalating revenge and counter revenge. In setting the revenge tragedy in

Rome, Shakespeare has unmasked the darker side of Roman history in

26. I fie Lahn 1s an adaptation of Seneca's Agamemnon, 1.115, See I fiomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, ed. J.R. Mulryne, 2nd ed., Ernest Benn Ltd., London, 1989.

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which a great art could thrive. In particular, he shows his audience the

nature and appeal of horror in the culture of cruelty and disintegration of

the Roman empire, that was once perceived as the greatest civilisation in

upholding law and justice. The revenge of Titus exceeds in cruelty and

cannibalism so that his action is more horrific than the initial crime that

provoked it. Given the extremity of his sufferings within the Roman

orientation of the play, he presumably feels he should seek justice outside

of Roman law. Titus's sufferings not only lead him to revenge but also

justice, that paradoxically justifies his weapon of cruelty.

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CHAPTER FOUR

MALICE OR MERCY IN THE MERCHANT OF VENICE?

Shylock : My deeds upon my head ! I crave the law,

The penalty and forfeit of my bond.

Portia: Is he not able to discharge the money ?

Bassanio : Yes, here I tender it for him in the court,

Yea, twice the sum,- if that will not suffice,

I will be bound to pay it ten times o'er

On forfeit of my hands, my head, heart,-

If this will not suffice, it must appear

That malice bears down truth. And I beseech you

Wrest once the law to your authority;

To do a great right, do a little wrong,

And curb this cruel devil of his will. ( IV.i.202-213).1

At the heart of Shakespeare's play is Shylock's adherence to the law as a

stratagem to legitimise his revenge on Antonio. What Shylock seeks is

legal justice which he defines in terms of revenge, 'The pound of flesh

which I demand of him' (IV.i99), but his malice stands in the way of

justice as Bassanio's plea to bend the law on his bond is negated by the

Venetian judiciary : 'there is no power in Venice/Can alter a decree

established' (IV .i.214-15). My argument is centred on the premise that

Shylock's demand for justice and the law is a mask for vindictive malice2

1 • All references to the play are to The Arden Shakespeare Edition, The Merchant of Venice, ed. John Russell Brown, London, Methuen, 1955 & 1961.

2 . The Oxford English Dictionary defines malice as (1) Active ill-will, desire to tease; bear, cherish, vindictive feelings. (2) Wrongful intention esp. as increasing guilt of certain offences, esp. of murder; malice aforethought or prepense. Johnson paraphrases : 'Malice oppresses honesty'.

and that, itself, is villainous in intent because his revenge is conceived

more from malice than duty. The paradox in The Merchant of Venice is

that the letter of the law uncompromisingly binds the vengeance which it

ought to proscribe. As a marginalised figure in Venice, Shylock is not

commanded to revenge like Horestes or Hamlet, but he is driven to exact

revenge rather than show mercy to Antonio because of his vicious

cruelty3 fuelled by racial and religious malice. Antonio and Bassanio as

well as the Duke of Venice are equally guilty of cruelty and malice. What

ties the plot together is the friendship of Antonio and Bassanio, that

becomes the background for the display of vindictive malice, as Antonio

has risked his own life for Portia's future husband, Bassanio. The

legitimacy of justice in the Christian-Jew dilemma inscribes a search for

interpretation in the controversial comedy interwoven with the reality of

the flesh-bond and the legendary three caskets. Paradoxically Portia

vindicates Antonio in a reversal of roles, not by transcending the law but

by legitimately enforcing it.4 The play is controversial because the

reversals for Shylock and Antonio show the satiric direction of the play

especially when they paradoxically become united in one faith by a court

decree at the end of the trial scene in a triumph of mercy over malice. Is it

really 'mercy' or a cruel punishment to have Shylock abrogate his identity

by a forced conversion ? Beneath the surface of the romantic comedy lie

the malicious undertones which are not comic at all. The Elizabethan

Rann glosses 'truth' as 'the strict rule of equity'. Quoted from The New Cambridge Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, ed. M.M.Mahood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987, 143n. 3 . The title-page of the first edition of The Merchant of Venice, in 1600, stresses the notion of 'cruel tie' and calls it not a comedy but The most excellent Historie of the Merchant of Venice, With the extreame crueltie of Shylock£ the !ewe towards the sayd Merchant, in cutting a iust pound of his flesh and the obtayning of Portia by the choyse of three caskets. Cited The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare), ed. A.R.Humphreys, Basis Blackwell, Oxford, 1973, p. 3. 4 • 'Malice prepensed is, when one compasseth to kill, wound, or beat another, and doth it sedato animo to be malice forethought, prepensed. This is said in law to be malice forethought, prepensed, malitia praecogitata'. See The Third Part of the Institute of the Laws of England, London, 1797, caps. 101, 105, Cited Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587-1642, Princeton, NJ., 1940, p. 7 - 9.

95

audiences' laughter must probably conceal a painful experience. Yet the

play is not a tragedy because it culminates not in the death of Antonio, but

in a romantic celebration of parallel weddings of Portia and Bassanio, and

Gratiano and Nerissa.

What are Shylock's motives for vindictive malice? Implicit in Shylock's

words and deeds are the social and cultural tensions expressed in

religious, racial and economic terms. The religious malice between the

Christian merchant and the Jewish money-lender is caused by various

power relations that exist even before the play begins. Antonio's

prejudiced hatred of the Jew's 'sacred nation' (l.iii.43) is countered by

Shylock's villainous admission : 'I hate him for he is a Christian' (1.iii.37).

Antonio's economic malice is evident in his speech on usury (1.iii.1-5),5

and he is disliked by the Jew for undercutting his thriving financial

business. The stipulation that 'Antonio shall be bound' (1.iii.4) for 'three

months' without any mercy is menacingly specific in the rhetoric.6

Shylock views the financial transaction of lending three thousand ducats

to Antonio not only as a way of gaining power, but also as a mask to

avenge himself on Antonio. Such a ploy in attesting an unenforceable

bond amounts to malice prepensed in order to ensnare the unsuspecting

Antonio.7 Shylock is at a loss to understand why Antonio should show

him such contempt when he needs what only Shylock and his like can

5 . The Elizabethans condemned usury as it was the practice of lending money at exorbitant, especially at higher interest than is legal. See Francis Bacon's essay 'Of Usury'. Cited Lawrence Danson, The Harmonies of The Merchant of Venice, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1978, p. 142. In arguing that 'no emphasis is placed on modes of money' save the subject of money, Joan Ozark Holmer says that 'usury is probably the most underestimated, and sometimes even misunderstood, element in the play'. See Holmer's Preface, The Merchant of Venice : Choice, Hazard and Consequence, Macmillan Press, London, 1995, p. xii. 6 . That Shylock 'hoards' his words has been remarked by Alexander Leggatt, Shakespeare's Comedy of Love, Methuen, London, 1974, p. 137; Quoted by Laurence Danson, 1978, p. 139. 7 . Harold G. Goddard is of a different opinion that Shylock's offer of a loan to Antonio without interest seems to have been a supreme effort of the submerged Shylock to come to the surface. However, Shylock's own testimony disproves this view. Harold G. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1951, rpt., 1960, p. 100.

96

provide. Antonio's malicious persecution of Shylock as a scapegoat,8 and

his part in shaping Shylock's own attitude to the Gentile society around

him demonstrate that he is guilty of xenophobia in not recognising

Shylock's humanity. It is oxymoronic that Venice, which prides itself in

upholding humanity so highly, treats Shylock inhumanely.

Antonio's racial malice convicts him of publicly humiliating Shylock.

Shylock, on the other hand, in trying to reduce humanity to his level, no

longer tries to harmonise with the Christian Venetian society he lives in; if

he can succeed in his revenge, he will forsake his humanity. To Antonio,

Shylock's 'rotten heart' (I.iii.97) accounts for his lack of mercy in his

business transactions as he makes his money 'breed as fast' (1.iii.91). But

Shylock manipulates this fear to his own advantage in his dealings with

Antonio and Bassanio, and later submerges his own character in the

malicious stereotype that has been imposed on him by the myths and

propaganda of the dominant ruling class in Venice, in stark contrast to

Belmont. We are given flashes of Shylock's malicious cannibalistic

menaces directed at Antonio, 'Your worship was the last man in our

mouths' (I.iii 53), and he characterises an invitation to dine with Bassanio

as an opportunity to 'feed upon I The prodigal Christian' (II.v.14-15).

Shylock cherishes the idea of feeding 'fat' (1.iii.44) his appetite for

revenge. Without Shylock's loan, Bassanio could not have afforded the

social trappings which made him a credible suitor for an affluent heiress

such as Portia.

Another motive for Shylock's malice is the loss of his only daughter,

Jessica, to a Christian lover, Lorenzo. Although the light hearted Salerio

. Harvey Birenbaum notes that 'Shylock plays the part of a scapegoat, and a scapegoat is a symbolic figure who is not endowed with a selthood'. See The Art of our Necessities: Form and Consciousness in Shakespeare, Peter Lang, New York and Paris, 1989, p. 91.

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and Solanio become wantonly malicious when they mock the Jew's

discomfiture over his daughter's elopement with a Christian, it is ironic

that Jessica, who voluntarily embraces the Venetian Christian community,

tells Lorenzo that even as a Christian convert 'there is no mercy' (Ill.v.29-

30) for her in heaven because she is a Jew's daughter. Solanio's taunting

accounts of Shylock's cries, 'My daughter! 0 my ducats, 0 my daughter'

(II.viii.15), suggest not about the loss of his only daughter, Jessica, but

that Shylock loves his ducats more than his daughter, who is seen as a

disposable commodity.9 Solanio exposes his own malice and his lack of

Christian mercy when he resorts to his crude mimicry (II.viii.14-22) that

not only reveals his cynical attitude to the Jew, but also exposes Shylock's

desperate plea for 'justice' and 'the law' as a mask for malice in times of

crisis. 10 What is of consequence is that Shylock's case rests on it's

legitimacy in law, for he adheres to the legality of the bond in the fervent

hope that the court must eventually allow him to exact the legal penalty. If

Shylock is not pretending to exact his vendetta, then his motives are those

of a malicious villain, as demonstrated during the trial, when he

stubbornly refuses to disclose his motives:

You'll ask me why I rather choose to have

A weight of carrion flesh than to receive

Three thousand ducats : I'll not answer that !

But say it is my humour,- is it answer'd? (IV.i.40-43),

Given the admission of his personal abhorrence for Antonio, Shylock

tactfully suppresses the whole notion of motive, and with it, all the racial,

. In The Jew of Malta, Barabas also cries in the same breath for his money and his daughter (II. i. 47-54). See Christopher Marlowe in Complete Plays, World Classics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1963. 10 . See D.J. Palmer, 'The Merchant of Venice, or The Importance of Being Earnest', Shakespearian Comedy, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 14, 1972, p. 11 - 28.

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religious and economic malice with which the play has been concerned. 11

Yet it is the mistreatment meted out to Shylock by the Venetian

community that hardens his heart against Antonio. To investigate the

nature of malice in the cultural context of the Renaissance society,

Shylock's adherence to the blood bond needs to be addressed.

As already noted, Shylock's cruel insistence on Antonio's pound of

flesh reeks with malice. Shylock's malevolence in stipulating his legal

terms for the blood bond symbolises the economic culture of Venice in

which each person is at others' mercy because of the malignant racial and

commercial rivalry. 12 In his passion for revenge, Shylock, who is goaded

by his Venetian enemies, prides himself in demanding no interest for his

loan to Antonio, no guarantees in case of default, nothing but 'wild justice'

in the form of a pound of flesh. While Shylock's worldly concern is his

usury,13 Antonio's opposition to the Jew's usury in contrast to his own

Christian generosity of giving loans without interest may appear to be a

motive more extreme than mere racial malice of Shylock. Shylock gains

the upper hand in his first encounter with Bassanio in Act One, Scene

Three, in which he plays his victim rather as a fisherman plays the fish he

aims to catch. Shylock's evil intent, that Antonio's flesh will serve 'to bait

fish withal;- if it will feed on nothing else, it will feed my revenge'

(Ill.i.47-66), is so maliciously villainous that it imbues him with into a

. For further discussion, see Graham Holderness, William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice, Penguin Critical Studies, Penguin Books, England, 1993, p. 49 - 50. 12 . For further discussion on Venetian commerce, see David C. McPherson, Shakespeare, Jonson and the Myth of Venice, University of Delaware Press, Newark, London & Toronto, 1990, p. 51 -56; Also see M.M. Mahood's introduction to the New Cambridge edition of The Merchant of Venice, Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 12 - 15, for a discussion on the 'Elizabethan Myth of Venice'. 13 . In the context of sixteenth century England, Walter Cohen sees Shylock as the embodiment of Capitalism in opposition to the Christian aristocratic merchant whereas Leonard Tennenhouse calls Shylock 'the very embodiment of mercantile logic'. Walter Cohen, 'The Merchant of Venice and the Possibilities of Historical Criticism', ELH, 49, 1982, p. 765-89. Marx sees Shylock both as victimiser and victim. p. 773. Also see Leonard Tennenhouse, Power on Display : The Politics of Shakespeare's Genres, Methuen, New York, 1986, p. 56.

