In this study of revenge and revengers in two Elizabethan
revenge tragedies the two plays I shall look at are Hamlet,
by William Shakespeare, and The Revenger's Tragedy,
by Thomas Middleton. I shall look first at the
playwrights' handling of the characters of the revengers,
and then at the treatment of the revengers by other
characters in the plays.
Although having similarities in
their underlying themes, and in their adherence to
conventions, these two plays present contrasting pictures
of the figure of the revenger; Hamlet offering a far more
complex treatment of its main character, and The
Revenger's Tragedy appearing, in comparison, limited
by the author's social message, and lacking in realistic
characterisation.
Hamlet and Vindice, the two revengers, have in common
their tasks as revengers, but they have very different
methods of dealing with situations, modes of thought, and
instinctual behaviour. Middleton's Vindice is largely an
allegorical character; his name and the names of other
characters in The Revenger's Tragedy (e.g.
Spurio, Ambitioso) are derived from Medieval morality
plays; names which suggest the quality of near-farcical
exaggeration which is a feature of The Revenger's
Tragedy from the opening scene's remarkable
similarity to a procession of the Seven Deadly Sins, to
Vindice's simplistic association of lust with Judas and
the Devil.
Hamlet, in contrast, is an individual with depth, who
suffers from insecurity, and a sense of absurdity. As we
see him at the beginning of the play he is suffering from
melancholy, not only from the death of his father, but
also from 'the moral shock of the sudden ghostly
disclosure of his mother's true nature' [1]. Hamlet is
psychologically real, and in my view while Vindice's
vengeance is all expressed outwards, Hamlet, as a man and
as a revenger, shifts from an external struggle for
vengeance to an internal one.
Both revengers respond to, rather than initiate events,
but Hamlet is much more an instrument of others than
Vindice, who is full of zest. Both characters carry a
burden of guilt. Hamlet's Oedipus complex, (Freud having
informed us of the revenger's unconscious motives), is
heavily aggravated by the absence of his father and
excessive closeness of his mother, and this accounts for
the refocusing of his patricidal wish onto Claudius, and
shows how his need for revenge is internal, not purely a
need to resolve dissatisfaction with the 'affairs of the
world', as is Vindice's. Hamlet's needs are deep and
complex, while for Vindice:
The smallest
advantage fattens wronged men. [1.2.98]
Hamlet's 'internalisations'
arise because he has identified his ego with his father -
the lost 'object' - and is therefore suffering from a
loss of ego. His inward suffering is further intensified
by his conflicts with Ophelia and Gertrude, leading him
to suicidal thoughts:
O that this too
too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not flx'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! [1.2.129-132]
Hamlet is searching
deep into his soul for explanations and resolutions,
while Vindice simply waits for 'that bald Madam
Opportunity'. [1.1.55]
Hamlet's delaying, compared to Vindice's incessant
activity, shows that the two revengers are in a way
opposite in their approaches to the problems confronting
them, but their roles within the plots prevent them from
taking entirely different directions. Hamlet and Vindice,
and the other revengers in both plays, may be ultimately
the agents of their own destruction, but we can see from
Shakespeare's presentation of Hamlet (and Laertes) that
he did not wish to portray revengers who slipped
irrevocably into immorality:
The foul practice
hath turn'd itself on me. [5.2.299-300].
Report me and my cause aright/ To the unsatisfied [5.2.321-322]
Hamlet retains some
integrity, or at least sincerity of purpose, even at the
close of the play, whereas Middleton's Vindice, Spurio,
Ambitioso et. al. receive no such redemption, and the
only possible purification or retribution for them is a
general holocaust.
A parallel distinction between the characters is seen in
the revengers' reactions to crises. Vindice's moral
weakness is exposed when he allows his indignation about
courtly manners and the faulty judicial system to
metamorphose into the immorality of his own subsequent
crimes. Hamlet's indignation, in contrast, is, for the
greater part of the play, turned inwards. Right from his
first soliloquy this is apparent:
O, what a rogue
and peasant slave am I! . . . Am I a coward? . . .
Why what an ass am I!' [2.2.530-562]
The keynote of Hamlet's
character is his self-questioning, in contrast to the
utter resentment and bitterness of Vindice. Compare
Hamlet's self-castigating words above with Vindice's, 'In
the midst of all their joys they shall sigh blood' [5.2.22],
which could be taken as the keynote of Vindice's own
tragic destiny - to be 'stained with a bloodlust
exceeding the bloodlust of his opponent'.
