DAY 1:
What a fascinating day. So we’re all hands on deck this week working on Middleton’s “The Revenger’s Tragedy”, a tale of lusty revenge and enough bloodshed it would make Titus Andronicus shudder. We began with a discussion of our initial reactions to the play. For my part I was struck by the immediacy of the violence compared to other more brutal early modern dramas knocking around at a similar time. What became clear from the group was how upsettingly funny we had found so much of it, it’s riddled with gallows humour and characters we should hate yet keeping getting laughs through their witty one liners. We then began to delve deeper into Act 1 looking out for recurring motifs and themes such as references to clothing, money, time, nature, violence and body parts. An interesting ripple was the regular references to jewels, especially as a bartering token for sexual favours as if sending someone some jewels somehow justifies the sexual violence present in so many other parts of the play. Another was the wry reminder from Lussurioso that money talks more than a man’s word. A good question to ask when beginning world building on a play is “Why now? What actions or circumstances propel all these characters into the plot of the play so they have to act right now?” It became increasingly clear that there was a power imbalance brewing as the corrupt nobles attempt to introduce Law to their lands, only so long as it’s not used to hold them accountable of course. But oh no, look who’s in the docket: the Duke’s stepson. We finished the day by exploring this tense courtroom interaction in which the Duke at first seems to allow justice to take its course but then disbands it seconds before the gavel can fall. While we found places for the humour, we found that these lofty lords are actually now in quite a desperate spot and are trying to flex every tactic they have to make sure they won’t actually have to suffer consequences. Exciting place to leave it. Come back tomorrow for more.
DAY 2:
“Treason! Guard!”….today was a fun one. The focus of this day was to explore some of the practicalities, predicaments and permutations of some of the most key moments in the play: namely, the brutal execution of the Duke, the disguised Vindice testing his female family members’ chasteness, and the great mystery and murder that is the Revengers Dance. We approached this by mining the text for facts and actions to test our hypotheses with, which we then turned into to a series of would-be TED Talks on how the Duke is lead to his doom. In this forensic way, it really made clear the horrific lengths Vindice and Hipolito go to and it in turn threw up even more questions as to how premeditated this was versus what parts are made up of bloodlust, frenzy or the pack mentality at play. A psychologist would have a field day on these lot. When exploring the test of faith scene with the disguised Vindice, his mother and sister, once again we found that these characters aren’t making the flippant decisions that a casual read of the text might suggest, but instead may be wrestling with every utterance and the effect it has on their revolve. When they seem to turn on a dime, is it because they’re mad as some academics might say or really because they’ve been pushed to the end of their wills by the hard siege of other characters’s actions? Finally we closed out the research days by beginning to dissect the Revenger’s Dance and the mad feeding frenzy of piranhas that the characters finally devolve into. It was interesting tracking the few indicators to action that Middleton provides and it made me wonder what the dance might look like: how fantastical, farcical or brutal is it? And again, what motivates these characters to lose all reason and let the bloodbath begin? Is it wild frenzy or some strange, shook up survival instinct? More to explore but an enlightening first peek.