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sense of sublime righteousness. Shylock, like Marlowe's Barabas, tries to

justify his revenge through the legality of the bond. 14 Is Shylock's

credibility measured by his utterances? Although we are inclined to take

Shylock at his word, and he seems somewhat justified in his hatred of

Antonio, 15 critics such as Prosser and Philias believe that his main reason

for revenge is economic - a motive well emphasised in the play. Between

the initial statement about revenge and the final one, in which revenge has

been equated with Christian 'humility' and made to seem a human

inevitability, there comes first Shylock's claim about a 'Christian example'

(IIl.i.486-96), and then his own catalogue of wrongs he has suffered under

Antonio, who will continue to act un-Christ-like, with unrepentant malice

toward his fellow merchant, calling him 'cut-throat dog' and 'cur'.

Shylock's motives for cruelty arise from the profound feelings of hurt he

endures silently. The revelation that Shylock has been abused and even

spat upon by Gratiano in the trial scene exposes man's inhumanity to man.

Shylock's attempt to justify criminal malice is unacceptable according to

his religious convictions, and the extravagant manner of his determination

to avenge himself on Antonio has no moral justification. In reality,

Shylock is gripped with a revenge morality with the venom of his heart,

congealed in the expression of his countenance masking itself as a

demand for the legitimacy of justice. Although it is not easy to reach a

clear judgment, my contention is that it is Shylock's wounded religious

pride, as well as his racial debasement by Antonio that triggers his hatred,

which, he says, justifies murder. A culturally conditioned self-hatred and

14 . See Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta in Complete Plays, World Classics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1963. 'This is the life the Jews are us'd to lead; / And reason, too, for Christians do the like' (V .ii.115 - 116). 15 . Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, Stanford University Press, 1967, p. 75; Peter G. Phialas, Shakespeare's Romantic Comedies: The Development of their Form and Meaning, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1966, p. 154, Cited Linda Anderson, A Kind of Wild Justice, University of Delaware Press, Newark, 1987, p. 59.

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the pain of alienation cause a determined Shylock to lash out at the deadly

malice of the Venetians. His lust for the pound of flesh seems a

consequence of the cruelty experienced by him. Shylock's misleading and

ironic sally, 'I would be friends with you, and have your love ... This

kindness I will show' (I.iii.134- 9), not only does injustice to the status he

had earned in his preceding speech but exposes his villainous intent in

adhering to the blood bond to implicate the State of Venice in the

legitimation of murder.

Does Shylock's villainy sprmg from Venice's anti-Semitism, as he

appears to believe? Shylock's virtuoso trick, of proposing the blood bond

is riddled with villainy and legal ramifications. It is probable that the

Elizabethan audiences saw Shylock as the embodiment of the Vice in

Horestes. 16 Shylock's disquieting justification of his actions, 'the villainy

you teach me I will execute' (III.i.65), implies that he has no qualms about

emulating the Christians. For Shylock it is the code of 'our sacred nation'

(I.iii.43) that is capable of 'hellish cruelty' (III.iv.21) and homicidal

revenge on those who made 'suffrance' the 'badge of all our tribe'

(I.iii. I 05). His villainy is transmitted to us as the result of his membership

of a proud race scorned by the Christians. Antonio's claim that 'The

Hebrew will tum Christian' (I.iii.175), and again at the end of Act IV,

when Shylock is ordered by decree of the court to 'become a Christian'

(IV.i.383), thus compulsorily enabling him to seek salvation, must seem

the ultimate, cruel punishment exacted by a sectarian Christian majority

that has always persecuted him. Thus the 'Christian example' of revenge

not only exposes the acrimony of racial malice, but also the contrasting

attitudes of the cruel usurer, as against those of the good merchant that

. Earlier audiences saw Shylock as a comic villain. See The Bell Shakespeare : The Merchant of Venice, ed. Penny Gay, Science Press, Marrickville, 1995, p. 8. The function of the Vice is to entice the victim to damnation.

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Venice upholds. While there is a clear villainy on both sides, we

encounter some difficulty in condemning Shylock as a villain rather than

sympathising with him as a victim. I concur with Hazlitt's comments that

'our sympathies are much oftener with him than with his enemies. He is

honest in his vices; they are hypocrites in their virtues' .17

Although the Elizabethan audiences are confronted with the wickedness

of a comedy villain in Shylock, they probably sense the brutality of his

private desire for revenge, that reflects the wickedness of a money­

oriented society.18 The anti-Semitic Antonio emerges as a cruel agent of

conditional mercy with stipulations attached (IV.i.377). In this respect,

Portia's appearance in the court room drama as a paradigm of mercy takes

on a conciliatory religious tone in the play. 19 Shylock appears larger than

life in dominating the play, although he exits in Act IV after the trial, and

does not appear at all in Act V. But this amalgam of tragic and comic

revenge elements is contradictory because such a combination proceeds

from the opposite intention when Antonio, who begins as a defendant

ends as a plaintiff, while Shylock who begins as the plaintiff winds up

convicted in a reversal of roles for his villainy. To argue that the play is a

tragi-comedy is to emphasise the convention that vindictive villains are

not rewarded in comedies. For Shylock becomes the villainous miser who

bears the brunt of derision and dissent, presumably much to the pleasure

of the partisan Elizabethan audiences. In contrast, Antonio is financially

17 • See The Chronicle, (6 April, 1816); reprinted, A View of the English Stage (1821), p. 226 - 7. Quoted in The Arden Edition, p. xxxiv. 18 . The Elizabethan audiences may have perceived this as the epitome of wickedness; Muriel Bradbrook commented that to remove all guilt from Shylock on account of his creed and birth would not have occurred to any sector of Elizabethan society. See A.R. Humphreys, The Merchant of Venice, Basil Blackwood, Oxford, 1973, p. 76. 1 • See Barbara K. Lewalski, 'Biblical Allusion and Allegory in The Merchant of Venice', Shakespeare Quarterly 13, 1962, p. 327 - 43; See also John S. Coolidge in 'Law and Love in The Merchant of Venice', SQ 27, 1976, p. 243. Coolidge holds the view that the play is a 'kind of hermeneutic drama, reflecting the content between Christian and Jew for the possession of Hebrew Scriptures'.

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rewarded for having given and received mercy. It is possible for the

Elizabethan audiences' pleasures in comedy to be subverted by a deeper

sense of racial, religious and economic injustices. To sum up, Shylock

paradoxically stands at the margins between a villain and a victim in the

trial.

The trial scene not only highlights the antipathies between the Christian

and the Jew but also epitomises the Jew's pursuit of malice in opposition

to Portia's plea for mercy. Was Shylock given a legitimate hearing? The

court hearing abounds in puzzling ambiguities and partialities. The

ambiguity also lies in the play's title as queried by Portia, 'Which is the

merchant here, and which the Jew?' (IV .i.172). The Venetian Law appears

to bear no signs of the concept of equity; it must be the unmitigated letter

of the law, so that the so-called 'strict court of Venice/ Must indeed give

sentence 'gainst the merchant there' (IV.i.200-1), if he has incurred the

penalty and forfeit spelt out in the letter of the bond. 20 The division of 'us'

and 'them' points to the partiality of the proceedings of the court. Nine

times Shylock faces the ignominy of being chastised as a 'devil' in the

play and, to cap it all, a 'cruel devil' (IV.i.213)21 brazenly by Bassanio

during the trial. As with Barabas in The Jew of Malta, Shylock's

vengeance is thwarted by the legal system. The Duke of Venice, who

should be the embodiment of Venetian justice,22 does not appear to be

impartial when he sympathises with Antonio :

I am sorry for thee,- thou art come to answer

20 . See 0. Hood Philips, Shakespeare and the Lawyers, London, Methuen, 1972, p. 27 - 40. 21 . With reference to Shylock as a 'devil', John Cross is of the opinion that the Jews were usually seen in the period as in league with the devil for rejecting Christ. For further discussion see Shylock: Four Hundred Years in the Life of a Legend, Chatto and Windus, London, 1993, p. 16 -17. 22 • Venice was noted for the 'inexorable administration of justice'. See Z.S.Fink, Classical Republicans, 1965, p. 43. Cited The Arden Edition, p. 113 n.

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A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch,

Uncapable of pity, void, and empty

From any dram of mercy ( IV.i.3-6).

By denigrating the Jew as an 'inhuman wretch' in his absence, and

sharply rebuking him for mercilessly pursuing the 'malice/to the last hour

of act' (IV .i.18-19), the Duke is also guilty of racial malice. Not only does

the Duke show his patronising attitude by addressing the merchant by his

Christian name, 'What, is Antonio here?' (IV .i.1 ), but he bitterly mocks

Shylock by a racial title, 'Go on, and call the Jew into the court' (IV.i.14).

The ambiguity in Shylock's utterances, 'I crave the law' (IV .i.202), implies

that Shylock no longer demands his pound of flesh but makes a plea for

the law to take its just course.23 It is bitterly ironic that the Jew is made to

believe that the wisdom of the law is to protect its citizens, when in fact

the law is manipulated to serve powerful members of the Venetian

society. What Shylock 'stands for' (IV.i.103) is malice in the guise of

justice representing judgment as his cause; whereas Portia's plea for

'mercy' and atonement represents selfless commitment to justice to free

Antonio from legalised murder. For all its legality Portia's speech on

mercy proves irrelevant to the resolution as revealed by her comments on

the 'strict court of Venice' (IV .i.200) that is far from strict as Portia is able

to use her disguise as the learned Balthazar not only to test her lover,

Bassanio, but to fool the court to save Bassanio's friend, Antonio. The

comic experience of disguise mirrors psychological confusion in the court

room scene.24 Like Antonio, Bassanio too fails to keep his bond for he is

23 . Von Ihering implies that it is the 'law of Venice itself knocking at the door of Justice; for his rights and the law of Venice are one and the same; they both stand or fall together'. See Struggle for Law, 5 th Edition, p. 81, Quoted in Edw. J. White, Commentaries on the Law in Shakespeare, Fred B. Rothman & Co., Littleton, 1913, p.136.

24 . For further discussion see Edward Berry, Shakespeare's Comic Rites, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984, p. 57 - 8. Berry observes that ' transformations and disguisings make lovers akin to actors, who manage themselves in another identity'.

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persuaded to part with his ring (IV .i.288-89) to the 'lawyer' who has saved

Antonio.

Implicit in the working out of these paradoxes is a congruence between

deception and truth. Portia's deception in some sense is a truthful lie.

Refusing Bassanio's well-intentioned but misguided plea that Portia wrest

the law to her authority, she proceeds at Shylock's insistence to fulfil the

letter of the law until it bestows the mercy that Shylock would not

consciously yield. Although Portia is inclined to be merciful, she must be

fully aware, 'that in the course of justice, none of us/Should see salvation'

(IV .i.195-196). It is in search for a higher justice, as distinct from the

letter of the law, that Portia fights Bassanio's legal battle for him and

wins.25 This poses a moral dilemma in the execution of justice. Shylock

is both enacting revenge and unmasking the systemic injustice of

Christian law and the hypocrisy of those Christians who control society's

legal system. Although Shylock uses the letter of the law as a mask to

wreak vengeance, Portia succeeds in interpreting the spirit of the law in

the dispensation of natural justice. Shylock has to grant the legitimacy of

Portia's legal interpretation because it is based on the very notion he

upheld, the letter of his bond and the letter of the law. But Shylock's

adherence to the legal bond is also seen as a challenge to authority as he

does not retract his demand for 'the pound of flesh' (IV.i.99). In this

regard, there has been a travesty of truth, because truth is regarded as the

strict rule of equity; but such a travesty is founded on universal necessity

in the unending search for and interpretation of a more enlightened

conception of justice. By clinging on to the very letter of the law, Shylock

J·_ ~~r further discussion see Catherine Belsey in John Drakakis (ed.), Alternative Shakespeares, Methuen, London and New York, 1985, p. 179.

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falls a victim to the system of justice as his vengeance is foiled by the

letter of the law by Portia's tempering of justice with mercy.

Portia's emphasis on mercy not only heightens the theatrical dynamics

of the trial but turns the tables on Shylock. So profound is Portia's plea for

mercy that Shakespeare draws a distinction between the words 'must' and

'mercy' (IV .i.180-82); for in the interpretation of law, no provision is

made for mercy, as what mercy opposes is not moral justice but the

legitimation of revenge. The distinction holds well in the play as much of

the jest of Elizabethan comedy lies in its ambiguity. What is implied by

Portia's speech, 'when mercy seasons justice' (IV.i.193), i.e. when mercy

is added to justice, is that, if strict justice were observed, no man would be

redeemed, since all men are sinners in the Christian context. Mercy, in the

legal sense of the term, is the total or partial remission of the punishment

to which a person guilty of some offence is subject under the law.26 In

seeking mercy, before the pronouncement of the punishment against

Antonio, Shakespeare recognised the distinction in law, between mercy or

clemency and pardon, for a pardon is the remission of punishment, after

the judgment of the court, while mercy or clemency is extended before

sentence.27 Once Shylock rejects Portia's appeal for mercy, Portia pursues

him vehemently, applying the letter of the law he has demanded.

