The importance of language in Hamlet and The Revenger's Tragedy

• Polonius: ‘What do you read my lord?’ Hamlet: ‘Words, words, words.’
• many word duels in Hamlet, Only the clown can match his wit.
• Hamlet mirrors people’s languages – for example he matches the ghost’s language after he meets him, but ghost also mirrors his use of the word 'foul'
• Hamlet’s language becomes more erratic as he tries to make himself the archetypal revenger – “keep his wounds green”
• “I am mad but north-north-west.” Lots of hidden meanings, riddling – playing the part of the fool?
• Ophelia also alter plays the part of the fool when she turns “mad”.
• Soliloquies to illuminate what they are thinking however, Vindice uses them not to ponder, but to plan revenge
• Ophelia loved Hamlet's 'words of such sweet breath composed'
• Duplicity of language important in revealing the conflict between inner and outer
• Titles given to people important such as 'uncle-father and aunt-mother'
• Hendiadys and doubling
• Hamlet constantly addressed as 'my lord'
• Language of excess – emphasise sin
• Letters used to sentence the character to death – never seen in physical form, are they trustworthy?
• Hamlet's letters to Ophelia bought into open, pored over, intrusion into privacy
• Polonius demands to know what Laertes and Ophelia were talking of
• Language used to give subjective account of what has happened offstage - preparations for war, Ophelia's death, Hamlet's adventures with pirates
• The power of the 'tongue' in Revenger's Tragedy
• Vindice was able to trick his mother into prostituting his sister
• In the Revenger’s Tragedy, most characters use asides to undermine the other characters – also give the audience information – the audience is submerged within the play
• Junior Brother unable to resist from insert his own comments whilst reading the letter from his brothers – product of society, excessiveness, no subtlety. He does not even trust the letter – no truth to words

Critical Views on Revenger's Tragedy

J.LSimmons

the tongue's fiendish urge to wag powerfully, frustrated with the desire to "be express'd," tickles Vindice willy-nilly into making his proud confession of murder to the new Duke

the murderous Vindice gives tongue to what might have remained mute 

disillusioned Christian humanist 

adapted conventions of satire and the moral interlude

Michael Neill

If marriage uses the woman's body as good money and unequivocal speech, rape transforms her into counterfeit coin, a contradictory word that threatens the whole system. - Patricia Joplin 

might be called the Viper and her brood - serpent carelessly nourished in the bosom of Middleton's state is the duchess, and her brood are a hatch of apparently fatherless sons, together with the duke's bastard

revenge is scarcely dramatized as a problem here unlike Hamlet

Spurio is given a symbolically central role in the social economy of his play

Vindice's description of vengeance as "murder's quit rent . . . tenant to tragedy" (I.i.39-40) nicely suggests its purely conventional role in Middleton's scheme

gender-coded issues of inheritance and usurpation are given exceptional prominence in the play's satiric design 

the bastard as a kind of living emblem for the usurping appetite 

definition of a bastard as "whore's son" implies that the anxieties surrounding bastardy had a great deal to do with its disruption of the proper line of paternity through the creation of a child that could only be defined as its mother's son and it constituted a challenge to the patriarchal order and its fictions of legitimate descent

Spurio's proclaimation that "Adultery is my nature" (I.ii.177) does more than  justify incest with his stepmother as a wittily symmetrical revenge against his adulterous father

illegitimate children were "a special class of transgressive male," credited with an unusually passionate and vigorous nature

but bastards would draw "a certeyn corruption and stayne from the sinne of his parentes"- Sir John Fortescue

form of genealogical counterfeiting because it threatened to displace the "true" heir with a "false" and debased substitute

play contains elements of tragedy, satire, and history 

extravagant irony of self-loss

Vindice being hired to kill his counterfeit self illustrates the governing principle of revenge drama, whereby the revenger is transformed into the simulacrum of the criminal he seeks to punish but could also be red as destabilization of identity characteristic of a world of bastard coining

Middleton locates his court, where everything goes "in silk and silver" in a degraded Silver Age, mockingly emblematized by the "silver years" of the duke 

progressive debasement of the currency of dukedom, climaxing in the farcical substitutions of act V where five dukes rise and fall in quick succession 

Vindice ironically proves himself to be the most prolific and successful of all the play's counterfeiters 

Vindice calls himself "Piato" ("plated") which identifies him with "blanched" coins (base metal plated over with silver to improve its appearance),'7 thereby associating him with the deceptive glitter of the whole court 

If men are coiners, it is women, according to Vindice, who are most "apt... to take false money" but also to become it as Gratiana and Castiza are liable to be "changed / Into white money" by his labours

