Revenge as a Mirror of Corruption in Shakespearean Drama

Abstract

Speaking in general terms, a revenge play is a genre of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in which the protagonist is seen to seek revenge since, sometimes imaginatively, sometimes in reality, he has been exposed to injustice and/or injury and wronged. The approach to the notion of revenge was dualistic in early modern culture. Revenge was something accepted and approved in the feudal world. However, in the early modern period, it was solely God who had the responsibility of taking revenge. Plays which ended with the accomplishment of the avenger are indicative of the fact that feudal codes were more powerful than the Christian ones. However, the Christian notion of revenge in which God might be the only avenger was actually praised since it was believed that the sovereign represented God. Thus, early modern revenge plays, especially revenge tragedies, reflected this twofold consideration on the subject. Undoubtedly, Shakespeare was among those dramatists of the Renaissance period who illustrated his time’s ambivalent treatment of the notion of revenge. This study proposes a reading of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar and Hamlet focussing on the notion of revenge to demonstrate that Shakespeare embedded revenge in his plays to mirror or even emphasize social/political corruption and inequity. Thus, the paper contends that Shakespeare’s depiction of revenge becomes a solid metaphor to dramatize justice and the judicial system in the selected plays.