What emerges in this discourse is the figurative equivalent of the

paradoxical separation between the letter of the law and the spirit of the

law in Shylock's quest for justice. Portia exercises her power to coerce a

marginalised victim to a vision of Christian mercy (IV.i.96-200) and

charity rather than malice. The legalistic approach to the administering of

26 . Jacob, Law Dictionary, cited Edw. J. White, p. 133. 27 See Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Rutherforth, Inst. 224 ; 3 Story. Con., Sec. 1488, Quoted Edw. J. White, p. 33.

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justice does not preclude mercy and compassion any more than it excludes

vengeance, but it does present problems for the advocacy of

reconciliation. Paradoxically to be merciful may seem to manifest

injustice bordering on sentimentality. Mercy which is tinged with

sentimentality is inconsistent with justice, for to treat a person with mercy

may result in a failure to fit the punishment to the level of crime. In saying

that 'the Jew shall have all justice' (IV.i.317), Portia artfully stresses the

word, 'justice', and nothing more to the confounded Shylock. Although a

cruel streak of excitement explodes in Gratiano's gibes about the justice of

the retribution, the conflict between the issue of law and dispensation of

justice emerges in Shylock's insistence on law. The reason why Shylock

must disregard Portia's plea for mercy is that the agreement in the bond

bears no compulsion. Shylock will not make provision for a surgeon to

stop Antonio's wounds as there is no stipulation to that effect in the bond.

It would appear that the violence of the flesh-bond must result in a debt

payable by physical mutilation - an aspect already discussed in Titus

Andronicus. So repulsive is his emotion that the element of malice is spelt

out in Shylock's villainous intent, and well implied in the manner of his

desire for legalised murder. In his insistence on the legitimacy of law,

Shylock is suggesting that he is fully responsible for the consequences of

his villainy.

Given the tension that permeates the trial,28 we need to consider the

argument for the legitimation of revenge that is supported by legal

agreement. The dramatic effect of the court room trial is curiously double­

edged on issues of law, justice and mercy. Shylock is confident that the

28 . 'The trial scene has always seemed inconsistent with Shakespeare's supposed legal learning, for the proceedings in it are such as never could have occurred in any court administering English law'. See John T. Doyle, 'Shakespeare's Law: The Case of Shylock', The Overland Monthly, July, 1886, p. 81.

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law is on his side when he pursues his suit against Antonio, but the Duke's

final appeal to the Jew poses a dilemma, 'We all expect a gentle answer,

Jew' (IV.i.34). At the heart of the trial lies the paradox that the laws of

Venice permit equality to all citizens the token of freedom that can be

used to deprive other citizens of that same freedom. The play unmasks

how difficult it is to change entrenched racism that is protected by the

law. However, the paradox revealed is that the legal process must hurt

both the law maker and the one using the law as a mask for revenge.

Although there can be no legal extenuation for racial and religious malice,

Shylock's contention hinges on his legitimate demand for equity and

human rights as seen from a point of cultural alienation and

marginalisation. Shylock shows his obstinacy when he rejects the Duke's

pleas for mercy twice on legitimate grounds of law:

Duke. How shalt thou hope for mercy rend'ring none?

Shylock. Whatjudgment shall I dread doing no wrong? (IV.i.88-89).

Since mercy represents the governing value of the Christian culture,

Portia's proposition, 'Then must the Jew be merciful' (IV.i.179), does

nothing to soften Shylock's stand on his legal suit. Portia accepts

Shylock's claim for the legitimacy of the terms of the bond and thus

attempts to avert the legitimation of revenge by countering with what the

law does not permit. Yet once the bond is duly recognised, to have it

invalidated subsequently by Portia's shrewd legal rhetoric raises questions

of fairness in law. Shylock's case rests legitimately on his right in law,

guaranteed by the contract freely entered into by Antonio, and protected

by the law of Venice. Proclaiming his readiness for 'death' (IV.i.115),

Antonio is fully in agreement with Shylock as to the justice of the usurer's

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cause as he feels that he 1s expendable because he has no family

commitments.

My contention is that Shylock's faith in the law has been shattered,

dispelling his illusion that the search for justice would legitimise his act of

revenge. In the trial scene, Shylock makes no reference to the vendetta

against Antonio, no mention of the racial persecution he has suffered, not

even of the abduction of his daughter and the theft of his property. Such

insinuations would of course constitute motives of animosity. But

Shylock stands tenaciously to the legality of the bond as a mask in order

to satisfy his vindictive malice, for he steadfastly refuses to respond :

... So can I give no reason, nor I will not,

More than a lodged hate and a certain loathing

I bear Antonio, that I follow thus

A losing suit against him!- are you answered? (IV.i.59-62).

Shylock, who has been so forceful in defending the letter of the law, falls

a victim in forfeiting half his goods to Antonio, the other half to the state,

and his life itself is forfeit for a malicious crime. Not only has the law of

Venice baffled the Jew but justice has unmasked 'the cruel devil of his

will' (IV.i.213) and villainous intent. Nevertheless the play's humanism as

opposed to malice is reflected in Portia's Christian plea for mercy in order

to avoid the necessity for judgment in the case. But the attempts of the

Duke and Portia to dissuade Shylock from taking the pound of flesh to

which he is legally entitled end in failure. The violence of his malice

towards Antonio, and the relish with which he holds the merchant in his

power reveal the ulterior motives of a villain. What Shylock fails to come

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to terms with is that, in ignoring Portia's plea for mercy as well as

insisting on the enforcement of the court's justice, he is unwittingly

paving the way for his own defeat by Portia's legal skill. Having turned

the law against Shylock by insisting that he shed no blood, Portia and the

court are placed in a quandary where no satisfactory judgment can be

made. Paradoxically Shylock has the law on his side, but Portia

legitimately refuses to flout the law. Portia's quality of mercy speech

(IV.i.180-202) does not constitute a legal argument, because Portia

succeeds not by breaking the bond but by submitting it to its rigorous

test.29

Although Shylock's antipathies towards Antonio have strong

justification, neither justice nor revenge materialises for Shylock, as he

turns away from the maxim, that 'it must appear/That malice bears down

truth' (IV.i.209-10), in order to redefine justice for himself, in the light of

the 'truth' of his own human experience in an alien culture. And what

emerges in Shylock's guise of teaching Christians a lesson using the

dominant culture is his own self-destruction. Once Shylock has been

defeated, the issue of mercy must seem strained to Shylock, and even

more strained must be Antonio who offers to return half his goods

provided that Shylock 'presently become a Christian' (IV.i.383). To use

the expression of Titus Andronicus, 'those words must be razors' to

Shylock's 'wounded heart' (1.1.314). Such a forced conversion is in itself

a punishment for a marginalised Jew. Although one cannot make a

Christian by a court decree, such an act is maliciously un-Christian and

inhuman. Nevertheless, in the Venetian cultural context, it would appear

that mercy is equated with Christianity, and hard-heartedness with

29 . For further discussion see Sigurd Burckhardt, Shakespeare's Meanings, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1968, p. 210.

110

Judaism. In appearance Antonio may speak of mercy, but in reality he

exacts cruel revenge on a Jew. Not only does Antonio emerge as a

merciless villain, but he projects his deep-seated malice just as Shylock

was villainous in intent in demanding the 'flesh-bond'. Even the Duke's

mercy must seem strained. In an ironic reversal of roles, the trial of

Antonio turns into a trial of Shylock for a malicious crime. The search is

emblematic of the individual's quest for the legitimacy of revenge because

it probes beyond the anger and hatred within Shylock to investigate the

whole notion of law and justice in a society experiencing a cultural crisis

in the context of Renaissance Christendom. Paradoxically Portia's

exaltation of mercy for the 'life and living' (V.i.286) has moderated the

rigour of justice in the court of Venice, upholding humanity against the

malice of a defeated villain.

The play is a comedy of triumph for Antonio, but a tragedy of loss and

suffering for Shylock. In The Merchant of Venice, the truth of the villainy

has been uncovered, though it must be regenerated through mercy over

culturally sanctioned malice. By the end of the play, the paradoxical

interactions of truth and malice of both the Jew and the Christians have

probably created for the Elizabethan audiences a kind of intellectual

equilibrium. The play closes with the symbolic harmony of marriages by

reconciling all contradictions beyond the threat of murder in a fairy tale

ending. Whether the play is a comedy30 or a tragicomedy, the search for

legitimacy leads us to the controversial search for interpretation, and, as

Hamlet remarked, 'The play's the thing' (II.ii.600), that matters for all

seasons .

. 'The Venice of Shakespeare's romantic comedy, The Merchant of Venice, must paradoxically have seemed a more accurate representation of a real modem world than the fourteenth and fifteenth-century England of his historical dramas'. Quoted Graham Holderness, Penguin Critical Studies, Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Penguin Books, England, 1993, p. x.

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CHAPTER FIVE

THE PARADOX OF REVENGE IN HAMLET

Hamlet. 0 God !

Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder ( l.v.24-25). 1

Central to Hamlet is the revenge on King Claudius for regicide. To cry for

revenge, as the above lines indicate, was the traditional function of the

stage ghost which the Elizabethans modelled from Seneca. Shakespeare's

ghost of King Hamlet is no mere theatrical stereotype but the catalyst that

triggers Hamlet's search for the legitimacy of revenge. My argument is

centred on the paradox that in his filial duty to avenge his father's death,

Hamlet delays the revenge action for tangible evidence in his pursuit of

justice. On this reading the real cause of Hamlet's delay lies not only in

his desire to reconcile the revenge action with his 'perfect conscience'

(V.ii.67) but also in his need to 'catch the conscience of the King'

(11.ii.601) with the use of the play-acting device (Il.ii.584-601). Ironically

the prince becomes the prisoner of his own conscience in his hesitation to

make a moral judgement. That is to say that the dramatic device of delay

is linked to Hamlet's conscience which is beset by 'melancholy' (II.ii.597).

My contention is that Hamlet's melancholy prevents him from pursuing

revenge, towards which Elizabethans had mixed feelings. To search for

the legitimacy of revenge is to probe the heart of Renaissance drama - the

heart of its conflicts and contradictions, and the paradoxical nature of

vengeance. It is paradoxical because in the Elizabethan sense, not only is

vengeance contrary to the Judaeo-Christian teachings but is also

1 . All quotations from Hamlet refer to the Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare, edited by Harold Jenkins, Methuen, London and New York, 1982, repr. 1984.

considered an honour and a 'sacred duty'.2 Hamlet's dilemma hinges on

his coming to grips with the legitimacy of his 'sacred duty' to kill

Claudius. The connection between paradox and dilemma needs to be

addressed here. Hamlet says to Ophelia :

'Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from

what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his

likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I

did love you once' (IIl.i.111-15).

In the Elizabethan sense, paradox is a thing contrary to received opinion

or rational explanation. 3 But the view of paradox as self-contradiction

existed during the Renaissance as a sub-category of paradox in general,

or, as Colie terms it, 'logical paradox',4 and it is this quality that links

Hamlet's conscience to the dilemma of his troubled mind. In epitomising

the paradoxical duality characteristic of human nature, Hamlet combines

villain and victim, justice and revenge, as he feels he is the dispenser of

justice and instrument of heaven. The paradox is that Hamlet is perceived

both as the revenger and the victim. It is in this sense that Hamlet is

construed as 'their scourge and minister' ( III.iv. 177). Such a view partly

accounts for Hamlet's dilemma and his dying words to Horatio, 'Report

me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied' (V.ii.343-4), imply that he was

not motivated by personal malice in avenging himself on a source of evil

but he was troubled by a conscience in his search for legitimacy. The

legitimacy of revenge becomes problematic for Hamlet because he has

. See Lily B. Campbell in 'Theories of Revenge in Renaissance England', Modern Phi/o/ogy,Vol. 28, February, 1931, p. 211. 3. Hamlet, The Arden edition, ibid., p. 282. 4 . Rosalie Colie, Paradoxia Epidemica: The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox, Princeton University Press, 1966, p.398; Colie defines paradox in the context of Renaissance literature as inducing a state of psychological ambivalence; Cited in Richard Horwich's Shakespeare's Dilemmas, Peter Lang, New York, 1988, p. 8. Reference is also made in The Introduction.

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first to be convinced of the King's guilt. Can a criminal act be legitimised

by a just cause? If the revenge action is not to be considered murder, then

any act of homicide must be justified or mitigated in some way. On the

other hand, justification offered for homicide must be subjected to careful

scrutiny, more meticulously conscious than is generally the case in

justifying what is prima facie wrong.

