Motif of Justice in The Revenger’s Tragedy A Close Study of Revenge and Justice in Cyril Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy

The genre of revenge tragedy has been an obsession with most writers throughout literature of different ages, starting from ancient Greek drama as seen in the works of three major tragedians, Aeschyus, Sophocles and Euripides and later dominant in the drama of the ۱۶th and ۱۷th c. England. The thematic significance of revenge became especially popular at the hands of the Jacobean dramatists. This paper endeavours to explore this ancient theme of revenge in the play The Revenger’s Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur, a Jacobean dramatist who exposes political manipulation during the course of the play and parallel to that the ultimate destruction of the avenger – Vindice whose mission is to uproot corruption but in vain, and this notion is explicit in the very title of the play.

Keywords:

damnation , hell , Evil , revenge , Justice , Corruption , Power