If Looks Could Kill: Fathers and Sons in The Revenger’s Tragedy

Abstract

If Looks Could Kill: Fathers and Sons in The Revenger's Tragedy Stephen Wigler The Revenger's Tragedy is characterized by unusual cruelty which strikingly calls attention to the human eye. Strangely, this aspect of a much admired and studied play seems largely ig­ nored.1 I think that examining the iterated eye and sight images, however, makes the play's treatment of violence and sexuality seem less gratuitous. Moreover, I hope that such an investigation will also enlighten the play's incest motif, and clarify its relation­ ship to the central revenge. Let us begin by collecting a few of the many references to the eyes. As Lussurioso approaches the bed in which he believes that his brother Spurio is committing incest with their stepmother, he declares thus and thus I'll shake their eyelids ope, and with my sword Shut 'em again forever.2 (II.iii.5-7) When Vindice, the revenger of the title, and his brother Hip­ polito arrange the murder of the duke, they devise tortures which center obsessively with their victim's eyes. They plan to make him watch the incest of his son and duchess because this "most affecting sight will kill his eyes before we kill the rest of him" (ill.v.23-24). As the poisoned duke is slowly and painfully dying, Vindice and Hippolito terrify him by showing him that the "country lady" he has kissed is truly a "bony lady" (i.e., Gloriana's poisoned skull): Place the torch ... that his affrighted eyeballs May start into these hollows. (III.v.145-46) Then the two revengers announce that ''To afflict thee more 206 Stephen Wigler 207 [your] eyes shall see the incest of. their lips," and the duke pleads "kill me not with that sight'' (ID.v.179f). But Vindice is resolute in his conviction that looks can kill and it appears that it is the duke's eyes he particularly wants to destroy. With sadistic glee that is logically incomprehensible, he informs his victim that "·thou shalt not lose/ That sight for all thy dukedom." As the duke continues to protest, Vindice tells Hippolito: If he but wink, not brooking the foul object, Let our two other hands tear up his lids And make his eyes like comets shine through blood. (III.v.196-98) The incestuous meeting, to which the duke is obliged to listen and to watch, ironically reflects upon his murder. Spurio has a twinge of conscience but his step-mother warns "forget him, or I'll poison him." Spurio insists that poison wouldn't be neces­ sary, and startlingly equates looking with killing. If the duke could see their embraces, Spurio tells his mother, he would not hesitate to add parricide to incest: So deadly do I loathe him • . . That if he took me hasp'd within his bed, I would add murder to adultery, And with my sword give up his years to death. (III.v.210-13) Looking is also associated with death when Lussurioso is intro­ duced to the undisguised Vindice. As the Prince gives him gold to murder "Piato," the revenger feigns blindness: VINDICE. LUSSURIOSO. VINDICE. 0, mine eyes! How now, man? Almost struck blind; This bright unusual shine to me seems proud Idare not look till the sun be in a cloud. (IV.iii.109-12) The "sun be in a cloud" looks forward, of course, to the murder of Lussurioso (the Duk.e's son), and perhaps suggests Vindice's killing "look." The use of the eye to suggest violence and danger is a Renaissance Commonplace. In The Anatomy of Melancholy, Burton re-creatively reports sources like Ficino who "prove" that by sight alone make others blear-eyed; and it is more than manifest that the vapours of the corrupt 208 Comparative Drama blood doth get in together with the rays of the eyes, and so by the contagion the spectator's eyes are in­ fected. Other arguments there are of a basilisk, that kills afar off by sight, as that Ephesian did of whom Philostratus speaks, of so pernicious an eye; he poisoned all he looked steadily on: and that other argument, menstruae feminae, . out of Aristotle...