English theatre

[kevin at limits.org]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, pynchon-l-digest wrote:
> From: Doug Millison <DMillison at ftmg.net>
> Subject: RE: COL 49 Chapter 4 Starters
> 
> I'm no expert on these revenge plays.  Can anybody explain more about the
> political environment in which they were written and performed? My knowledge
> of English history is quite weak -- was this the time of, or just following
> (because Cromwell closed the theaters) the English Civil Wars?  In any case,
> in the period of the Revenge Tragedy,  could it be that the playwrights were
> speaking to the politics of their day?

Revenge tragedies and plays of other genres at the time often addressed
the conflict between the older traditional ways of medievalism and the new
ways of the English Renaissance.  A famous example would be the conflict
between the older, brawling, armored, Fortinbras-thumping King Hamlet and
his Wittenberg-educated son, with Claudius falling somewhere between
(Denmark being between Wittenberg and Norway).  The Elizabethan theater
was, for one thing, the first time that theater was a real _business_,
with stocks in the company and spies stealing scripts, and there's a sense
especially in Marlowe (the John the Baptist of English literature) of
wonder at being able to pay money to experience the exotic (see, for
example, the famous grapes in _Faustus_ or the cargo manifests in scene
one of _The Jew of Malta_).

For a general introduction to the genre and period take a look at the 
Oxford Classics _Four Revenge Tragedies_, edited by K. Maus, who is also
responsible for the capitalism bits above.  It contains the _Spanish
Tragedy_, the _Revenger's Tragedy_ that someone else mentioned, and...two
other revenge tragedies of the period.

Revenge, in the genre, comes from conflicts between the old ways and the
new ways and between order and chaos.  In the _CT_, the tristero takes on
aspects of the old (it's almost a primal force, like the Eugenides) and
the new (a modern cartel that does not acknowledge political boundaries).

As for the thing about Kyd being arrested and Marlowe -- IIRC, Kyd got
arrested for possession of radical pro-Catholic literature that, some
think, was left in his lodgings by Marlowe.

--Kevin Troy