The theatrical dynamics of delay are crucial to the development of

Hamlet's search for legitimation. The experience is dramatised not only in

the apparition of the Ghost but also in Hamlet's agonising examination of

conscience in contrast to the guilty conscience of Claudius. But Hamlet's

justification in avenging his father is subject to his 'perfect conscience'

(V.ii.67). Claudius is play-acting a role concealing the crime of fratricide

that has brought him power. Although Hamlet is made to look like the

conventional revenger reminiscent of Hieronimo or Titus who cries out

for blood revenge, the role of revenger is thrust upon Hamlet by the ghost.

The difference is that, unlike Hieronimo or Titus, Hamlet does not cry out

for blood revenge on Claudius but delays because his conscience is

engaged in a process of ratiocination. Hamlet abruptly changes roles. In

discarding the role of a mad prince, he seems to take on the role of an

avenger. Shakespeare modifies the Senecan device of delay to highlight

the hero's self-reproaches, to make the Elizabethan audiences feel that the

search for legitimacy is sustained till the end of the play, which takes toll

of nine lives. Hamlet's problem is exacerbated by his untimely and

accidental slaying of Polonius - an act that contrasts with his refusal to kill

Claudius at prayers. In law, provocation may reduce a charge of murder to

manslaughter.5 Hamlet thinks it is Claudius he is stabbing through the

. For concepts of murder and homicide, see Philip E. Devine's, The Ethics of Homicide, Cornell University Press, Ithaca & London, 1978, p. 15-17. Also James F. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England, 3 vols., London, 1883, III, p. 105.

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arras. As well as being morally wrong, the manslaughter of Polonius in

itself is an illegitimate act that sets in motion the culture of further

violence and revenge. While Ophelia is bereft of love and life and

'Christian burial' (V .i. I) save 'maimed rites' (V .i.212) because of her

suicide,6 Rosencrantz and Guildenstem are punished for being Claudius'

instruments, just as Polonius was. There is mitigation as Hamlet

substitutes their names for his own in sending them to their untimely

demise, 'not shriving-time allow'd' (V.ii.47). He is forced into this action

in self defence. Queen Gertrude is 'poison' d' (V .ii.316) by a drink

originally intended for Hamlet, and Laertes 'justly kill'd with own

treachery' (V.ii.313). The illegitimate King gets poetic justice for his

'treason' (V .ii.328); the Prince himself 'slain' (V .ii.319) with blood upon

his hands, and everyone of them sent to their doom with all their

'imperfections' (1.v.79) on their heads. All this because Hamlet delays in

disposing of Claudius, the 'lecherous kindless villain' (Il.ii.576) apparently

at prayers, when he dreads to make his revenge imperfect by sending his

father's murderer to 'heaven' (III.iii.74).

What is the measure of Hamlet's legitimacy? The notion that it was

morally wrong for a son to avenge his father's murder was not entertained

in Hamlet's time.7 On the contrary, revenge was believed to be necessary

to the eternal rest of the murdered one even though it was in breach of

both human and divine law. According to religious teachings killing is a

contradiction in itself as it is against the sixth commandment. Besides

there is Biblical injunction against taking revenge as the Christian

. In the sixteenth century, Christian funeral rites were denied to suicides. However it should be noted that in the Anglican Constitution of 1603, Canon 68 declared that the right to full Christian burial was not to be denied to those who committed suicide while insane. The coroner's verdict was not suicide. For the general picture of suicide see L.I. Dublin & B. Bunzel in, To Be or Not To Be, Methuen, New York, 1933, p. 86. 7 . Lily B. Campbell, 'Theories of Revenge in Renaissance England', Modern Philology, Vol. 28, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Feb, 1931.

116

doctrine reserves the right of vengeance to God and forbids it to any other

person. There is an inherent ambiguity in the contradictory Renaissance

concepts of revenge as simultaneously a sacred human duty and a divine

prerogative. In Hamlet, not only is revenge condemned but there is an

element of justification for the slaying of Claudius ; but no verdict could

acquit Hamlet of unjustifiable recklessness in striking Polonius, who has

been held in high esteem by the Queen as 'the unseen good old man'

(IV.i.12). The Queen attributes Hamlet's killing of Polonius to the false

apprehension of his deluded brain (IV .i.11 ). It seems to me that the

characteristic Christian or Stoic attitude toward homicide is inconsistent.

One aspect of Hamlet's state of mind is that if he holds the notion that his

moral consciousness consists in his capacity to alter his attitude toward

the world rather than the world itself, then I would argue that the

application of this principle to killing would be an exhortation to be

prepared to accept whatever suffering might befall one rather than to take

action to eliminate that suffering, including action resulting in one's own

death. It could also be argued that Hamlet, as the rightful heir to the

throne of Denmark, executes justice upon two would-be accessories

before the fact, Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, without showing any

mercy. Such an act is also indicative of Hamlet's homicidal tendency. An

examination of the arguments for his conduct in his killings manifests the

mystifying ambiguities and apparent contradictions in his moral attitudes.

From this perspective, it seems that Hamlet is deeply divided in this crisis

of conscience which embodies the conflict between the Senecan and

Christian codes of values. The intricate artistry of Hamlet presents action

in a certain light, as such an action seems both to condemn and to endorse

revenge. Hamlet's search for the legitimacy of revenge leads to puzzling

ambiguities.

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Does Hamlet seek revenge or justice on Claudius ? From a moral

perspective, revenge is the equivalent of murder most foul. Hence

Hamlet's search for legitimacy becomes not only a matter of honour but a

search for meaningful justice. In many respects, the democratic ideals of

honour in the twentieth century basically contradict the assumptions of

Elizabethan society. For example, Hamlet's attempt to take the code of

revenge into his own hands was to challenge divine authority. Is divine

justice committed to the rulers by Gods? In the Elizabethan era, the

Christian argument against revenge was intertwined with the legal

mechanism, since the sovereign and his judges were agents of God.

According to legal theory, the administration of justice was the concern of

the state and the taking of private revenge was a usurpation by the

individual of those powers that belonged to the state alone. Paradoxically

Hamlet's prolonged search for vengeance becomes a self-conscious search

for fairness, because in the Elizabethan sense, and as already pointed out,

not only is vengeance contrary to the Christian doctrine but is also

considered an honour and a 'sacred duty'. The contradiction could not be

more significant. Due to the failure of the enforcement of law and justice,

the revenger must feel justified in his own mind in undertaking the act of

revenge in the interests of justice. Yet an unjust act in itself is in defiance

of legitimate authority. What is suggested is that Hamlet's anger stems

not from 'things rank and gross in nature' (1.ii.136) like Claudius, but

from his own powerlessness, for he blames himself for his frustration. He

must endure his agony alone. The unobtrusive irony behind the paradox of

Hamlet is that the prince of Denmark becomes the hesitant revenger as

well as the victim. In the development of revenge, not only does Hamlet

question the legitimacy of King Claudius, but paradoxically he becomes

the object of the king's revenge. Moreover the vulnerability of Laertes is

exposed when he is manoeuvred by Claudius into a seemingly sordid plot

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against Hamlet's life for the slaying of Polonius. On the other hand,

Laertes' predicament parallels that of Hamlet, and it is the development of

Laertes' revenge that prompts Hamlet to act as the emblematic image of

the 'rugged Pyrrhus' (II.ii.446).

Arguably the search for the legitimacy of revenge is embodied in four

vengeful sons - F ortinbras, Hamlet, Laertes and Pyrrhus. Young

F ortinbras plans to take revenge on Denmark for the losses sustained by

his father in a duel with King Hamlet. But Fortinbras' motives are openly

expressed and his actions are ambitious, so he manages to vindicate his

father to win back much more than his father lost. On the other hand,

Laertes, who cries out, 'my revenge will come' (IV.vii.29), has legitimate

reasons for wanting to avenge both the death of his father at the hands of

Hamlet, and the madness and subsequent death of Ophelia. Hamlet's

reference to the legendary Pyrrhus in the play-scene is presumably

intended to emphasise the horror the revenge ethic necessarily entails.

Pyrrhus seeks to avenge his slain father, Achilles. Hamlet's choice of

passage from Aeneas' tale (Il.ii.442) in the play scene indicts revenge. In

revenging Priam, the Player weeps in sympathy with Hecuba, the wife of

the slain Priam who is intended to bring to mind the fate of King Hamlet. 8

By extension, Hecuba's reaction to the loss of her husband is also intended

to expose the composure of the widowed Gertrude. But Claudius, who

first initiated the culture of violence and death by his fratricide, conceals

his secret motives to dispose of his nephew. When Claudius first attempts

to use Rosencrantz and Guildenstem to dispose of Hamlet and fails, he

plots his revenge through Laertes, who wants blood revenge. Like

Horestes and F ortinbras, both Laertes and Hamlet also lament the tragic

. For further discussion see Cedric Watts, The Deceptive Text, Harvester, Brighton, 1984, p.15 & 35. Hamlet's choice of the tale clearly shows his intentions to expose the horrors of revenge to the Elizabethan court audiences.

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loss of their respective fathers. But Hamlet's task is that of Horestes; each

must restore the legitimacy of the kingdom by avenging his father's death.

In the case of Horestes, not only is matricide involved, but Horestes'

objects of revenge also include his mother's paramour. As the avenger,

Hamlet feels he is the dispenser of God's justice and instrument. Hamlet's

desire to dispatch Claudius' soul to hell is the measure of his affection for

his father and of his response to the Ghost's Senecan code of values. So he

demonstrates his filial bond not only in his deed but in his words when he

speaks in paradox.9 Unlike Fortinbras and Laertes, Hamlet feels he

cannot fulfil his act of revenge without having definite proof of Claudius'

guilt. But Hamlet's belief in humanity has been shattered by his mother's

unfaithfulness to his father, and her over-hasty incestuous marriage to his

uncle. To the new King of Denmark legitimacy is a mere pretension.

I have argued that the case for revenge exhibits serious internal

tensions. Somewhat paradoxically, even the most genuine motive for

revenge conceals within it the germs of puzzling ambiguities - the desire

to kill or not to. In his commitment to legitimise his act of revenge Hamlet

deals philosophically, seeking a code of conduct that is governed by

reason and not by emotional frenzy. This is reinforced in Hamlet's

soliloquy that spells out the sublime image of man who is 'noble in

reason, ... infinite in faculties ... the paragon of animals' (II.ii.304-7), and

yet Hamlet's conscience is troubled by the issue of suicide. In the first

soliloquy (l.ii.129-59) suicide is rejected on the grounds of divine

9 • Peter Sacks observes that 'almost every revenge tragedy .. .includes a trial and violation of language. And it is worth noticing the frequency with which acts of vengeance are performed in ways which apparently make use of a theatrical or verbal mediation only to disrupt it'. See 'Where Words Prevail Not: Grief, Revenge, and Language in Kyd and Shakespeare', ELH 49, 1982; reprinted in Harold Bloom, Elizabethan Dramatists, Modem Critical Views, Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 1986, p. 51.

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injunction against such an act of 'self-slaughter' (l.ii.132). 10 Thus the

waiting game demands not only the search for the legitimacy of revenge

but also Hamlet's conscious stand on the issue of suicide. In contrast to

Hamlet, Hieronimo, who is denied legal justice, takes his own life, as his

wife and Bel-imperia had taken theirs before.

The function of the Ghost is to work the victim to a climax : 'Revenge

his foul and most unnatural murder'(l.v.25). Hamlet is powerless to

dispense justice because the power is vested in the sovereign who 'may

smile and smile and be a villain' (l.v.108). To murder a King on the

evidence of a mere Ghost does not seem the appropriate action for a Stoic,

for the Danes might also impute the murder to the disappointed

aspirations of Hamlet to claim the throne. Besides, to kill the villain at his

prayers does not seem an adequate punishment (III.iii.89-95) for his crime

as the Prince believes Claudius will attain salvation. The bitter irony is

that Claudius appears to be in a state of grace, but in reality he is in a state

of mortal sin, since he cannot pray despite his attempts. My contention is

that Hamlet's perfect conscience restrains him from killing Claudius on

Senecan grounds as he thinks he is genuinely praying. Clau_dius' prayer

scene appears to be a charade as he is tormented by the guilt of his

'brother's murder' (IIl.iii.38). Is he genuinely showing penance for his

crime of fratricide? Claudius is reminiscent of Cambises, who like

Claudius is both a fratricide and 'incestuous beast' (l.v.42). 11 Claudius

10 • The traditional Christian teaching derived from Augustine and Aquinas was that life was a gift from God and should be preserved. In 1594, John King, Bishop of London, taught that Scripture gave 'a commaundment in expresse tearmes' against suicide. What is argued here is that the Church regarded 'selfslaughter' as counter to the sixth commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill'. My contention is that Hamlet demonstrates sound moral judgment in his stand against 'self-slaughter'. See Lectures vpon Jonas Delivered at Yorke in ... 1594, Oxford, 1597, p. 184-91, and in 6 th edn., London, 1618, p.183-90., Cited S.E. Sprott, The English Debate on Suicide, From Donne to Hume, Open Court, Estd. 1887, La Salle, Illinois, 1961, p. 3. 11 • Cambises murders his brother and marries 'hys owne suster germayne, whereas nature abhorreth from such kynde of copulation'. The source for Thomas Preston's Cambises ( 1561) was Richard Tavemer's Second Rooke of the Garden of Wysdome (1539), Cited Richard A. McCabe,

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does ask 'mercy' for the 'offence' (111.iii.46): 'Forgive me my foul murder'

(III.iii.52). How can God be both just and merciful ? The paradox is that

to be merciful is perhaps to be unjust as God Himself seems to promise

vengeance (Romans 12: 19)to his creatures while insisting that it is

immoral for them to assume the divine role and presume to exact

vengeance themselves. I suggest, therefore, that the proper role of mercy

in the life of a virtuous person lies in institutionalised justice - on its

legitimate employment of 'the law' (III.iii.60). But in reality, Claudius's

position as King places himself above the law as the sovereign is believed

to derive the legitimate authority from God according to the Divine Right

of Kings. It is the assumption of this thesis that both justice and mercy are

considered moral virtues that exercise one's conscience. 12 Dramatically,

the Ghost serves as the voice of conscience to institute a revenge action.

