Revenge Play - Influence

Influence

A number of plays, from 1587 on, are influenced by certain aspects of revenge tragedy, although they do not fit perfectly into this category.

Besides Hamlet, other plays of Shakespeare's with at least some revenge elements are Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. Other revenge tragedies include The White Devil, The Changeling, The Duchess of Malfi, The Atheist's Tragedy, The Jew of Malta, The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois,The Malcontent and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore.

Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49 contains an extended parody of the Jacobean revenge-play formula, titled The Courier's Tragedy and written by the fictitious Richard Wharfinger. Most of the action is simply described by the narrator, with occasional snippets of dialogue.

In Edward Gorey's masterpiece, The Unstrung Harp, the protagonist, the novelist Mr Earbrass, sees a performance of Prawne's The Nephew's Tragedy, a fictional revenge play performed, "… for the first time since the early seventeenth century, by the West Mortshire Impassioned Amateurs of Melpomene."

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