Dramatic Themes Research Articles

Aiola Nux : The Musical Design Of Sophocles’ Trachiniae

Abstract: In the original performance of Sophocles’ Trachiniae , song and dance were essential in communicating dramatic theme and character. Tragic choreia is structurally defined by paired stanzas: the antistrophe repeats the melody of the strophe but reverses its direction of dance. In Trachiniae , this antistrophic structure becomes thematic, representing the fateful bond between Deianeira and Heracles and the resulting narrative repetitions/reversals. Digital analysis of pitch accents reveals that this musical metaphor was reinforced melodically through the development of a “shimmering” circumflex motif, culminating in Heracles’ melismatic monody. Through this musical framing, Sophocles situates his tragedy in relation to other genres (epic, paean) and to musical developments in the fifth century.

Preschool children’s discourses on gender during dramatic play from critical perspective

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to explore dramatic play processes from a Marxist-Feminist perspective as a context in which preschool children express their understanding of gender and related issues. This qualitative study utilized critical discourse analysis to focus on the meaning created among children through their interaction while playing. The current study, with its idea of the active construction of gender and its critical attitude, goes beyond other studies that focus only on stereotypes and are influenced by constructivist approaches. The children's discourses on gender are organized into four Marxist-Feminist related categories as stereotypes, false consciousness, inequality in production, and power relations. The results showed that the inequalities in the social context of children are reflected in the educational environment through dramatic themes, play roles, and materials used in dramatic play. At the same time, children challenged these inequalities from time to time by using the dramatic structure.

Психолінгвістична характеристика дискурсу з компонентом «чорний колір» (на прикладі творів Е.М. Ремарка)

In recent decades, colour vocabulary has been actively studied by the Ukrainian and foreign scientists. Modern Linguistics has significant achievements in research of this issue, however, some of its aspects, in particular, psycholinguistic characteristics of the discourse with a colour element, still remain relevant and poorly researched. Colour has always played an important role in artistic discourse. The names of individual writers are inextricably associated with certain coloronyms, which is a so-called marker in their work. One example of this phenomenon is the colour black, that is dominant in the discourse of E.M. Remarque, which, given the mostly dramatic themes of the author’s novels, is quite expected, especially if the fact is considered through the prism of Psycholinguistics. The purpose of the given scientific investigation is to provide psycholinguistic characteristics of the discourse with the «black colour» component in E.M. Remarque’s works and to identify the impact it has on the reader in the process of perceiving the outstanding author’s texts. Implementation of the stated tasks of research involved the integrational usage of general scientific methods (such as description, induction, deduction), as well as the analysіs of dictionary definitions, current native and foreign psycholinguistic sources; contextual and structural-thematic analysis; modelling and classification of actual material. The results of the analysis of the Remarque’s discourse with the «black colour» component allow us drawing the following conclusion: the coloronym «schwarz» in E.M. Remarque’s is characterised by a wide semantic content, wherein the black colour is used by the writer both to determine the colour of the described object neutrally and to convey figurative negative semantics. Lexemes denoting black, in their direct meaning, indicate the colour of the depicted object directly. Using the colour nomination «schwarz» in symbolic meaning, the author resorts to «painting» in dark natural phenomena, which are not characterised by black; depicts dishonest and illegal actions; demonstrates negative attitude towards people. Using the specified colour nomination as the colour of clothing, objects, buildings, as well as emotions, experiences and feelings, non-verbal means of intensification the semantics of “black” – the designation of poses, gestures, facial expressions, body movements the author demonstrates not only his personal attitude towards the characters of his novels, but by focusing the consciousness of the reader on their difficult psychological and physical state, he encourages to rethink the causes and consequences of their actions. Stable association with the black colour, peculiar for a long historical and cultural development of mankind, and therefore with sad events in human life, losses, failures, loneliness, is verbalized in all analysed Remarque’s works. Thus, the black colour is the necessary element of the psycholinguistic portrait of Remarque’s character.