The voice of conscience constrains Hamlet from acting in ways that

offend against a moral order.

In his delay in acting, Hamlet is faced with the dilemma of either

taking his own life or taking justice into his own hands without extending

his benevolent sense of Christian 'mercy' (III.iii.46). Justice may be often

tempered with mercy as in The Merchant of Venice. What is at stake for

the Prince is either to give in to Claudius who has committed regicide to

gain power, or to restore legitimacy to the throne of Denmark. Does

Hamlet ever consider being merciful to Claudius ? I think not. The

dilemma confronting Hamlet is that to grant mercy to the villain may

involve giving him less than his just deserts for a crime of regicide; hence

Incest, Drama and Nature's Law 1550-1700, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 117. 12 . For a discussion of mercy and justice see Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Humphrey's Forgiveness and Mercy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, p. 168. They hold the view that 'as we expect God as Cosmic judge to manifest both justice and mercy, so too do we expect this of secular judges. There are judges who can 'temper their justice with mercy'.

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Hamlet pursues his quest for legitimate retributive justice. In this respect

the King who masquerades as the embodiment of virtue seems nothing

but a Vice figure as an inciter to revenge. Hamlet calls him 'the vice of

kings' (111.iv.98) thus stressing the paradox of a king who is both a villain

and a clown in striking contrast to his majestic predecessor. 13 The dubious

nature of the King is evident in his own prayer, 'There the action lies in

his true nature' (IIl.iii.61-2) which implies that the foul deed is exposed by

a quibble that paradoxically lies. The word 'lies' exposes the treacherous

nature of the King who exhorts Laertes that 'revenge should have no

bounds' (IV.vii.127).

In the further development of revenge, Hamlet feels that he must delay,

and yet at the same time he must cleanse Denmark - 'an unweeded garden'

(l.ii.135) of an evil force. 'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark'

(l.v.90) is what is signified, and Shakespeare's use of the metaphor -

'unweeded garden' is the signifier. 14 The state of Denmark is rotting away

in the frenzy of violence, and though Hamlet indulges in acts of Senecan

bloodletting, it is against the Stoic principles he expresses, as Hamlet's

morality is located in a Christian world. What is implied by the inference

is not what Hamlet sees but what he constructs because of the vicissitudes

of his circumstance. Not only does Hamlet demonstrate his desire for

vengeance but also the craving for his own survival when he sends

Rosencrantz and Guildenstem to their deaths in England, with the specific

instructions that they be 'put to death, not shriving-time allowed' (V.ii.46-

7). It is my contention that Claudius is actively supported by such society

. Harold Jenkins holds that a vice is a model of iniquity, with particular reference to the character so called in the Morality plays. As the devil's henchman, he was a mischievous buffoon. A vice of kings thus stresses the paradox of a king who is both villain and clown, a grotesque figure against his majestic predecessor. See The Arden Shakespeare Edition, Hamlet, Methuen, London and New York, 1982, repr.,1984, p. 325n. 14 . See Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 -1913) in Modern Criticism and Theory, ed. David Lodge, Longman, London & New York, 1988, p. 1 - 14.

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worthies as Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, who, in appearance, pose as

friends of the Prince but who, in reality, act illegitimately as Tweedledum

and Tweedledee for the King. Hamlet's disposal of Rosencrantz and

Guildenstem appears problematic, when we consider the moral

justification of an arguably gratuitous killing. Their deaths are not near his

conscience as he seems to take pleasure in the mechanism of their demise

regardless of divine retribution.

Of all the puzzling problems evoked by the play, Hamlet's lunacy'

(II.ii.49) is the most challenging and at the same time the most difficult to

solve. Was Hamlet really mad? Whether Hamlet is feigning madness or

acting remains a mystery. The earliest evidence of Hamlet's madness

comes from Horatio's description of Hamlet's words as 'wild and whirling'

(I.v.133). But here Hamlet was dealing with the dilemma of the Revenge

Ghost and therefore this does not strike us as unsoundness of mind.

Unlike Horestes who is fully aware of his father's murderers, Hieronimo,

Titus and Hamlet require definite proof of the villain's identity to give

legitimacy to their vengeance. Both Hieronimo and Titus are also

temporarily deflected from their purpose not only by the device of delay

but by a madness, partly real and partly feigned, before they carry out

their revenge. But Hamlet seems to take advantage of his supposed

madness as an excuse for his strange behaviour in showing cruelty to

Ophelia and his mother. Not only does Hamlet refer to Ophelia as 'a

breeder of sinners' (III.i.121 ), but he admonishes the Queen in the closet

scene about her infidelity. 15 Nevertheless the mother is manipulated to

unravel the mystery of Hamlet's madness as echoed by the King :

'Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go' (III.ii.190). As Michel

. In this respect Hamlet appears as harsh as Horestes who vilifies Clytemnestra as an adulteress as already discussed in the Chapter on Horestes.

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Foucault has shown, the Renaissance conception of 'madness' is far

removed from our own - a statement such as 'The tragic hero is a madman'

denotes a character whereas we are interested in defining a dramatic

function. 16 In a later scene, Hamlet avers to his mother ironically that he

is only 'mad in craft' (III.iv.187), and not 'essentially' mad, as he has no

real motive for feigning madness when he is alone with her. 17 The killing

of Polonius and the violence against Ophelia are the moments in which

Hamlet expresses regret about the consequences of what he himself calls

his 'madness'. 18

Hamlet's discourse on death with the two gravediggers in the graveyard

scene heightens the dramatic action inherent in Hamlet's madness : 'That

skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once' (V.i.74). And Hamlet's

subsequent emblematic reference to Cain's jawbone strikes at the very

heart of fratricide alluding to the Biblical story of the revenge murder of

the younger Abel by the older brother, Cain. Y orrick's skull is a haunting

reminder of Hamlet's lost childhood. The Court of Denmark appears as a

wasteland, because the graveyard becomes emblematic of the confused

world in which the cruel injustice of the initial crime enforces a demand

for revenge by an avenger who is not a villain but a hapless victim. The

gravediggers subsume the comic and the tragic with their repartee on the

romantic illusions we cherish about death. When Hamlet conveys to the

mourners that he has more reason to mourn Ophelia's death than Laertes

has, it is not an indication of his madness but a sincere desire to match

16- Cited Franco Moretti, 'The great Eclipse: Tragic Fonn as the Deconstruction of Sovereignty', in Shakespearean Tragedy, ed. John Drakakis, Longman, London and New York, 1992, p. 63. 17 . It is suggested by J.C.Maxwell, that in both Hamlet and Titus Andronicus, we have a combination of feigned madness with some degree of real mental imbalance; but in The Spanish Tragedy, there is cunning revenge under the guise of madness. The conflicting opinions show the dichotomy between appearance and reality. See The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, ed. J.C.Maxwell, Methuen, London, 1953, 1963, p. xl-xli. 18 . See K. R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and Hamlet, International Universities Press, Inc. New York, 1971, p. 210 - 255.

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whatever Laertes may aspire to do. I would argue that Hamlet retains a

measure of dignity, not madness, for he promises to apologise to Laertes

for any wrongs that might have been done. Lest we doubt that he means to

take such a step, he does apologise to Laertes in a later scene: 'Give me

your pardon, sir, I have done you wrong' (V.ii.222). But Hamlet's

admission that 'His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy' (V.ii.235)

dramatises the consciousness of what is distinctive in theatrical dynamics

such as his ability to interpret the state of his inner feelings. While I find

that Hamlet's madness is full of puzzling ambiguities, the theatrical

dynamics of such a condition become a practical ploy for his

procrastination in his protracted search for legitimacy. Shakespeare likens

Hamlet's dilemma to that of the rugged Pyrrhus who also delays his

revenge.

The depiction in the play-scene of Pyrrhus as a revenger objectifies for

the Elizabethan audiences Hamlet's troubled conscience which becomes

his inner voice of moral judgment. In evoking Pyrrhus' filial relationship

to Achilles, Hamlet likewise remembers his father as a heroic ideal. 19

Both demand blood to appease their fathers' spirits. At the direction of

Hamlet, the first Player refers to Aeneas' tale :

So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,

And like a neutral to his will and matter,

Did nothing ( Il.ii.476-8).

As Michael Hattaway points out, Pyrrhus is, in Hamlet's mind, the 'half­

comprehended mental antagonist of the Ghost', a 'broken image120 who

1 • For further discussion see R.S. Miola, 'Vergil in Shakespeare', Vergil at 200, ed. John D. Bernard, New York, 1986, p. 248 - 51. 20 .T.S Eliot, The Wasteland, 1.22. Cited Hattaway, 1987, p. 90.

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haunts Hamlet's memory, often undiscovered, but exercising a hold on his

actions. In this respect, Claudius is symbolic of the 'painted tyrant',

Pyrrhus, who kills King Priam.21 The ironic reference to Pyrrhus reminds

us of the switching of roles between Hamlet and Claudius. As Pyrrhus

slew Priam in revenge and Claudius did not, my contention is that Hamlet

is seeking vindication of delay rather than motives for retribution. As

prisoners of their own conscience both suffer in silence, but our

sympathies are divided between the victim and the villain. Michael

Hattaway claims that by choosing Pyrrhus, with whom Hamlet identifies

himself, Shakespeare explores the ethical dilemma of the revenger: "How

is a man to be a revenger, executioner or assassin without being a

murderer motivated only by 'hire and salary' (111.iii.79)?".22 That brings

us to the question of the legitimacy of the Ghost.

As the revelation of the Ghost and his desire for vengeance subvert his

reason, Hamlet sets out to seek objective proof of the Ghost's story. Does

Hamlet really believe the Ghost is as 'honest' (l.v.144) as he says in Act

One ? The Ghost does prefigure calamity for Denmark in the death of its

legitimate king and his son and most of its Court. Even the legitimacy of

the Ghost as the harbinger of revenge is open to question. To argue that

the emblematic Ghost is such a controversial figure is to question the

legitimacy of the Ghost which raises complex dialectics underpinning the

nature of contradictions in Renaissance drama. It is controversial because

for one thing the 'Christian' Ghost's command runs counter to the Biblical

. For study of the legendary Pyrrhus see Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet, Oxford University Press, 1959, p. 141-162. 22 . This aspect is discussed by Michael Hattaway, in his work, The Critics Debate: Hamlet, Macmillan, 1987, p. 90. This opinion is not shared by other critics. See J. Bayley, Shakespeare and Tragedy, London, 1981, p.171; N. Brooke, Shakespeare's Early Tragedies, London, 1968, p.191; A.J.A.Waldock, Hamlet: A Study in Critical Method, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1975, p. 25.

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injunction against revenge.23 Another controversy is whether Shakespeare

intended the Ghost to be a Catholic or a Protestant. Fish observes

correctly that a dialectical presentation is disturbing for it requires of its

readers a searching and rigorous scrutiny of everything they believe and

live by.24

Is Hamlet obsessed with the power5 of the Ghost ? What worries

Hamlet is that 'the devil hath power / T' assume a pleasing shape'

(II.ii.595-6). Bamardo's challenging words in the opening scene, 'Who's

there?' demonstrate the overpowering nature of the Ghost which grips the

mind as the play unfolds. According to Roman Catholicism, Ghosts were

the souls of those trapped in purgatory. 26 Evidence of such beliefs 1s

shown in the play when the Ghost tells Hamlet :

I am thy father's spirit.

Doomed for a certain time to walk the night,

And for the day confined to fast in fires

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purged away. (l.v.9-13).