Castiza's flesh is metamorphosed into a form of material wealth

Robert Ornstein Vindice dies "not because the moral order is restored or because the goddess Astraea re turns to earth," but because of the selfish motivations of a crafty politician

Brian Gibbons Vindice's death is so abrupt that it cannot be regarded seriously

Arthur.L.Kistner and M.K.Kistner

commonplace of Elizabethan and Jacobean serious drama that the protagonist must die 

The playwright's ability to convince his audience of the necessity of his hero's death is one determination of the success or failure 

If Vindice's fall is to have moral significance, it must be inevitable; that is, it must fulfill the logical expectations of a moral system. 

not the simple reward-for-the-good and punishment-for-the-bad morality that has generally been imposed on the play 

like Vindice, Lussurioso contrasts the era with other times which were less sinful and 

Antonio speaks of the perversion of justice "in this age" (I.iv.55), and Castiza laments that "The world's so chang'd' 

the reward of virtue is demonstrated in the first scene: the skull of Gloriana, poisoned for her chastity, and, through neglect, the death of Vindice's father, worthy in mind but not in estate 

vice is to advancement as virtue is to poverty 

Virtue, in the forms of Castiza, Gratiana, and Antonio's wife, dwells away from the Duke's palace but the court tries to buy/take them - Gratiana is temporarily overcome by temptation and Antonio's virtuous wife is ravaged by the court

Vindice's relationship to the court, the source of corruption, grows stronger throughout the play, and as it does, his virtue declines - his acceptance of a guise of evil is his first step downward 

not the reluctant, tortured decision for revenge and justice that characterizes Hamlet but an eager lust for the enemy's blood 

Vindice has brought Gloriana to court as a prostitute and murderess

Henry Hitch Adams Vindice's death satisfies the claims of heavenly justice

Larry S.Campion 'an obsessive loathing of the sexual sinfulness of men'

Revenger's Tragedy Research

Who was Middleton? 

• Son of a bricklayer whose coat of arms was certified in 1568
• Born in London in 1560
• Middleton's father owned property adjoining the Curtain theatre
• 15 year legal battle over inheritance after father died
• Went to Oxford in 1598
• published three long poems which weren't particurlarly successful
• his book of satires, ran afoul of the Anglican Church's ban on verse satire and was burned
• Often made a living writing topical pamphlets
• Wrote for the Admiral's men
• Involved in the War of the Theatres
• Married Mary Marbecke in 1603
• in 1620 he was appointed City Chronologer
• Middleton wrote in many genres, including tragedy, history and city comedy
• He appears to have written on a freelance basis for any number of companies
• Middleton's plays are characterised by their cynicism about the human race

How does Revenger's fit the revenge tragedy genre? 

• decaying moral and political order
• lots of death and revenge
• eventually there is justice
• corrupt court
• Vindice as malcontent
• set in Italy
• Good man takes over command at the end

What are the links you can see with Hamlet in theme and character?

• Revengers contrast to Hamlet's delay
• Attacking women for their morals
• Deceit and deception
• Trouble within royal family
• Use of skull
• Use of poison
• Corruption of court
• Inheritance - claudius and all of Duke's son intervening in line of succession
• Women committing suicide
• Mother figure with dubious morals
• incest
• acting/hidden identity

Context:

• Midland revolt - peasants against the enclosure of common land by wealthy landowners, hundreds of people were hanged
• Often wrote for boy actors
• The accession of James I created the political and cultural climate in which he wrote all his mature work
• Middleton's stepfather in 1595 had allegedly attempted to murder his wife (Middleton's mother), so the playwright had first-hand experience of conjugal violence

Morality in Hamlet

Hamlet’s conflicting concern over religion,

Eg. Suicidal hints in his soliloquy
- speaking to R/G “what a piece of work is man”
- “the quintessence of dust”
- “to die to sleep, to sleep per chance to dream.”

Or he is concerned with the morality of killing Claudius whilst he repents.

Hamlet is a product of his time: conflict over medieval and renaissance values

Hamlet’s inner conflict over revenge: mind or body

1  “the play’s the thing/ Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”

    Resort to violence and rashness: killing of Polonius and “Now will I drink hot blood”

    Lack of morality of other characters inspires Hamlet’s own reduction of morality and similarly in RT Vindice is reduced to murder

      Conversely in the Revenger's Tragedy, religion is less concerning,
e.g. Vindice mocks the thunder comparing it to simple stage effects: “when thunder claps heaven likes the tragedy

   No moral conflict over revenge:

In the Italian society some forms of revenge were countenanced by the laws

“now let me burst;  I’ve eaten noble poison”

“shine through blood/ When the bad bleeds then the tragedy is good”