This presentation explores some basic characteristics of Revenge Play and illustrate 'Hamlet' as revenge play

1. Hamlet: A Revenge Play
It is an emotion that naturally appeals
to dramatists since it provides a
coherent and logical framework for the
depiction of human passions.
dilipbarad@gmail.com
www.dilipbarad.com

2. Revenge, the desire to retaliate for an injury, is a
powerful, natural, and dangerous human emotion.
• Revenge never sleeps – as Thomas Kyd
dramatically demonstrates in The Spanish
Tragedy.
• In Spanish Tragedy, father Hieronimo takes
revenge for his son Horatio’s death.
• Hamlet is a play concerned with son’s revenge
for the murder of his father. It is a story
concerned with murder, sudden violence and
the slower but more deadly reaction to that
violence.

3. • A series of events can clearly be seen to start
with some original crime and end once that
crime has been avenged.
• The Greek tragedians used it many times and
it reached the Elizabethans as part of the
classical heritage through the literature of
Rome. Aided by their own historical vision,
and challenged by the particular
requirements of their own theatre, they
made the form their own to such an extent
that the term ‘revenge tragedy’ can usually
be understood as referring to tragedies
written between 1580 and 1642.

4. Seneca & Thomas Kyd: Revenge Tragedy:….
• The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus are the
early and successful examples of the dramatic use of
revenge.
• In both plays an injured man has difficulty, first in
identifying the people who have harmed him, and
then in attacking them, since they are both powerful
and well guarded.
• Patience, cunning and continuing resolutions are
necessary in order to achieve revenge. Hieronimo
avenges murder of his son Horatio in The Spanish
Tragedy and Titus Andronicus imitates Thyestes in
Greet Myth – after serving his enemy Tamora, Queen
of Goths, the minced bodies of her children cooked in
pie, after she has eaten it, he kills her.

5. Chief features of Revenge Plays:
• It deals with some crime – murder heinous
and most unnatural.
• Some near relative or intimate person is
called upon to avenge the murder
• It is the Ghost of the dead who reveals the
crime committed.

6. Chief features of Revenge Plays:
• Sacred duty to take revenge is accepted and
revenge is taken with disastrous
consequences
• There is much bloodshed and physical horror
• There is much that is thrilling and sensational
use of fighting, of violence, madness,
adultery, even incest.

7. Illustrations from Hamlet – a revenge play:
• Murder of King Hamlet by Claudius
• * Ghost of King reveals crime to Prince Hamlet
and lays the sacred duty to take revenge
• * Death of Polonius, Ophelia, Gertrude,
Guildenstern, Rosencrantz….
• * Madness of Hamlet/Ophelia, plots and
counter plots, reference to adultery and incest
relations, nunnery scene, graveyard scene,
fencing fight, poisoning…

8. Hamlet- A revenge play with a
difference:
• Hamlet cannot be labeled as mere revenge play.
• The element of revenge play (blood and horror)
are refined and lifted above the realm of cheap
melodrama.
• Ghost – symbolic significance; it is not merely
object of horror, but also the representation of
hidden, mysterious forces that lurk around us. It
is an instrument of justice to punish the evil
doer.

9. Hamlet- A revenge play with a
difference:
• It is not only tragedy of revenge, but is a
tragedy of human soul.
• Hamlet’s suffering in his melancholy, in his
hesitation, in his inaction at a crucial moment
in his life, in each one of the aspects of his
many-sided personality; he typifies some one
or the other phase of human nature.

10. Hamlet- A revenge play with a
difference:
• His reflections on life, the truths which he
utters from time to time, are as true-today as
when they were uttered.
• His tortured soul is threadbare before us and
it raises the play above a crude melodrama or
revenge play.