In Act 2 scene I Vindice far exceeds his duties while
testing his sister Castiza. In his search for truth he
undermines his own; not only through his disguise, but
also through his Machiavellian cynicism. In contrast to
the introspective Hamlet, Vindice is an unremitting
revenger.
Thou hast no
conscience; are we not revenged?/ Is there one enemy
left alive amongst those? [5.3.108-109]
The psychological
makeup of the revengers not only shows Hamlet to be more
fallible, more sympathetic, but also suggests that
although the outcomes of the plots may be similar, the
causes leading to them will not necessarily be similar.
Hamlet's delay is a perennial talking point among critics,
and perhaps Shakespeare wanted to impress on us that
action is the chief end of existence. For Hamlet, action
is paralysed at its very inception:
The native hue of
resolution/ is sickled o'er with the pale cast of
thought. [3.1.84]
But is his anguish
about his moral sensibility, or about the wound to his
own ego?:
Thus conscience
does make cowards of us all.
Hamlet may be free
from the conscious contriving of Vindice, ('Tis now good
policy to be from sight;' [2.3.27]), but like Vindice,
Hamlet must disguise his true nature in order to perform
his mission, and indeed survive, against overwhelming
odds. He does this through his 'antic disposition', about
which Polonius observes:
Though this be
madness, yet there is method in't. [2.2.203-204]
This 'antic
disposition' becomes almost comic when, during the closet
scene, Hamlet has difficulty in removing it again.
Vindice's disguise also serves his purpose, but he has
far more control over it.
And therefore I'll
put on that knave for once . . . for to be honest is
not to be i'th'world. [1.1.93]
The causes of Hamlet's
ambivalent attitudes can be partly explained by taking a
psychoanalytic approach. We see Hamlet donning a
hysterical posture; sexual alienation from Ophelia,
rejection of the reproductive instinct, and delaying
avenging his father because he himself has contemplated
the same deed against his father. His way of remembering
(this may be interchangeable with 'revenging' for one
like Hamlet living entirely 'inside' himself) is seen, by
Marjorie Garber [2] as being 'the dramatisation and
acculturation of the repetition compulsion'.
The play within a play, the Queen's two marriages, the
twin husbands, 'The counterfeit presentment of two
brothers' [3.4.54], and the double murder of Hamlet's and
Laertes' fathers all become examples of a transference-neurosis,
the instigator of which is the ghost, or the phallic
symbol: 'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard/ A
serpent stung me.' [1.5.35].
Such an analysis gives an idea of the complexity of the
decisions Hamlet the revenger has to take, which is in
stark contrast to Vindice's world in which murders are
convenient political expedients and appear to be almost
the entire stimulus for the playwright's development of
the plot. Middleton does expose hypocrisy, and does show
everyone to be ambitious, but Shakespeare explores in
much greater depth the underlying psychological reality
behind the 'carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts.' [5.2.363]
Middleton was indebted to Marston's The Malcontent for
his picture of a world of artificial brightness,
unnatural darkness and 'lascivious banquets (which) sin
it selfe gilt ore'. In the 'accursed pallace' there is no
remorse, and the aim of existence is reduced to the
fulfilment of corrupt ambitions:
Were't not for
gold and women, there would be no damnation. [2.1.250]
The disorder in
Middleton's political and cosmic spheres is paralleled in
Hamlet, but while Vindice commits murders in which lust
and death unite, Hamlet apostrophises the dubious ghost
which unremittingly demands a transformation from the 'memory
of loss' to the 'Revenge of loss.' Maynard Mack has
pointed out that the 'Ghost's injunction to act becomes (so)
inextricably bound up with the character of the world in
which action must be taken'.
Nietzsche once said: 'The past has to be forgotten if it
is not to become the gravedigger of the present' [3].
Hamlet's memories are locked up and 'All the action in
the external world will not rout out the tyrannical,
unconscious fantasies of the primal scene, but turning
bloody thoughts against his own mind might liberate him'
[4]. Hamlet cannot, like Fortinbras and Vindice, kill off
all father-figures in battle - his plight is internal and
he must brood ineffectually: 'How all occasions do inform
against me.' [4.4.32]. This seems to me to show that
Hamlet is an observer rather than a participant in
history's evolution until, that is, he moves into action
by an act of self-naming with the signet ring:
This is I, Hamlet
the Dane! [5.1.243]
Both plays end in
horrifying purges, and Pyrrhic victories are the only
vengeance available to the revengers obsessed with their
'pre-ordained' tasks, ('but heaven hath pleas'd it So/
That I must be their scourge and minister' [3.4.173-175]),
but the contrasting presentations of the revengers
arouses different responses in an audience. In The
Revenger's Tragedy there are thirteen revenge
actions, five without motivation, and it seems that
Middleton's aim was to use revenge as a dramatic device
to arouse revulsion. All his revengers become embodiments
of hell.
