Essay on the Revenger’s Tragedy

How far would The Revenger’s Comedy be a more appropriate title for Middleton’s play?

Thomas Middleton’s play, The Revenger’s Tragedy, introduces to the audience a corrupt world where obsessions for vengeance lead to desires for murder, which clearly makes this play a tragic one.
But The Revenger’s Tragedy can be considered as well as a comic play concerning some elements, and we’ll see therefore how far The Revenger’s Comedy would be a more appropriate title for this play.

First of all, disguises, which are often used by the characters, constitute an important aspect of the comic part in this play. Indeed, Vindice always appears disguised as Piato, a fictive character, in front of Lussurioso, and when the latter asks Vindice to find him Piato, the scene turns laughable for Vindice is supposed to find a man who both doesn’t exist and is himself: “An impossible task, I’ll swear, to bring him hither that’s already here” [IV; ii;174]
It is also pleasing for the audience to feel superior when admiring the way Lussurioso is fooled by a disguised Vindice; whereas the audience perfectly knows who is under the mask. Even without the use of disguises, the characters in The Revenger’s Tragedy can be mistaken about an identity. It is the case when Ambitioso and Supervacuo order an Officer to execute Lussurioso and when Junior, the one they wanted to release from jail, got killed instead.
Due to the facial and verbal reaction of Ambitioso and Supervacuo when they discover their brother’s head in a bag, the audience is thus led to laugh in spite of the macabre situation: “O furies! Plagues! Confusions! Darkness! Devils! ” [III;vi]. Therefore, the tragic aspect of the play is lightened by the use of black comedy.

In addition to this one, other surprising discoveries are present throughout this play. For instance, when Lussurioso discovers the Duke and Duchess in bed instead of Spurio and the Duchess as he had expected, it