A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 10

The Revenger's Tragedy stands as one of the darkest masterpieces of the Jacobean stage, a revenge play that refuses easy morality or comfortable resolution. Vendice returns to a corrupt court bearing his beloved's skull, transformed by grief into something between mourner and predator. The Duke who destroyed his life now reigns amidst lust and assassination, and Vendice enters this viper's nest disguised, his bitter grief calcified into cold purpose. Tourneur constructs a world where revenge becomes indistinguishable from self-destruction, where each act of violence begets another, and where justice and murder become impossible to tell apart. This volume presents the play in its original form, allowing readers to experience a theatrical work that influenced generations of dramatists while remaining startlingly modern in its refusal to provide catharsis. For readers who savor the shadowed corridors of literary history, this collection offers access to a play that helped define the revenge tragedy genre.