ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -No, Ben Jonson’s play Volpone is not a revenge tragedy. Volpone is an incisive, satirical comedy. There is no real revenge.

Detailed explanation-2: -Shakespeare’s plays Hamlet, Othello and even King Lear may be referred to as revenge tragedies but it is Titus Andronicus that truly embraces this genre.

Detailed explanation-3: -Common ingredients include: the hero’s quest for vengeance, often at the prompting of the ghost of a murdered kinsman or loved one; scenes of real or feigned insanity; a play‐within‐a‐play; scenes in graveyards; scenes of carnage and mutilation; etc.

Detailed explanation-4: -The first really popular revenge tragedy was The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd. It was written more than a decade before Hamlet, and it was still being performed when Hamlet was first staged.

Detailed explanation-5: -revenge tragedy, drama in which the dominant motive is revenge for a real or imagined injury; it was a favourite form of English tragedy in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras and found its highest expression in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.