Act the Fool: Antonio’s Revenge and the Conventions of the Counterfeit-Disability Tradition

Abstract

This chapter establishes the conventions of the counterfeit-disability trope and explores how those conventions both upheld and complicated the concurrent conventions of revenge tragedy. The counterfeit-disability tradition defines itself through its narrative, thematic, and generic flexibility, but specific conventions still unify it, namely, its focus on audience response. Grounded in a reading of John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (c. 1600–01), the chapter demonstrates how the dissembling of disability supports the play’s narrative structure, providing a plot device to facilitate Antonio’s delay of revenge and to inoculate him (and the audience) against the dangerous ethics of that vengeance. Further, Row-Heyveld argues that consistent attention to audience interpretation—where skillful spectators suspect counterfeit disability and faulty spectators believe and pity dissemblers—fosters suspicion about disability off-stage as well.