Assessment of Hemophilia and Associated Risk Factors at Rural Area of Sindh Pakistan

Background: Hemophilia is a genetic disorder related to blood, in which the blood is impotent to clot the draining due to paucity of blood clotting factor.
 Objective: The dramatic theme of this research was to evaluate the knowledge skills about hemophilia in healthy individuals and cradle regarding familiarity of this ailment was also evaluated.
 Methods: Crossectional randomized research was conducted on 274 study subject’s normal population of rural areas of Sindh and frequent questions apropos cognizance of this disease were probed from all participants and SPSS software was used for the analysis of the data.
 Results: From the given data, it was estimated that 59% of the population were familiar with hemophilia, whereas 36% study subjects had no idea about this disease, feminine gender were more familiar with risk factors and people who had more knowledge about hemophilia were graduate in qualification. Chi Square value was found 0.001.
 Conclusion: It was concluded from the research that there should be promotional seminars should be conducted from health care providers regarding hemophilia and its risk factors.

COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGY OF DRAMA LYRIZATION

The article is devoted to the study of the communicative strategy of drama lyrization. The study was based on the works by Oleksander Oles. In modern literary criticism, the lyrization of drama is associated with the subjectivization of dramatic action. Different types of lyrical composition of drama serve for the structural organization of the author's emotions and thus implement the communicative strategy of lyrization of drama through rhythmic-intonational organization of the text, polyphony of the author's position, musicality of the text, combination of stage realism and artistic conventionality. Expression in a lyrical drama realizes many meanings, which are often transmitted through a metaphor or a symbol. One of the functions of this type of expression in lyrical drama is to blur the line between the poetic experience and the word, which has absorbed the potential of the poet's feelings, and to give it a symbolic status. At the level of the genre in the late nineteenth - early twentieth century the dramatic theme is actualized, which is a reflection of the tendency to lyricize the drama. It is realized by the poeticization of drama as a manifestation of communicativeness or operable properties of lyricism in drama, when the laws of lyricism become the structure-forming foundation of drama. Based on the communicative strategy of form transformation, Oleksandr Oles managed to create a lyrical drama with no traditional division into actions or acts. Instead, there is only a graphical-mathematical division into episodes, which unite the text of the play with a dream vision, a model of in life, which has a conditionally ironic game character. Due to the vision of the dream, the author of the drama actualized the world - theater, symbolized the chronotope of the play, giving it a conditional and playful-ironic character.

McGuinness's Music

Throughout his long and varied playwriting career, Frank McGuinness has made extensive use of music from a plurality of genres. Music plays a variety of roles in the plays, supporting and enriching dramatic themes and moods. The music of Irish English, particularly the music of his native Donegal, is also an important element, often used in contrast to accents from other areas and classes. Music in a McGuinness play may be diegetic or incidental. Music and the music of language may involve counterpoint, balance, underscoring, delight, or a contrast to surrounding silence. Donegal (2016) continues McGuinness's habit of incorporating musical works of various origins and styles, but it also includes pieces co-created by Kevin Doherty (music) and McGuinness (lyrics). It is the latest evidence that in a McGuinness play music and musical language carry meanings important to the drama.

The Art of Resistance: Cultural Protest against the Austrian Far Right in the Early Twenty-First Century by Allyson Fiddler