The legitimacy of Ghosts became a controversial issue among the

reformed theologians who denied the existence of Purgatory, which is

conceived as a place where souls of the dead are purified by suffering.

23. Romans 12 :19. 24 . Stanley Fish, Self-consuming Artifacts : the Experience of Twentieth Century Literature, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1972, p. I - 2. 25 . Stephen Orgel was the first to argue that spectacle was a form of power. For further discussion see The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1975, p. 89. 26- For further aspects of the ghosts see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Penguin, ed. Harmondsworth, 1973, p. 701; R.M.Frye, The Renaissance 'Hamlet': Issues and Responses in 1600, Princeton, NJ, 1984, p.19; Cited Michael Hattaway, Hamlet, Macmillan, 1987, p. 30 -31.

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Most Elizabethans firmly believed that Ghosts were the spirits of the

dead. According to traditional Catholic teaching, if a person died without

penance for serious sins, he or she went to hell. If the person died with all

the sins forgiven, he or she went to heaven. But if the person died with

less serious sins unforgiven, then his or her soul went to Purgatory where

it suffered for a time. Whether the Ghost may be a demon in disguise or

the spirit of his father, this does not distract Hamlet from pursuing his

search for the truth about his father's murder. Is the Ghost a spirit of evil ?

The Ghosts that urged revenge were particularly suspect. 27 According to

the Elizabethans, the King who possessed Divine Right, was also God's

chosen representative on earth as reinforced in the Biblical verse, 'the

powers that be are ordained of God'.28 The Ghost's instruction that

Hamlet had to kill a King was tantamount to blasphemy, and in this

respect, Claudius' fratricide was murder most foul. Hamlet appears as

puzzled as we are at his spontaneous reaction to the Ghost's command:

0 all you host of heaven ! 0 earth ! What else ?

And shall I couple hell ? 0 fie ! Hold, hold my heart ...

So uncle, there you are, Now to my word:

It is 'Adieu, adieu, remember me'.

I have swom't. (I.v.92-112)

Not only is Hamlet prompted to his revenge by 'heaven and hell', but the

juxtaposition of heaven and hell (I.v.92-112) suggests the ambiguous

nature of Hamlet's mind tormented by the haunting words of the Ghost,

'Remember thee' and 'Remember me' that confer the legitimacy of

revenge. What is argued here is that the psychological process indicated

. See R. M. Frye, 1984, p. 22-3. 28 . Romans 13: 1

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by the power of the Ghost's language has a devastating effect on Hamlet.

It is the recurring image of the remembered Ghost rather than the

command to revenge that is of great significance to the search for the

legitimacy of the act of revenge.29

In the first Soliloquy the power images are invoked by Hamlet who

speaks of himself as 'prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell'

(II.ii.580). Hamlet's ethical dilemma implies that he is tom between the

dichotomies of good and evil as represented by the images of heaven and

hell. Fredson Bowers regards the Ghost's injunction as 'the transmission

of a divine command'.30 But Bevington disagrees with Bowers in saying

that 'the Ghost does in fact appear to speak for providence. His message is

of revenge, a pagan concept basic to all primitive societies but at odds

with Christian teaching'. 31 In contrast with Bowers, Patrick Cruttwell

recognises that 'both play and character are notably Christian', but he

assumes 'Shakespeare's acceptance in Hamlet of the ethic of revenge'.

According to Cruttwell the man who follows this ethic with courage and

responsibility cannot be doing wrong, whatever mistakes or inevitable

damage to others may befall him on the way.32 My presumption is that, as

far the legitimacy of the Ghost is concerned, Hamlet is prepared to 'take

the Ghost's word for a thousand pound' (III.ii.280) but only after staging

the play-scene. And part of the Ghost's word is that he has the permission

of heaven ( I.v.92) to purge Denmark and to avenge the shedding of the

royal blood. Hamlet is prohibited from revenge by the Christian concepts

2 . Stephen Greenblatt, New Historicism in Shakespearean Tragedy, ed. John Drakakis, Longman, London and New York, 1992, p. 181 - 2. 30 . Fredson Bowers, 'Hamlet as Minister and Scourge', PMLA 7, 1955, p. 744 - 5. 31 . See The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. Hardin Craig and David Bevington, Glenview III: Scott, Foreman and Company, 1973, p. 902. 32 • Patrick Cruttwell, "The Morality of Hamlet, 'Sweet Prince' or 'Arrant Knave"' in Hamlet -

Shakespeare Institute Studies, ed. John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris, p. 120 - l. Cited Alex Newell, The Soliloquies in Hamlet, Rutherford, Associated University Press, London, 1991, p. 154.

130

of heaven and hell as the notion of revenge is linked to the Christian crisis

of conscience as in Macbeth. 33 By the same token, it could be argued that

the problem of Othello's conscience is not that he murdered Desdemona,

but that he was mistaken about her guilt. The association of the ghost of

his 'father's spirit' (l.v.9) with the premonition of 'hell and heaven' makes

Hamlet probe the very nature of man's existence. That his conscience is

tom between an 'honest ghost' (l.v.145) and evil ~host underpins his

dilemma which implies that vengeance belongs to God 34 and not to the

Ghost. The ambiguous role of the Ghost demonstrates the notion that it is

modelled on the Senecan spirit of revenge. 35 The Ghost is primarily

preoccupied with expressions of cruel vengeance and blood thirstiness

like the Ghost of the murdered Andrugio in Marston's Antonio's Revenge

(1600):

Pandulpho. Murder for murder, blood for blood doth yell

Ghost of Andrugio. 'Tis done; and now my soul shall sleep in rest.

Sons that revenge their father's blood are blest.

(Antonio's Revenge, V .iii.113-15). 36

33 . Macbeth's crimes are regicide, murder and tyranny, and Lady Macbeth is accessory before and after his crimes. In the sleep-walking scene, Lady Macbeth is burdened by conscience of guilt when she mutters to herself and to the absent Macbeth who haunts her waking dreams : 'Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand ... Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out on's grave'. Macbeth (V.i.47-60), The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare, edited by Kenneth Muir, Methuen, London, 1977. The smell of 'blood' symbolizes the consciousness of Lady Macbeth's guilt. Muir is of the opinion that the Ghost of Banquo has been regarded as a hallucination driving Macbeth to exhibit his guilt because he was guilty unlike the Ghost of Hamlet's father who was invisible to Gertrude because she was innocent of any crime. This seems to imply, however, that Hamlet, who always sees the Ghost, is also guilty as indeed the audience presumably is ! 33 · Romans 12: 19. 35 . Shakespeare's use of the emblematic revenge Ghost, which is a stock Elizabethan convention as originally portrayed by Thomas Kyd in the lost Ur-Hamlet, derives from Seneca's plays Agamemnon and Thyestes ; See Mary Bevington, The Supernatural in Seneca's Tragedies, Menasha, Wis. 1933, p. 30 -3. Also cited by Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992, p. 33. According to Doran, Hamlet without Seneca is inconceivable. Madeleine Doran, Endeavours of Art: A Study of Form in Elizabethan Drama, Madison, Wis., 1954, p. 16. 36 . Quotations are from The Selected Plays of John Marston, ed. Macdonald P. Jackson and Michael Neill, Cambridge UP., Cambridge, 1986. Only two ghosts appeal to a protagonist to commit blood revenge; i.e. Andrugio in Antonio's Revenge, and the Ghost in Hamlet.

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Antonio's Revenge parallels Hamlet, with the murderer of the hero's father

wooing the mother, plotting against the son, and eventually falling by the

son's revenge with the amazed aid of the mother ; Fredson Bowers

considers Antonio a villain whereas Levin L. Schucking believes him to

have the sympathies of the Elizabethan audiences, even in the slaughter of

the innocent boy Julio.37 In saying that he wants to drink 'hot blood'

(Ill.ii.392), Hamlet comes closer than ever before to the conventional role

of the revenger like Titus or Hieronimo.

That the Ghost plays an important role as a catalyst is demonstrated by

the Ghost's revelation of the suspicious circumstances of the death of

King Hamlet. What is more, by appearing three times, the revenge Ghost

signals the urgency for the Prince not to delay but to avenge the foul

murder. The Ghost appeals to Hamlet's better 'nature' (1.v.81) in order to

instigate 'murder most foul, as in the best it is' (1.v.27), whereas m

Horestes, Nature is against all such revenge.38

Nature. Nay, stey, my child! From mothers bloud withdraw thy bloudy

hand!

Horestes. No, nought at all, oh Nature, can my purpose now withstand.

Shall I forgive my fathers death? My hart can not agre,

My father slayne in such a sorte and unrevengyd to be

(Horestes, 408-11).

3 . See Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1940, p. 124; Levin C. Schucking, The Meaning of Hamlet, London, 1937, p.138; Samuel Schoenbaum believes Marston's sympathies to lie with the revengers although he finds the play a 'prolonged sadistic fantasy.' Quoted in 'The Precarious balance of John Marston', P MLA, LXVII, 1952, p. I 071. 38 . See the interaction between Horestes and Nature in Pickeryng's Horestes, 408 - 419. Horestes rejects Dame Nature's appeal (449).

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In Hamlet, however the ambivalent origins of the Ghost, points to the

heart of Hamlet's tragic dilemma in impelling him to engage in the ancient

pagan ritual of revenge in contravention of God's laws. Thus the dubious

authority of the Ghost creates a psychological dilemma for Hamlet, and

like Hamlet, the Ghost itself 'is a figure consumed by torment of hatred'. 39

Unlike Shylock, Hamlet's motive is not hatred, but his stings of

conscience contribute to a cumulative argument that his protracted delay

is caused by his need to find some legitimate proof of the Ghost's

command.

To legitimise his act of revenge, Hamlet must come to grips with the

legitimacy of the Ghost itself. What is puzzling is that although the Ghost

is seen by Hamlet, Horatio and the soldiers, it is only to Hamlet that it will

speak. When it appears while Hamlet is with his mother, she is unaware of

its presence. Does this indicate that there is a closer affinity between the

father and son, rather than the mother and her first husband? It appears

that way, for the episode raises serious concerns about the Queen's hasty

marriage with Claudius less than two months after her husband's death. In

his desire for the tale to be told, Hamlet tells Horatio that Claudius

bath killed the King and whored my mother,

Popped in between th' election and my hopes (V .ii.64-5).

This also poses a legal problem in Hamlet. It is suggested that the

irregularity of the Queen's second marriage is considered a further motive

to accelerate Hamlet's vendetta against his uncle. Is Gertrude an

accomplice in the murder of her first husband? Although we are told she

. See Martin Scofield, The Ghosts of Hamlet : The Play and Modern Writers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980, p. 141.

133

deeply loved her first husband it is surprising that she is immediately

reconciled to his death in less than two months regardless of her period of

mourning. Given her royal prerogative to remain a Queen, there are

suspicions about her complicity in the murder of the elder Hamlet, but

there is no proof to implicate her. In the closet scene, but not until then,

we are convinced that she was not involved with her husband's death.

Like Pickeryng, Shakespeare places his spirit of Revenge inside the

play itself as a character who speaks to the protagonist directly. Having

done so, he continues disconcertingly to associate the Ghost with a

Christian hereafter, and refuses to judge its notion of vengeance. Hamlet

never discloses the nature of that silence towards which the protagonist

moves gradually, away from us, and into which the Ghost finally

disappears. This is one reason why the tragedy is both appealing and

terrifying, and also shows a relevance to the world as we know it, an

aspect that is lacking in Pickeryng and Kyd.40 Hamlet is a Christian play

because of the Christian context of the action, unlike Horestes or Titus

Andronicus, and as such the legitimacy of the Ghost and its evidence are

open to esoteric interpretation.41

Why does Hamlet prolong his quest for justice? The process of

pursuing legal justice becomes a complex one for Hamlet. Hamlet gives

the impression that he is not very enthusiastic about seeking either justice

or revenge at first without evidence of the truth of the Ghost's story.

40 . Christopher Ricks, English Drama To 1710, Sphere Reference, 1971, rep. 1988, p. 206 - 7. 41 . The ghost has come under heavy scrutiny by different critics. No other play has been analysed so extensively, no character has touched the hearts of different cultures as deeply as Hamlet. See Victor L. Cahn, Shakespeare the Playwright, Greenwood Press, New York & London, 1991, p. 69-70. Hamlet continues to be a diploma-piece for the critic as well as the actor. 'I shall find nothing new to say regarding either Shakespearian drama or its hero (Hamlet) for everything has been said already - everything, and more than everything'. So wrote the French critic, Jules Lemaitre in 1886. Cited C.J. Sisson, Shakespeare's Tragic Justice, Methuen, London, 1963, p. 52.