Vindice may see no opportunity for legal recourse, but we
wonder whether he actually wants to:
0 sweet,
delectable, rare, happy, ravishing! [3.5.1]
This delight in
revenge should arouse equal suspicion of Hamlet's
underlying motives, but his are internalised, delayed,
and he seems to try to work out the moral validity of
revenge:
Prompted to my
revenge by heaven and hell. [3.1.564]
And in his treatment
of Ophelia we feel Hamlet is more masochistic than
anything else:
We are arrant
knaves, believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunn'ry
[3.1.127-128]
Nevertheless, Hamlet
does, in a way, descend into a hell of medieval vice (like
Vindice). When we see him in the prayer scene Hamlet's
behaviour externally is Christian, but internally he has
become blinded by hatred, a pagan figure:
Why, this is hire
and salary, not revenge!
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
'Tis heavy with him; and am I then reveng'd,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage? No!
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent. [3.3.79-88]
But Hamlet does not
commit premeditated murder (except in his excessive
treatment of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, which Erlich [4]
explains as Hamlet's need for the written word to be true),
but his contemplation of murder makes him appear closer
to Vindice than ever. It will only be much later, when
Hamlet plays with Osric the courtier, that we see his wit
without bitterness and satire without malice. The 'slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune' do not matter when
Hamlet has his eye on eternity: ('We defy augury . . . ')
Both Vindice and Hamlet move from a position of
centrality to one of isolation as 'sick souls' infecting
the state. In Hamlet we see that the 'exteriority
of prose' is mingled with the 'interiority of verse' and
this signifies Hamlet's isolation from his fellow Danes.
We also see what has been termed the 'metatheatrical self-consciousness'
which parallels Hamlet's self-consciousness - the play
within the play - which can be seen as the turning point
for Hamlet in this light.
Ironies abound in The Revenger's Tragedy;
Lussurioso is imprisoned after trying to maintain his
father's reputation; Ambitioso and Supervacuo forget to
say who they want killed, and eventually achieve
purification by killing each other. With so much irony
the author cannot be said to be addressing real life, or
showing heavenly judgement, although maybe he suggests a
moral order of sorts in keeping with the Renaissance idea
of life as a dance, a 'farandole'.
The political order is confirmed in neither play and
Shakespeare and Middleton both use the revenger to
undermine social superficialities, but Shakespeare also
recognises the realities beneath the superficiality, for
example the whims of Fortune, Sin etc. and the fact that
man can fight against such influences, but not conquer
them. Hamlet says, 'I do repent; but Heaven hath pleas'd
it so.' [3.4.173]
Further characteristics of the playwrights' portrayal of
the revengers can be seen by considering distinctive
motifs and omnipresent images. In Hamlet the predominant
metaphors are those of disease and decay: 'Here is your
husband, like a mildewed ear' [3.4.64]; the ulcer motif
shown by the poisoning of the King in the play within the
play in the finale; the symbol of skin disease shown in
the 'mole of nature' [1.4.24]. 'Something is rotten in
the state of Denmark', a general 'taint' expressed by
sickness, lunacy, jealousy, and guilt turns all sour, and
the perceptions of the revenger are seen to be in a
similar vein:
do not spread the
compost on the weeds
To make them ranker. [3.4.151-152]
In Middleton's play we
find imagery of burning, and of corruption of the state:
'Throwne Inck upon the forehead of our state' [1.2.4] We
have the motif or the skull too - paralleling Yorick's
skull - the scull of Gloriana, Vindice's love, which is
apotheosised and could almost be a symbol for the play
itself, or a motive for it.
Modern criticism offers several interpretations which
contribute to an even more ambivalent evaluation of the
revengers. In the light of Marxist criticism by Michael D.
