English Tragedy

The English Renaissance produced some of the major tragic works in Western literature. While most readers associate this period with the plays of William Shakespeare, other playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster also made enormous contributions to the flowering of the genre. This entry will largely exclude Shakespeare, whose works are admirably covered in the Oxford Bibliographies article by David Bevington (see William Shakespeare). Most of the playwrights taken up here wrote for the professional playhouses in London between the late 1580s and early 1630s, although the London theater was not the only source of tragic literature: Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc was written and performed at the Inns of Court, while Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam is a closet drama, composed with no intention of public performance. Nevertheless, the tragic masterpieces of this era—works such as Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi—were produced to serve flourishing theatrical enterprises in London’s public and private playhouses. Tragedy was widely believed to be the most elevated dramatic genre, dealing as it does with affairs of state as well as issues of life and death, fate and free will, social corruption and violent retribution, damnation and the possibility (or impossibility) of redemption. The dominant literary strain was that of revenge tragedy, with Kyd’s play providing a template built upon and modified by numerous others. At the same time, the genre was also capacious and flexible. “Domestic tragedies” like the anonymous Arden of Faversham centered not upon the court but the household and seemingly had little to do with affairs of state. Other works feature comic subplots (Middleton and Samuel Rowley’s The Changeling) or a mordant black humor that borders on self-parody (Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy or John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore). In this regard, English Renaissance tragedy is hardly monolithic. It is instead marked by a vibrancy and experimental energy that are still appreciable today. For information on bibliographies, reference works, and comprehensive literary histories, see the Oxford Bibliographies article on “English Renaissance Drama” by David Bevington.