Reviewed by: The Art of Resistance: Cultural Protest against the Austrian Far Right in the Early Twenty-First Century by Allyson Fiddler Joseph W. Moser Allyson Fiddler, The Art of Resistance: Cultural Protest against the Austrian Far Right in the Early Twenty-First Century. New York: Berghahn, 2019. 214 pp. Austria has undergone tremendous political changes from 1986 to the present, which transformed the once politically quiet and consensus driven post-war country to a fundamentally politically polarized nation, in which a significant part of the political resistance is conducted by means of cultural productions. Kurt Waldheim's election as president and the simultaneous rise of Jörg Haider and his Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) in 1986 contributed both to Austria gradually shedding the founding myth of the Second Republic as the first victim of Hitler's aggression, but it also led to the rise of new right-wing populism. The formation of coalitions with the FPÖ and the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) in 2000–2002 and 2002–2006 as well as 2017– 2019 led to a diverse range of cultural protests against the Austrian far right, which Allyson Fiddler—one of the leading experts on this topic—carefully examines in her book The Art of Resistance, focusing on the turn of the millennium and the ÖVP-FPÖ coalitions from 2000 to 2006. The first chapter provides an overview of political developments from 1986 to 2000 as well as the cultural protests in those years, which furthermore provides readers with an overview of how Waldheim and Haider polarized the country. The second chapter, entitled "Performing Politics: On the Sounds, Symbols and Sites of Resistance," examines protests in the early 2000s from Christoph Schlingensief's "Ausländer raus!" shipping container and Paul Poet's 2002 documentary film about this project to a series of political musical performances. Very importantly, this chapter also emphasizes the enacting of everyday cultural resistance in Austria. In chapter 3, "Novel Responses: Protest in Prose," the author examines Ernst Molden's Doktor Paranoiski (2001), Erika Pluhar's Die Wahl (2003), Marlene Streeruwitz's novels and Walter Wippersberg's trilogy of political thrillers. Additionally, [End Page 127] Fiddler examines a wide range of short stories by Paulus Hochgatterer, Eva Jancak, Dieter Schrage, El Awadalla, Luca Kilian Kräuter, Hoppelmann Karottnig, Richard Weihs, Brigitte Tauer, and many more, closing the chapter with a discussion of Gerhard Haderer and Leo Lukas's graphic novel Jörgi der Drachentöter (2000). The fourth chapter, "Projecting Protest: Resistance on Screen," deals with film, of which Ruth Beckermann's Homemad(e) (2001) and Peter Kern's 1. April 2021—Haider lebt stand out among several other shorter films. The fifth chapter, "Staging Resistance: Dramatic Themes and Interventions," focuses on plays by Elfriede Jelinek, Franzobel, Streeruwitz, and Robert Menasse and also shows how theater could be brought to the streets of Vienna. This book overall offers a rich selection of well-known and also more obscure artists and their cultural productions. In her conclusion, the author argues that while Austria did not have a far-right government between 2006 and 2017, that does not mean that art did not have any reason to protest. This can be seen in Elfriede Jelinek's Schutzbefohlenen (2013), which deals with the so-called refugee crisis. Robert Schindel's novel Der Kalte (2013), his sequel to Gebürtig (1992) and Ruth Beckermann's film Waldheims Walzer (2018), as well as further episodes of Marlene Streeruwitz's So wird das Leben are mentioned, as well as Tony Glasberg's Land im Sumpf (2017), which is a fictionalized portrayal of what would happen if a neo-Nazi group took over the government. And Fiddler makes it clear that this topic is an ongoing work in progress for the artists who will continue to produce works of resistance, and there is no doubt that there will be other new artists who will become known in years to come to work on this issue. This book is remarkable for closing an important gap in Austrian Studies scholarship on contemporary politics and specifically the cultural responses and resistance to far-right wing governments in Austria. The political situation in a country...

Las otras Raquel: El Diálogo trágico de José March y Borrás

This paper deal with another text dedicated to treat with the traditional dramatic theme of the legend of Raquel, the Jewish of Toledo of which the Castilian King Alfonso VIII supposedly fell in love: Dialogo tragico. Intitulado La Raquel. Facil de egecutar en casas particulares. Sacado de la historia y adornado con intervalos de musica. Por un aficionado, written by the Castellon-born Jose March y Borras, a work not well known until the present, and not mentioned between the creations that historically dealt with those same issues. In this article, the Dialogo tragico is framed in the dramatic tradition in which it is inserted; it is dentified the group of works of the Enlightenment to which it belongs, and the historic literary genre that is its own; the data that is preserved about its unknown author is provided; the composition received by the same is studied; information are rescued about the printers who made it known in their century; and a modern edition of it is made, in order to make it available to interested readers. With everything, it has been tried to contribute to rescue an important part of Spanish bibliographical heritage, that, until now, it has remained in the shade, and to complete, in this way, the usually presented panorama of the Spanish culture and Literature of the age of the Enlightenment.

