＂Those That Did Eat Are Eaten＂: Parasites and ＂The Revenger’s Tragedy＂

Abstract

This paper interprets the world of the court depicted by ”The Revenger's Tragedy” as one filled with social-political-sexual parasites consuming their hosts while at the same time being consumed by other parasites, a world which seems to be spinning out of control via its own ”pollution” or ”corruption” as if in the throes of a sort of mad contagion. The chaotic parasitism that marks the court society throughout this Jacobean drama merely echoes Michel Serres's view of human relations, in which our social contacts being fundamentally rooted in an inescapable pattern of eating/eaten or ”eating while being eaten.” The social and moral meanings of ”parasite” fit the many scenes of court revels and feasting in ”The Revenger's Tragedy”, a microcosm of our actual world where the contagion of parasitism spreads from individual to group to an entire society or kingdom, that is, expands throughout an entire ”body politic.” The shocking deeds of adultery, rape, incest, treachery, and murder that fill ”The Revenger's Tragedy” suggest in various ways, and on various levels, a contagious parasitism and process of decomposition. The play exemplifies what I take to be a common phenomenon within human society: the male parasitic consumption, through acts of lust and even murder, of the chaste femininity. Thus Vindice is using the chaste virgin, using the essence of her purity (her skull), as his host so that he may lure and, through her/it, indirectly kill the Duke. It becomes increasingly clear that vengeance serves not as a moral cure but merely for the sadistic and sensual pleasure of the characters. Like the parasite's strategy for survival, Vindice's continual change-of-form allows him to reside within different hosts, consuming them from within. This artificiality resists decay as much as Vindice's dressing up of Gloriana's skull. To pursue this interpretation I turn to medical investigation of parasitic infection and pollution and to Michel Serres's view of parasites in The Parasite as being in-between, eaters that are also eaten.