134

Hamlet's motivation is so complex that he is determined to investigate

'doubts of foul play' (l.iii.256). Paradoxical as it may seem, this is the

motivation that drives Hamlet to pursue a course of justice. To Hamlet not

only is revenge synonymous with justice, it is justice. It is the right of a

legitimate heir to the throne to dispose of a tyrant, Claudius, who has

perpetrated the murder of King Hamlet. Claudius 'stole' (III.iv. I 00) the

crown and hence Hamlet's discernment of evil and hatred of the

illegitimate regime of Claudius. Although we accept Hamlet as the

legitimate heir, Claudius is confortably installed with full consent of the

Court as the King. Therefore Hamlet is incited to legitimate action by

compelling motives as Claudius uses his power illegitimately to serve his

own need for security. Hamlet does not want to abandon his search for

legitimacy as he wants justice done. A. C. Bradley is of the opinion that

Hamlet's tragedy is that he is incapable of dealing with Claudius as he is

preoccupied with melancholic feelings concerning his father's death and

mother's hasty remarriage.42 Understandably, Hamlet is in mourning for

his dead father, and bitter against his mother for sharing the throne with

the fratricidal lover in apparent full agreement. Moreover, Hamlet does

not rush into the first opportunity for blood revenge that presents itself to

him, for he also believes that his soul is 'immortal' (1.iv.65-8).

Hamlet's dilemma is that he cannot see the point of any action. On the

one hand, his alienation means that he cannot see the point of acting any

way. On the other hand, he is not literally 'dead' at the moment of acting

if he is careful. That is the final irony. Hamlet's concern for the salvation

of his soul makes him more hesitant than a classical hero, Thyestes, but it

also means that if he is to legitimise his revenge on Claudius, it must be

. A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, Macmillan, London, 1932, p. 94.

135

revenge on his immortal soul.43 And Hazlitt claims that Hamlet's

'refinement in malice is only an excuse for his own want of resolution'.44

Whatever delays Hamlet's revenge upon Claudius, it is not his desire to be

convinced, by certainty of the Ghost's appearance, or by the certainty of

the play-within-the play, but his need to satisfy his conscience that his

actions would be just. Moreover the Ghost by instructing Hamlet not to

harm his mother in fact prevents Hamlet from making a total commitment

to revenge. In stressing Hamlet's indecision, Shakespeare presents a man

undone by the responsibility of carrying out a vendetta unsuited to his

Stoical nature. His plight is demonstrated in his own words : 'The time is

out of joint' (1.v.196). Goethe is of the opinion that 'in these words lies the

key to the whole behaviour of Hamlet, . . . and Shakespeare wished to

describe the effects of a great action laid upon a soul which was unequal

to it'. 45 Hamlet's delay is necessary to enable him to dispense his own

justice after careful consideration. It is my presumption that a malicious

motive was inconsistent with the Stoical nature of Hamlet who is immune

from the crude passions of Titus. Hamlet's continued preoccupation with

his 'discourse' that embodies the power of reasoning develops into an

expression of bewilderment.

In the soliloquy (IV.iv.43-45), a very confused Hamlet tries to give

legitimacy to his continuing commitment to revenge. He has blood on his

hands because he has already killed Polonius thinking it was the King

behind the arras.46 Ironically, Hamlet contrasts this aspect of the battle

43 . Cited Paul A. Cantor, Hamlet, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989, p. 43. 44 • William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, London, 1917, Repr. 1955, p. 83. 45 . Goethe, Wilhelm Meister: Apprenticeship and Travels, translated by R.O.Moon, G.T.Foullis, London, 1947, Vol. I. p.211-12. Also see Roy Walker's, The Time is Out of Joint :A Study of Hamlet, Andrew Dakers Limited, London, 1948, p. 75 -90. 46 . Hamlet attempts to legitimize the murder by claiming he is under the charge of heaven - 'I do repent; but heaven hath pleased it so ... The death I gave him' (IIl.iv.173-177). See The Arden Edition, Hamlet, 1982 & 1984.

136

with his own irresolution, for he has such strong cause for revenge and yet

delays taking any action to secure that revenge. One of the several

interpretations, as it appears in Olivier's film-version, is 'the tragedy of a

man who cannot make up his mind', not for lack of evidence but because

of a defect in his temperament.47 To accept Hamlet's delays as a moral

weakness is to construe that the normal reasons for the postponement of

action are wanting or inadequate and that no urgency was in fact presented

to Hamlet for his resolution. Hamlet's appeal to the higher loyalty of

Horatio to live on to tell Hamlet's story 'to th' yet unknowing world'

(V.ii.384 ) saves Horatio from the possibility of committing suicide, as

suicide was a pagan ritual among the Romans who resorted to it as a

measure of maintaining honour and duty: 'I am more an antique Roman

than a Dane'.48 It was also the argument that the ghost of King Hamlet

used on the Prince, 'If thou didst ever thy dear father love -... Revenge his

foul and most unnatural murder' (l.v.23-25). The underlying assumption is

that justice must not only be done but should appear to be done. It would

be facetious to imagine that what Horatio was to tell the world, and to tell

F ortinbras, was that Hamlet wanted to be excused for not being able to

make up his mind sooner.49 What Hamlet wants is that Horatio gives a

faithful report of his 'story' (V.ii.354) which he alone knows in order to

protect his name and fame.

The weight of the play-scene is a pointer to the sequence of the

delayed revenge action. The metaphor of the world as theatre comes to

fruition in the staging of The Mousetrap. Ironically Hamlet uses the

4 • Stephen Booth is of the opinion that Hamlet is the tragedy of an audience that cannot make up its mind. 'On the value of Hamlet'; Reinterpretations of Elizabethan Drama, ed. Norman Rabkin, Columbia University Press, New York, 1969, p. 152. 48 . 'Antique Roman' implies one who prefers suicide to unworthy life. Cited Hamlet ed. Harold Jenkins, 1984, p. 415 n. 49 . C. J. Sisson, Shakespeare's Tragic Justice, Methuen, London, 1963, p. 56.

137

theatrical device of a play scene to test not only the 'conscience of the

King' (11.ii.601) but the Queen as well. He does not want to act in haste in

disposing of Claudius, for his strategy is to find objective proof by

observing Claudius' guilt in the crime. Hence it is all important for Hamlet

that the players for The Murder of Gonzago be fit and proper instruments

for his play-within-the play, that the acting of the play should be realistic

and natural so that Claudius may see himself consciously in the mirror of

nature, and betray himself. And the palace audience should be led to

anticipate the success or failure of the dramatic device. The Prince's

desperate labours in the production of the play are necessary not only for

his conscience to be certain, but for his certainty to be shared if possible

by others at the Danish Court by the external manifestation of guilt by the

King who would be under the watchful eyes of Horatio. No sooner has

Hamlet observed the change in Claudius' behaviour, than he plans to

embark on his courseof justice. Unlike Macbeth, who has terrible qualms

about killing Duncan, Hamlet is placed in the position of a judge sitting in

judgment on Claudius. Like Tamora and Titus, Hamlet proves himself an

able contriver of revenge drama. Like the Thyestean banquet in Titus

Andronicus, like Hieronimo's 'Solomon and Perseda', and Antonio's

masque, Hamlet's play-scene is aimed to test not only the validity of the

Ghost's command but the conscience of Claudius and the reaction of the

Court audience. Claudius is uneasy about Hamlet's theatrical motives for

the play-scene. So powerful is the enactment of The Mousetrap that it

compels Claudius to interrupt the playscene; his guilty conscience cannot

take in any more. The depth to which Hamlet has fallen is clear in his

lingering delay, which is not only a functional aspect of revenge but

related to the dispensation of justice. All causes must make way for the

culture of violence and death in Hamlet. What we encounter in the

dynamic experience of the search for legitimacy is Hamlet's gradual

138

solution to his dilemma that entails the execution of justice. The Play

scene convinces Hamlet to purge Denmark of its evil. Hamlet's advice to

the players expresses not only Stoic principles but a discourse on

theatrical dynamics : 'Suit the action to the word, the word to the action,

with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature .. .'

(IIl.ii.17- 24). The dramatic device of delay also projects Hamlet's

Stoicism, that he is not prone to act in haste without sufficient proof.

The ethics of Stoicism gains momentum in the search for legitimacy.

Paradoxically, Stoicism is both idealised and repudiated in this Christian

play. The decision to avenge is taken after much Stoical reflection and

deliberation. Hamlet presents Stoicism as an ideal that is virtuous but

difficult to imitate in the seedy world of Elsinore. Hamlet's Stoic precepts

to live according to 'nature' (l.ii.87) as Seneca would have it 'presupposes

the knowledge of what is natural, of what is true and real in human

experience'. 50 According to Marxist critic, Raymond Williams, 'nature' is

the most complex word used frequently by playwrights. As mentioned

earlier, in Horestes, John Pickeryng makes his creation 'Nature' double as

'Vice' to dissuade Horestes from matricide. The Stoic ideal is complicated

by Claudius who becomes the figure of Vice as the purveyor of damnation

and deceit, reminiscent of Aaron, Edmund and Richard. Like a true Stoic,

Claudius advises Hamlet to follow 'nature' (l.ii.87), to content his passions

with reason. Claudius strikes the Stoic pose to Laertes as a man of reason.

The moral dilemma of Hamlet is manifested in the Stoic overtones as he

comes to terms with man's inconsistency in his 'vicious mole of nature'

(l.iv.24) that often breaks down the 'pales and forts of reason' (l.iv.28). In

fearing the revenge Ghost, Hamlet refers to himself and his soldiers as

0 . Cited Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy : The Influence of Seneca, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992, p. 56.

139

'fools of nature' (I.iii.54) thus challenging the Stoic ethics of reason and

wisdom. The Ghost's command for revenge, 'If thou hast nature in thee,

bear it not' (1.v.81) works on Hamlet's conscience to carry out his filial

obligations to legitimise his vengeance with murder. The probing

Stoicism is more searching in Antonio's Revenge than in Hamlet. Hamlet's

Stoicism collapses with his killings of Polonius, Rosencrantz and

Guildenstem, Laertes and finally Claudius. What is being rejected here is

the Christian-Stoic view of hamlet as capable of defining himself from

within, independently of the world with which he identifies and which

acts upon him. Try as he might in avoiding suicide, Hamlet was unable to

find that elusive spiritual strength which would sustain him in the face of

odds, and ultimately enable him to transcend it altogether. Hamlet, like

Antonio, wishes to confront rather than compromise Stoically. He would

rather take on the world of Claudius than endure the illegitimacy of his

regime.

By contrast the contentious issue of the search for legitimacy lies not

necessarily in the moral aspects of revenge in Hamlet but the delegation

of the responsibility for vengeance to the powers vested in the duly

constituted authority. It is the subversion of power that leads Claudius to

commit regicide. Having usurped the throne of Denmark, Claudius is left

to plot the death of the Prince who is the immediate obstacle to his power

and authority. To uphold the legality of justice, Hamlet has to break the

law by paying violence with violence. But Hamlet, as the Prince and

rightful heir to the throne of Denmark, believes that he is the instrument

of divine justice. Thus he is driven to take the law into his own hands in

order to reconcile the revenge action with his 'perfect conscience'

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(V.ii.67).51 Since Hamlet's object is justice, and in order to attain justice,

Hamlet must live on to avenge his father's death. As Robert Miola noted,

paradoxically, 'Hamlet is a weeping Stoic and a hesitant Pyrrhus'.52

Though Hamlet is caught up in the twin paradoxes, the final moments of

the play produce the heavy emphasis on Christian Providence: 'There's a

divinity that shapes our ends .. .' (V .ii.10-11 ). He waits for the time that

was earlier 'out of joint'. And to wait for the opportune moment was worth

the delay although the role of vengefulness was unsuited to his Stoical

nature.

In his search for legitimacy, Hamlet is caught up in the cycle of

violence and death expressed in his words : 'The readiness is all'

(V.ii.218).53 It is in the orchestration of these moments that we must find

the specific emotion that the search for the legitimacy of revenge is

intended to elicit in the Elizabethan audiences. In defending himself,

Hamlet redeems himself in stabbing the King when he finds that his

sword has been poisoned. Hamlet justifies his act of revenge by using

Claudius' envenomed rapier as well as the poisoned cup. The 'union'

(V.ii.322) ironically signifies the King's marriage of which the poisoned

cup becomes the emblem.54 It is my contention that with regard to the

stabbing, action is theatrical dynamics ; and with regard to the poisoning,

'justice seems to reside merely in the word and not in the world'.55 Justice

must not only be done, but must seen to be done paradoxically through the

cruel process of revenge. My presumption is that when Hamlet does kill

1 . Like Thyestes' Ghost of Seneca, the Ghost in Hamlet demands vengeance for past crime. Seneca, Thyestes, Tr. J. Heywood (1560), ed. Joost Daalder, Ernest Benn, London, 1982. Refer for obvious inversions between Thyestes and Hamlet. 52 . Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy : The Influence of Seneca, Oxford, 1992,

f:i .6!~e Matthew xxiv. 44' Be ye also ready; Luke xii.40' You also must be ready', in The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version, Oxford University Press, 1973 & 1977. 54 . For further discussion see Bradley, 1957, p. 122, Cited Jenkins, The Arden Edition, p. 414. 55 . See Hattaway, 1987, p. IOI.