Becoming-minoritarian in Paco Bezerra’s Grooming and El señor Ye ama los dragones

Marginalization is at the core of Paco Bezerra’s work. The dramatic themes explored in his plays are varied, ranging from molestation, feminism, ecoterrorism, and immigration to bullying and many others. However, on another level throughout his oeuvre, there is always another element that stems from the marginalization aspect embedded in the dramatic conflict: a far more insidious and entrenched rotten core that affects everything and everyone on stage. While most of his characters are clearly beleaguered on the grounds of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, or a combination of several biases that act unabashedly on the surface, there is also an unrelenting criticism toward a higher form of political oppression or authoritarianism that pervades each play. In this article, I examine Bezerra’s Grooming and El señor Ye ama los dragones as enunciative acts of oppositional discursive strategy to show how the marginalization process, at the two levels sketched above, occurs. By analyzing the plays under Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of minoritarian, minor literature and becoming-minoritarian, we can witness how marginalization functions to rupture the fragile order in Bezerra’s plays at both levels. Hereby we can see that the playwright has created works that belong to a minor language as defined by Deleuze and Guattari. Examining the move from the particular issue at hand, the dramatic motor, to some larger unspecified phenomena, suggests a potentially troubling forecast for Spanish society.

At the Discourse-Myth interface: A Corpus-based Analysis of Mourning Becomes Electra

The Electra-myth as a dramatic theme has an outstanding expressive capacity. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize the interplay between myth and discourse in O'Neill's trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra. In so doing, Corpus Linguistics is the research method adopted in this study. Keyword in Context (KWIC), frequency and collocation are three techniques provided by the software AntConc 3.5.7 (Anthony, 2018) and applied for data analysis. The interrelationships among characters, which are verbally portrayed as a linguistic manifestation of the Greek myth in discourse, are depicted through these tools. The untypical mother-daughter relationship has its atypical father-daughter/ mother-son counterparts that portray a tragic atmosphere shadowed by the gloomy scent of the Electra-myth. Discursive practices serve as linguistic realizations that bridge the gap between the mythical and the real. Results highlight the effective role played by corpus-based studies to underpin modern discourse analysis.

Virtue and Vice on Stage

Philo’s claims to have attended the theater are well known; yet the extent to which dramatic themes inform his writings remains to be explored. This study juxtaposes two of Philo’s treatises that engage with drama in disparate ways. First, in the Legatio ad Gaium, drawing on contemporary disdain for acting, Philo criticizes the emperor’s theatrical pretentions. Coupled with his aspirations for divine honors, Philo depicts Gaius’ passion for performing as particularly contemptuous. More than mere personal folly, however, Gaius’ administration was an enactment of a tragic plot in which the Jews had become the dramatic victims. By contrast, in Quod omnis probus liber sit, Philo provides a string of exempla in support of the Stoic paradox that the virtuous person is truly free, even if enslaved; among these are two popular dramatic heroes: Polyxena and Heracles. The contrast between these two treatises foregrounds the complexity of Philo’s relationship with the stage: on the one hand, the bloody violence of tragedy is emblematic of Gaius’ policies toward the Jews; on the other, individual dramatis personae are evoked as embodying the ideals of virtue.

DECONSTRUCTING FALSE IDENTITY: EXPLORING GENDER DISCRIMINATION AND ROLE-PLAYING IN THE GIRL WHO TOUCHED THE STARS

Mahesh Dattani, is an avant-garde Indian English dramatist known for his radical and unconventional dramatic themes. His plays are characterized by an extremely sensitive temperament that delves into the intricacies of the human nature and strives to expose the hypocrisy of the urban life and society. This paper discusses his play The Girl Who Touched the Stars as a quest for a lost identity. In doing so, the paper sheds light upon the underlying themes of gender discrimination, misogyny and role-playing that the playwright uses in this play to show how much these evils are rampant even amongst the educated classes of the society. Specifically, the paper explores the deconstruction of identity of the protagonist as employed by the playwright and examines the implications this technique has on the narrative of the play. The interconnection between the role-playing and the inherent theme of gender discrimination is also analyzed in order to see how these elements complement each other. Also, the paper comments on the efficacy of radio drama as a medium for handling a sensitive theme like this.

Thomas Adès and Meredith Oakes: The Tempest

Abstract This article analyses the opera The Tempest, composed by Thomas Adès to a text written for him by Meredith Oakes (after Shakespeare); it was first staged at The Royal Opera House in London in 2004. The text is first examined for its relationship with Shakespeare’s original play; the plot, cuts, transpositions and significant additions are all examined; then the relationship between the dramatic themes of the opera and those of the source text, and the ways in which direct quotations from Shakespeare are used and reworked, are also considered. In these last two sections the music of the opera begins to feature in the analysis, and text and music are examined as an integrated whole in the sections that follow, which discuss in turn the four principal characters Prospero, Caliban, Miranda and Ariel. Two closing sections consider aspects of the structure and style of the music that have not been explored earlier in the article. There are numerous quotations from the libretto, three plates and five music examples.