Bristol we are encouraged to see Hamlet and Claudius as
two murderous clowns and death as an occasion for
laughter as well as grief (consider, for example, the
comic gravedigger). The 'antic disposition' is a
carnivalesque disguise which helps Carnival's customary
opposition to the established social order. The
disruption of the natural order is something Hamlet tries
to avoid but he must become part of it, and when he does
so (by killing Polonius) he becomes part of a circular
process by which 'life devours life and individual
pretension is brought down to earth':
A man may fish
with the worm that hath eat of a King and eat of the
fish that hath fed of that worm. [4.3.26-27]
Religious
interpretations offer a different perspective. Neither of
the revengers is morally obliged to take revenge (although
they may think that they are), but their actions are not
seen in moral terms as crimes, but as evidence of the
corrosive power of sin: 'A Hydra with many heads' (H. D.
F. Kitto.) After Polonius's interference Hamlet's love
for Ophelia is corrupted, as are Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, and the drama is seen as a contagion
spreading, and spreading even into Hamlet's own mind,
leading him into madness.
Feminist-psychoanalytic criticism seems to reduce Hamlet
to a symbolic character, (like Vindice and Spurio) but
does offer some useful ideas. Hamlet feels his inadequacy
about being unable to rapidly avenge his father, and this
inadequacy is all too acutely turned around upon himself,
his resulting madness reaching, in my opinion, the very
borders of what we know:
Imaginations are
as foul
As a vulcan's stithy, [3.2.83-84]
Janet Adelman has
stated that the 'this', of 'that it should come to this'
[1.2.138], symbolises the Fall, or contamination by the
sexual female within (i.e. Gertrude's sensuality). So
Hamlet's priority is to free himself from this 'foul and
pestilent congregation of vapours' by his own death, and
not the deaths of others.
Hamlet's perception of women as sexually dangerous links
well with the motives for revenge in The Revenger's
Tragedy, i.e. Vindice's disappointment at his mother's
vulnerability to bribery: 'I blush to think what for your
sakes I'll do,' she says [2.1,24].
My emphasis so far has been on the authors' handling of
their revengers, but perhaps it is also pertinent to
mention how the revengers are handled by the other
characters. Middleton's world is one of corruption and
duality - parasites the lot, driven by lust and greed for
social advancement. The reactions of Vindice's fellows
are not unlike his own. It seems to me that the main
figures of the play, due to their debased ambitions, want
to maintain their position at whatever cost, and
character portrayal stretches only a little beyond this
generalisation. Even the Duke seems like Vindice: 'I'll
try them both upon their love and hate'.[2.3.86]. The
reactions to Vindice himself reveal only blindness and
ignorance to the end: 'Pray heaven their blood may wash
away all treason!'
Hamlet is not a fixed figure like Vindice, a 'malcontent',
throughout, nor is he in literal disguise, and this
enables Shakespeare to portray deeper and more realistic
interactions than does Middleton. As long as Hamlet
maintains a semblance of courtly manners and polite
discretion he is treated well. He says:
I know my course .
. . and the devil hath power
T'assume a pleasing shape. [3.1.578-580]
His periods of
apparent dangerous and turbulent lunacy are watched
carefully however, mistrusted by all except Horatio.
Where Vindice is destroyed by the other characters
because he wishes to destroy them, Hamlet is damned by
the other characters because of his honesty and his
mistaken way of handling that honesty.
Hamlet is sent to England to be murdered, and here we see
the knock-on effect of revenge:
Diseases desperate
grown
By desperate appliances are reliev'd. [4.3.9-10]
It seems that both
Shakespeare and Middleton observe an aspect of the human
condition through the revengers; 'Now then it is no more
I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me' [5], but the
revengers have enormously different character traits, and
inhabit very different realities. Vindice emphasises for
us how a man can set in motion the forces which will
eventually destroy him, while Hamlet moves from an
external reality to an internal, essentially negative
reality, but achieves a personal redemption:
The soldiers music
and the rite of war
Speak loudly for him. [3.2.381-382]
Here Shakespeare is
saying that his revenger was saved, not because of, but
in spite of his revenge, and thanks to his sound
intentions in the face of a whimsical providence.
References
[1] Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy
[2] Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare's Ghost Writers.
[3] Nietzsche. Use and Abuse of History
[4] Erlich, A. Hamlet's Absent Father
[5] Romans 7.17
Further reading:
Levin. Understanding Hamlet
Wofford S. L. ed. Criticisms in Hamlet
Dover Wilson. What Happens in Hamlet
© Heron McConnell, March 2001
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