著者

笹山 隆

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.37, no.2, pp.187-200, 1961

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Revenge is so vitally connected with the essence of Elizabethan tragedy that it can never be analyzed away as a mere theatrical device for sensationalism. The present paper is an attempt to see how in the works of each playwright revenge as an actional pattern was affected and modified by his vision of tragedy. The Biblical phrase "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." was ringing in popular ears; it was nothing less than an abominable sin of pride to anticipate the justice of God. Besides, in all the extant plays of Seneca, whose influence on contemporary tragedy was so potent, the revengers were always depicted as villains. From these circumstances came a line of villain-revenger plays from The Jew of Malta to The Cardinal. God's dictum against human revenge, however, also implied a commitment to divine vengeance. And if the heavenly justice be realized, not by supernatural means alone, but through the agency of man, it would not be impossible that an act of revenge should be justified, though the revenger himself must suffer death as the price of his sin. Thus a lawful revenger was often looked upon at once as a hero and a sinner. This was part of the mystery of the cosmic fate and was closely related to the ambiguity which exists in the core of tragedy. Already in The Spanish Tragedy we find the author confronted with the problem of how to deal with this paradox. By gradually adding the hero-revenger a Machiavellian aspect, Kyd deliberately cancelled the pity aroused for him and simplified the audience's response accordingly. Fletcher in his Valentinian went on this line so far as to disintegrate tragedy through a totally implausible transformation of the protagonist's character. Here as in many other tragedies by Fletcher or Shirley, revenge was linked up with such an ego-centric concept of honour that it had lost its universal ethical meaning. A Woman Killed with Kindness and The Atheist's Tragedy might be considered as potential revenge tragedies in which revenge is transcended either with the spirit of forgiveness or the absolute confidence in divine providence. In The Changeling the author seems to point out incisively that a sinful crime, regardless of the motive, must inevitably germinate a revenge upon the criminal himself. The characters in Women Beware Women and The Revenger's Tragedy inhabit the heart of darkness where various evils latent in human flesh devour each other in complicated plots of revenge and counter-revenge. Webster in his two great tragedies stood above easy moralization; for him revenge was an instrument with which to set off the vain absurdity of being and extol the glory of the human soul that boldly challenges it. Massinger tried to impress somewhat melodramatically the emptiness of self-righteous human justice, whereas Ford utilized revenge only as an aesthetic medium to sustain the pale icy glow of beautified suppressed passions. Chapman in The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois tackled philosophical problems of revenge, but failed to give unity to his tragedy through the obscurity of his own footing. In Hamlet, when we reflect upon the growing cognizance in the hero of the ubiquitous providence since the incident on the sea, it seems quite reasonable to see in his killing of Claudius not so much a consummation of the revenge which occupies his whole mind in the earlier acts as an instance of divine intervention. Such an interpretation makes way for Hamlet's salvation, and brings him nearer to the hero of Oresteia in his sacrificial role.