Heidegger’s (Dramatic?) Dialogues

Taking my cue from the richly dramatic character of the Platonic dialogues and how that dramatic character informs the thought therein, I attempt a reading of Heidegger’s dialogue on a country path that takes similar account of the dramatic themes of that dialogue. Accordingly, I address such themes as the fact that the characters of the dialogue are not given personal names, the fact that it is and must be a dialogue that occurs on a country path, and the strange interactions of the three characters. The paper culminates in a discussion of the role of “night,” which, I argue, functions as our guiding image of Ereignis.

Between cosmopolitanism and nationhood: Italian opera in the early nineteenth century

The revival of interest in music evident in recent historiography has led to an investigation of the specifically transnational nature of musical languages and practices. This article explores the possibility of re-reading in a transnational perspective the classical theme of the relationship between the Risorgimento and opera. It focuses on two different points of view: on the one hand, the construction of the librettos as a delicate balance between European romantic narratives and dramatic themes evoking nationalistic sentiments; on the other, the fact that ideas and practices of the theatre as a vehicle of political mobilisation developed in a broad international context where Mazzini and many other nationalists found inspiration in multinational political experiences and discourses. The article concludes by saying that the meanings of terms such as cosmopolitanism and nationalism need to be carefully weighed when we look at nineteenth-century opera production. Only in the closing decades of the century did genuine competition between national traditions arise, which led in Italy to a veritable ‘obsession’ with ‘Italianness’ in music.

«Atiérrame el porvenir»: la Confesión de Juan Fernández de Heredia

El artículo es un primer paso hacia el estudio exhaustivo de la producción religiosa de Juan Fernández de Heredia. La poesía de uno de los más importantes representantes de la corte de Germana de Foix no ha sido, sino en años recientes, objeto de análisis pormenorizado y menos lo han sido sus composiciones religiosas. En efecto, los textos devotos de Fernández de Heredia son un número exiguo frente a su amplia producción de tema amoroso y de tipo tradicional. Sin embargo, a pesar del número reducido de composiciones, la poesía religiosa de don Juan se imprimió por primera vez seis años antes de que saliera la editio princeps de sus Obras en 1562, puesto que vio la luz en 1556 en la primera edición española del Cancionero de Jorge de Montemayor. El objetivo del trabajo es averiguar qué tipo de textos religiosos escribió Fernández de Heredia y, sobre todo, si su poesía devota es asimilable, y en qué medida, a la producción de finales del xv principio del xvi del mismo ámbito temático o si presenta —como hemos intentado demostrar en trabajos anteriores a propósito de su poesía amorosa—, frente a esa tradición diferencias, en algunos casos especialmente relevantes, procedentes de la gran tradición lírica valenciana cuya cumbre es Ausiàs March. El artículo se centra especialmente en el análisis de la Obra exhortando la obligación que el cristiano tiene de confesar y lo que debe hacer —o, mejor dicho, la Confesión— y demuestra, una vez más, que Juan Fernández de Heredia funde en sus versos tradiciones poéticas diferentes fijando su mirada, también en este caso, en la producción de su gran coterráneo, en concreto en el Cant espiritual, texto con el que el poema de don Juan comparte el dramático tema de la contritio y de la dificultad de llegar a un sincero arrepentimiento y en cuyos versos es posible detectar en más de una ocasión la fuente directa de nuestro poeta.

