The Tempest

The Tempest by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a strange one. Prospero starts the play as a revenger, and his authoritarian disposition towards his daughter, Ariel and Caliban provides plenty of scope for modern day readers to see the character as an upholder of patriarchy, colonialism and racism. But at the end of the play, there’s a swerve away from revenge and towards high-minded forgiveness. Prospero overcomes his baser nature – which the play elsewhere associates with conspiring courtiers, drunken louts and 'savage' men in faraway lands. He is the stage manager as hero, whereas in most Shakespeare plays the stage-manager tends to be the villain (see in particular Iago and Edmund). He is not as compromised as the 'Duke of Dark Corners' in Measure for Measure – whereas that play's ending descends into farce, The Tempest strikes a more wistful tone. Prospero's magic engineers a happy ending – a restoration of the natural order, with natural slaves put in their place and the rightful rulers reassuming theirs. Shakespeare's contemporary audience may have accepted this at face value. A modern audience may find it harder to do so.

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The Changeling

The Changeling: Full Text and Introduction by Thomas Middleton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Bit of an odd one. There are thematic connections to be made between the largely unconnected main plot and sub-plot, but they are rather flimsy. Middleton’s moralistic policing of female chastity is quite an unattractive trait, but the villainous De Flores, obsessed with bedding the beautiful Beatrice-Joanna even if it kills him, is a fun role.

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The Witch of Edmonton

The Witch of Edmonton by Thomas Dekker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A play full of ambiguities. To what extent is the titular witch created by the prejudices of her community? How much agency does she really have? She is both a scapegoat and a revenger. The play revels in the fascination with witchcraft while at the same time portraying Mother Sawyer as a victim. Both her and Frank Thorney are pressured into doing evil by the fraught economic circumstances they find themselves in. Both get sent to the gallows, but while Mother Sawyer goes out cursing, Frank is penitent – a slightly heavy-handed insistence by the dramatists on the importance of forgiveness. The most ambiguous character of all is of course the satanic talking dog, who either inspires or encourages the chaos that engulfs Edmonton. In the end he is beaten an away by the good-natured simpleton Cuddy Banks – a Bottom-like figure who consorts with demons but can’t be corrupted by them. It is another one of the play’s ironies that the most heroic character is the clown.

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The Knight of the Burning Pestle

The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is a testament to the rapid evolution of the theatre in Renaissance England that basically within 20 years of the medium establishing itself we get deconstructions like this. Here a rote city comedy with shades of Dekker’s Shoemaker’s Holiday is disrupted by a grocer family who park themselves on the stage and insist on the addition of a heroic adventure subplot (heavily influenced by Don Quixote). Their interjections provide a meta commentary on the different tastes and expectations of the audience, although the jokes do start to wear a bit thin towards the end. The author’s preface seems to be a defence against accusations of snobbery – the play is written to “please all, and be hurtful to none”. It’s certainly a delight.

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The Revenger's Tragedy

The revenger's tragedy by Cyril Tourneur
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Takes the revenge tragedy genre established by Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy to its limit and beyond – stripping out any potential for pathos or catharsis and replacing it with farce. Middleton (more likely to have been the dramatist than Tourneur) was best known for acerbic heavily-plotted city comedies, and those inclinations are present here – with disguises creating absurd situational comedy and the revengers deploying wildly inventive methods of murder. Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus had a similar blackly comic tone, but The Revenger’s Tragedy refines the formula and introduces a contempt for the machinations of courtly life that points towards Webster’s nihilistic White Devil and Duchess of Malfi. A lot of fun.

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