Aphorisms on Revenge Tragedy

(1) Theology (Gk. θεολογια, L. theologia): The dramatic tension in much revenge tragedy has its origin in the presumption of divinity, not only its existence but also its ultimately felicitous interaction with humanity, though this theology can rarely be authenticated in the action of the drama.

(2) Justice (Gk. dikh, L. ius): The presumption of an ethical governing intelligence produces in the protagonist and his society a belief in cosmic justice, the notion that divinity influences the course of the universe such that virtue is rewarded and vice punished. In other words, each person gets his or her due.

(3) Honor (Gk. timh, L. honos): Since divinity justly governs the universe with a system of rewards and punishments, a character’s past behavior and ethical capacity can be retroactively reasoned from that person’s fortune. A theology of cosmic justice produces a culture of honor, a world in which you are what you appear to be, so that reputation must be guarded at all costs.

(4) Injustice (Gk. adikia, L. iniuria): If a crime does not engender a commensurate punishment, or if there exists a discrepancy between behavior and fortune – and this is how most revenge tragedy begins, with a ghost’s revelation of injustice or the protagonist’s recollection of it – then both the system of cosmic justice and the culture of honor are in danger of collapse.

(5) Shame (Gk. aidwz, L. pudor): When the protagonist or his family is the victim of a crime, and that crime goes unpunished, he is shamed – his honor soiled, as he says, usually in declamatory lamentation – a great danger because in his culture this embarrassment signals a corresponding ethical inferiority.

(6) Madness (): Because the apparently random operation of the universe so clearly differs from the rational organization hitherto presumed, the unfairly shamed protagonist grows increasingly confused, often signaled in the equivocation and intricate wordplay of the seemingly madman’s quips.

(7) Anger (Gk. orgh, L. ira): When the protagonist stops trying to understand the failure of cosmic justice and the culture of honor, and begins to think about how hard it will be to oppose the society that has perverted them, shame and confusion translate to anger, often voiced in inconsolable ranting, sometimes at nothing in particular but frequently at women or the feminine.

(8) Indignation (Gk. nemesiz, L. indignatio): Anger unalleviated becomes righteous indignation toward the unpunished criminal and the community that has willingly perverted the system of cosmic justice, in contrast to the protagonist who now sees himself alone as virtuous, a frustration often manufacturing a series of hilarious but reckless insults hurled in public with no consideration of the cost.

(9) Vindication (Gk. ekdikew, L. purgatio): Knowing his society judges him by his reputation, which currently is poor, the protagonist feels compelled to set the world aright. As he outlines his his great soliloquies, the protagonist can at once restore his honor and confirm the existence of cosmic justice if he can expose the injustice against his family and punish its perpetrator, which means that the protagonist views himself as an agent, if not a scourge, of God. In other words, the protagonist projects his crisis onto divinity, so that the truth of cosmic justice can only be confirmed by the restoration of protagonist’s honor.

(10) Vigilantism (Gk. ubriz, L. proscriptus): The failure of society to conform to the tenets of cosmic justice provides the protagonist with the justification for suspending civil law in order to legislate his own sense of justice, which he believes comes from God.

(11) Propriety (Gk. to prepon, L. decorum): The suspension of civil law in order to follow divine law means that everyone – both protagonist and antagonists – is guilty in one sense or another, and the dramatic decorum that governs revenge tragedy allows for only one outcome for a guilty person: death.

(12) Reciprocity (Gk. antipeponqoz, L. lex talionis): Since civic law has failed, the protagonist personally imposes the law of reciprocity, or the notion that legal consequences must perfectly answer injustices, an aspect of the drama often signaled rhetorically in figures like polyptoton (e.g. “the killer must be killed”).

(13) Craft (Gk. poihthz, L. auctor): The protagonist desires a response to injustice that is as powerful as the original crime itself. He imagines an ideal retribution, often causing a delay since he refuses to act until that perfect stage for revenge is set, which is to say that the protagonist in his quest for revenge begins to think like a playwright. In other words, cosmic justice looks exactly like poetic justice, and while the protagonist cannot be a god he can still be a playwright. Vengeance alone can satisfy his legal, ethical, and theological desires, but only a theatrically compelling vengeance can satisfy the protagonist’s psychological desires, and he plots his revenge as a dramatist plots a play, usually complete with disguises and stage managing.

(14) Spectacle (Gk.oyiz, L. spectaculum): The revenger’s desire for a public vindication means that his retribution must be a spectacle, on show for all to see, resulting in the play-within-the-play or some variation of a large celebration that ends the revenge tragedy.

(15) Disaster (Gk. katastrofh, L. calamitas): The meticulous orchestration of the spectacle ensures that the catastrophe will be horrific, leaving no guilty party alive, including the protagonist, whose death answers his guilt in breaking civil law in order to follow a higher law. Even as the protagonist dies violating the civil law, he does so while enforcing (he believes) divine law, which allows him to die a satisfactory death knowing that he has pleased the judge of all judges, God, whose judgment usually appears in the form or a thunderclap, earthquake, or other meteorological disturbance.

(16) Blood Feud (Vendetta) or Civilization (): The end of revenge tragedy promises one of two possible futures, either a blood-feud that perpetuates the culture of honor, those left alive seeking to avenge the injustices of the play now finished, or a moment of civilization in which legal authority is conferred onto a new sovereign who establishes the rule of law to deal with anyone left alive.