Review of Morgan Y. Liu, Under Solomon’s Throne: Uzbek Visions of Renewal in Osh

In a body of scholarly literature on Central Asia that has tended to foreground dramatic themes, polarized identities and the grand abstractions of ‘transition’, Morgan Liu’s carefully crafted portrait of Uzbek social imaginaries in the city of Osh is a striking and refreshing contribution.Under Solomon’s Throne is an urban portrait in miniature. It is at once a brilliant example of the capacity for immersive, long-term fieldwork to bring new light to enduring questions of urban conviviality, and a demonstration that subtle, multilayered analysis can be rendered in clear and accessible prose. Liu’s focus is on what he calls Uzbek social imaginaries. An ‘imaginary’ here is a regularly structured, socially organised and tacitly held model of the social and political world: one that is learned in, and articulated through, the spaces of the city. Liu’s is an expressly ‘ground up’ approach; social relations are not merely played out in place, he argues, but ‘constituted by it in a fundamental sense’ (p. 135). His ethnographic narrative draws upon extensiveUzbekand Russian-language fieldwork in several Uzbek-majority mahallas (residential communities) in Kyrgyzstan’s second city, Osh, between 1993 and 2011. This extended temporal scope, perhaps unique in the growing ethnographic literature on the region, illuminates an ongoing process of social navigation, as Osh Uzbek men use their city to calibrate the virtues and failings of two very different models of post-Soviet statehood, those of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The result is a manylayered story of social complexity and social change. Uzbekistan’s protectionist economic policy, led by the seemingly khan-like Islam Karimov, for instance, invited pervasive praise from Liu’s male Uzbek interlocutors in 1995. Ten years later, after an unprecedented demonstration of state violence in Uzbekistan towards unarmed protestors, the range of attitudes was much more diverse, and many Osh Uzbeks felt relieved to live in the relatively freer environment of Kyrgyzstan. Liu’s attentiveness to the practice of social navigation enables him to bring a nuanced voice to debates about Kyrgyz-Uzbek relations that are often conducted in sharply polarised terms. His research was undertaken in a context of considerable economic Cont Islam (2015) 9:109–112 DOI 10.1007/s11562-013-0260-0

A Tale of Two Cities: Symbolic Capital and Larp Community Formation in Canada and Sweden

Larp events are not isolated, but happen in a larger context of a community of larpingparticipants. Like all communities, members will share ideas about good and bad practices and behaviour and develop norms that tie the members together. Organizers can then use language to communicate which practices they emphasize as important, and what they consider good or bad practices for their event. Such norms can invoked for the purpose of legitimizing the larp in the community and can then be transformed into attributes of symbolic capital with a power of their own. In this way, the events build on, and generate, such symbolic attributes, which take on significance for community homogenization. Larpevents can thus be seen as an expression of established community practices.
 The purpose of this article is to locate common attributes of symbolic capital in the presentations of eight larps from two cities, Edmonton, Canada, and Stockholm, Sweden. The documents of the larps are analysed using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory, which discusses how symbolic capital can structure social space, to identify common denominators and reveal central community values.
 The inquiry concludes that different symbols for proper larp have been adopted in the two cities, where the Edmonton community has a strong emphasis on rule-books and mechanics, while the Stockholm community is focusing more on the exploration of dramatic themes and authenticity. This indicates that the two communities can be thought of as different social spaces, distinctly separate from each other. The article also includes a discussion about the potential implications of authoritative symbols and their role as a homogenizing force within a larp community.

Chance Encounters of the Musical Kind: Electronica and Audiovisual Synchronization in Three Films Directed by Tom Tykwer

Abstract This essay examines the interaction of electronica music, editing, and shot composition in three films directed by Tom Tykwer, all of which share the dramatic theme of the chance encounter, and all of which were scored by Tykwer in collaboration with pop-music composers and producers Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil. By using electronica music, the films train the audience’s attention to subtle changes of musical texture, which, when synchronized to changes in the image, help to convey the theme of the chance encounter. I argue further that the compositional practices that characterize Tykwer’s approach to film music constitute a fundamental shift not only from the leitmotif-bound tradition of classical Hollywood scoring but also from that same tradition’s Romantic conception of the single, creative artist who works within a musical canon associated with high art.

Vengeance, Variously: Revenge Before Kyd in Early Elizabethan Drama

Though it is a critical commonplace that English revenge tragedy began with Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy , there has been little systematic discussion of how revenge fared as a dramatic theme before Kyd’s inaugural work. This essay reexamines the importance of revenge in early Elizabethan drama, by broadly surveying its thematic and rhetorical prominence in the corpus of extant plays that predate Kyd’s tragedy. The prominence of revenge in pre-Kydian drama reveals that The Spanish Tragedy intensifies and systematizes structurally a theme that had for decades already been a well-worn mainstay on the English stage. A study of early dramatic revenge provides the basis for a more contextually sensitive account of revenge tragedy’s origin, and of its larger relationship to contemporary Elizabethan theatre.