141

Claudius, he is not acting upon his moral duty to revenge but reacting

spontaneously on the spur of the moment in defending himself in

retaliation for some of the nine deaths.56 It is befitting that Claudius

should be the agent of final retribution after such a protracted delay, but

the tragedy climaxes with the death of Hamlet, since a complete outsider,

Fortinbras, restores law and order. On the literal level, Hamlet, like The

Spanish Tragedy, epitomises a quest for earthly justice, a process that

destroys Hamlet in his search for legitimacy. On the metaphoric level, it

restores a sense of legitimacy to the maintenance of order and justice in a

corrupt society poisoned by the vice of Claudius. Paradoxically, Hamlet,

as the heir to the throne of Denmark, performs the sacred duty of deposing

a false king to set his legitimate 'cause aright' (V.ii.343), and risks divine

vengeance whether in an illegitimate world had he succeeded or in the

Christian hereafter .

. For an argument to the conclusion, see Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet, Oxford University Press, New York, 1959, p. 35.

142

CONCLUSION

The five plays represented in this thesis span the period of Elizabethan

drama until the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign in 1603. They encompass

the most extraordinary creative period in the history of the revenge genre -

the imaginative boldness of John Pickeryng, the intellectual brilliance of

Thomas Kyd and the dazzling creativity of William Shakespeare. We can

only conjecture that the contemporary interest stemmed from the belief

that all the plays about revenge capture extraordinarily compelling

paradoxes that go to the heart of what fascinates and horrifies in human

behaviour. The plays set on a page by the playwright burst into life on a

stage. The Elizabethan dramatists infused a double vitality of stage and

page in the search for the legitimacy of revenge in the five different plays

in which the securing of justice brings about revenge that contradicts the

interests of law and order. Paradoxically, the chains of revenge are not so

much broken as they are bonded into the scales of justice.

In Horestes, Pickeryng's condemnation of private revenge and Horestes'

commitment to public justice lend the interlude its literary appeal for the

justification of legalised revenge for regicide. The interlude reinforces the

premise that justice is what 'law of gods and man' decree. Paradoxically,

the search for legitimacy not only leads to the condemnation of revenge

but also to the endorsement of legalised revenge. In contrast to The

Merchant of Venice, the search for justice is not tempered with mercy in

the interlude as Horestes upholds the supremacy of the Rule of Law in

contrast to mercy. Pickeryng introduces an element of crudity in the play

that has not proved disastrous in blending a political history of the reign of

Mary Queen of Scots to satirise the dilemma of both Horestes and his

mother, Clytemnestra, using personified abstractions of the Vice. It is, in

fact, one reason for the enduring hold the play has upon us.

In giving the Vice extraordinary theatrical prominence, Pickeryng is

distorting the interlude with puzzling ambiguities in developing the Vice

as inciter to revenge that also entails justice. The Vice figure instils the

notion of revenge into the personified abstractions of Truth, Courage and

Revenge, and it is they, not he who acts out what he personifies. Horestes'

hesitation when his mother pleads for mercy is sharpened by the Vice's

insistence on vengeance. The revenge of Horestes, as commanded by the

gods, is a just punishment for the guilty. In firmly rejecting his mother's

plea for clemency, not only does Horestes uphold the legitimacy of law

and justice, but he escapes retribution for matricide. Like The Merchant of

Venice, the play ends on a festive note as Menelaus is reconciled to giving

his daughter's hand in marriage to his nephew, Horestes. The extraordinary

events of the play, including the political allusions to Mary Queen of

Scots, as well as the ethics of revenge, make the play the first of the

long Elizabethan line in the revenge genre.

In The Spanish Tragedy, Thomas Kyd articulates the Senecan

Renaissance treatment of revenge that constitutes a compelling vehicle for

the social conflict between the central authority and individual justice. The

Elizabethan age was very much one of frayed tempers and violence and the

authorities were continually troubled by the mass of small quarrels, the

stabbing and revenge killings. One of the problems prevalent in the

sixteenth century was to get the grieving parties to settle their disputes in a

court of law rather than by force of arms. As he runs out of options,

Hieronimo, despite being a Knight Marshal, resorts to taking the law into

his own hands as his faith in divine and human justice falter weighed by

145

the burden of his immense suffering. Paradoxically society and the

individual become each other's victims because of the incompatibility of

revenge and reconciliation. Try as he might to remain true to his moral

convictions, Hieronimo, a Stoic, transforms himself into a sinner to fulfil

his personal vengeance with hopeless fatalism by discharging the burden

of retribution himself before succumbing to suicide.

What emerges from the above discussion is that we draw close to the

Elizabethan passion for the vindication of honour or duty that must lead

the protagonist such as Hieronimo or Titus into strange vagaries. The

dilemma is that audiences are given emotional satisfaction with the

enactment of human justice that contradicts Hieronimo's Vindicta mihi

speech against private vengeance. What is ironic is that ghosts who

instigate revenge exact a terrible price from the world of the living in both

The Spanish Tragedy as well as Hamlet. Revenge could only breed the

culture of violence not the rigours of reconciliation which render life

meaningful. Publicly people condemned revenge while presumably there

was a degree of private satisfaction. It is paradoxical indeed that while The

Spanish Tragedy exalts the law of private justice, the play paints a

merciless world ruled by unworthy hands who are themselves obsessed by

the pride of power. This is true of both The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet.

The unfolding of events in Titus Andronicus demonstrates the

subordination of law to political power and its destructive effects on the

body politic. With its distinctive references to Roman history, legend and

literature, Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, set in imperial Rome, presents

the notoriety and the depravity of its corrupt emperors who are themselves

assailed by the lawless Goths, who eventually destroy Rome. To argue that

the play is simply a struggle between Roman honour and Gothic barbarism

146

is to exaggerate the play's historical significance. The Roman honour

deteriorates with Saturninus's callous marriage to Tamora and Titus's

monstrous revenge and cruelty in the banquet scene. Marcus's perception

of Titus that he is 'so just that he will not revenge' (IV.i.29) demonstrates

the human failings of a Roman general who degenerates to the depths of

depravity in the end.

The culture of violence in Titus Andronicus reveals the hero's

transformation into a cruel revenger. The sexual excesses of cruelty such

as the rape and mutilation of Lavinia, the execution of Titus's sons,

Tamora's adulterous tryst with Aaron, add new dimension to theatrical

dynamics. What is significant is that Tamora's adultery with the Moor is

more a political crime than moral as it destroys the possibility of a

legitimate hereditary successor to the Roman empery. The perpetration of

rape, which is mentioned fifteen times in the play, is directly linked to

revenge. Titus invokes justice when, in his frenzy, he shoots arrows up to

the gods bearing the Ovidian message 'Terras Astraea reliquit' ('Justice has

left the earth'). Not only does Titus find earthly justice corrupt but his

patient wait for divine retribution is painstakingly expressed in the non­

Christian play. In order to appease the family honour, Titus sinks to the

level of his opponents in succumbing to the cycle of revenge killings as a

form of retributive justice. In his futile appeals for both divine and human

justice, Titus prefigures King Lear but, unlike Lear, he never attains

spiritual realisation through his sufferings. Shakespeare dramatises the

cruel paradox that revenge breeds further revenges which cease only when

all the perpetrators have been destroyed. Shakespeare ends the play, as it

began, with preparations for the rites of burial, and ironically order

restored.

147

It is a cruel irony that although the play ends with a political solution,

the paradox of cruelty which becomes the blood stream of the play is

perpetuated to the very end with the new emperor Lucius's vindictive order

to cast Tamora's body 'to beasts and birds to prey' (5.3.197). The lack of

spiritual depth in the play is countered by the Senecan culture of violence

and blood letting that can provide a powerful experience for the theatre.

The figure of Titus owes something to Kyd's Hieronimo, just as Hamlet

probably does to Kyd's Ur-Hamlet.

Originally categorised as a comedy, The Merchant of Venice has been

seen by influential critics as a problem play or even as a tragi-comedy as

Shylock develops from the comic grotesque enjoyed by the Elizabethan

audiences to the sympathetic, tragic figure of modem times. The plot is

theatrically charged in an intricate web of human relationships in which

reason and revenge are not compatible in a multi-cultural society. To argue

that our sympathies lie with the persecuted Jew forced to vengeance by the

heartless Venetian society is to underrrate one of the most controversial

characters in Shakespeare. There is a deep sense of justice mixed with the

bitterness of Shylock's resentment and hence the desire for revenge is

almost inseparable from the sense of wrong. To say that the malice of the

Jew is unmasked by legality is to reiterate the notion of poetic justice in

the play. Antonio's unchristian and personal ridicule of Shylock for his

practice of undercutting usury festers in Shylock's heart to breed his deadly

malice firmly fixed on vengeance. Portia, as the learned 'doctor',

demonstrates that 'she can learn' (III.ii.162) by practising the mercy that

she earlier advocated to Shylock who, in turn, spells out the incriminations

of the Christians. An exponent of dramatic paradox, Shakespeare uses

disguise on the stage to unmask the acrimony of malice and to extol the

virtue of mercy.

148

The final scene illustrates the paradox of the leaden casket choice that

points to the idea that only in selfless giving will the giver then receive a

return. Again, Shakespeare demonstrates the cruel consequences of the loss

of a Jewish faith which throughout his life Shylock considered an integral

part of his ancient culture. Shylock's forced conversion, which is not

uncommon to Renaissance Europe, is a disenfranchising of the Jewish

view of his own cultural identity.

Beneath the surface of this comedy lie the insoluble dilemmas and

unavoidable betrayals that are an inescapable part of the frailty and

corruption of human nature. The flesh-bond which the Jew had drawn up

in order to avenge himself on the Christian produces the opposite result to

that he had envisaged. Designed to deprive Antonio of his life, it deprives

Shylock of the 'means' to live. The whole of the trial scene is a masterpiece

of theatrical dynamics. When we consider the relation of the trial scene

theatrically, rather than verbally, The Merchant of Venice proves its own

measure of universality in giving the stage a cosmic dimension not only in

showing the supremacy of mercy over malice, but also in showing the

cruelty of the Christians towards the Jews. A closer investigation of the

play enhances our appreciation of Shakespeare's use of reversals as a

strategy for dramatic irony to engage the audience's as well as the

characters' expectations that the play will 'hold the mirror up to nature'. In

conclusion, the cruel paradox of Elizabethan revenge lies in the Jew's

Christianisation that is an outrage upon humanity.

Hamlet is perhaps Shakespeare's supreme achievement. Paradoxically

Hamlet becomes a revenger as well as a murderer who must suffer the

consequences. Both Claudius and Hamlet use violence to achieve their

149

revenge - one covertly, the other openly. In Shakespeare's characters, the

paradox of violence is made more explicit. Violence is an end in itself.

Although Elizabethan audiences would have been sympathetic to the

victim of injustice they held the religious conviction that vengeful murder

was wrong and such murderers should be punished. Again, the ethical

dilemma whether the Elizabethans approved murderous revenge or not

continues to touch the questions of honour as well as problems of

lawlessness and retaliation. The ambiguities created between the realm of

scourge and minister become incompatible, because in his capacity as a

minister of heaven, Hamlet acts as a scourge of evil immersing himself in

the cycle of violence 'to set right' the rotten state of Denmark thus ensuring

that poetic justice is served with the elimination of Claudius.

The play epitomises not only the conscience of Hamlet but also the

complex conscience of mankind. In becoming the avenger-hero of

Elizabethan drama, the heroic Hamlet is accorded the royal tribute from

Fortinbras that enhances his attributes in which his melancholy and self­

reproach are so forcefully drawn that they become haunting traits. A.C.

Bradley's influential analysis that Hamlet was weighed down by a state of

melancholia could be extended to the other grief-stricken revengers such as

Hieronimo and Titus Andronicus who were also disillusioned by

melancholia and temporary insanity that inhibited their action. Hamlet

becomes a study of the doubting conscience inherent in the ambiguities of

his providential role.

I have tried to demonstrate in my investigation what kind of plays

these are, and what sorts of paradoxical assumptions and puzzling

ambiguities lie behind them. But to judge from the plays here surveyed, it

is the dynamics of reprobation which seems to infuse the imagination of

150

the Elizabethan age. The plays might be seen as the correlatives of

conscience in 'the unweeded garden' of the world with meaningless cycles

of fear and recoiling vengeance. But what makes Elizabethan drama worth

the reader's attention is not theatrical dynamics or theatrical virtuosity,

though the plays abound in all these. It is the vision of man's search for the

legitimacy of justice and his 'imperfections' as amplified in Hamlet, the

paradoxical sense of the disparity between his aspirations and his

environment, his fear and fascination of revenge - these are as hauntingly

relevant today as they were when the plays were first written and

performed. In essence the tragic situations and contradictions remain

startlingly modem as the Elizabethan playwrights dramatise paradoxes that

transcend time.

151

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