Female Revenge on the Early Modern Stage

Abstract

The outsized influence of Hamlet has caused “revenge tragedy” and male protagonists to dominate critical considerations of retributive violence in early modern drama. Female Revenge on the Early Modern Stage centralizes the female revenge plot in domestic tragedies, comedies, and romances as well as in conventional revenge tragedies. It makes three main claims: 1) female revengers are more common in early modern drama than has previously been realized; 2) the female revenge plot functions differently in different genres, and 3) understanding female revenge’s function in each genre reveals the plays’ political resonance for early audiences.

Chapter 1, “The ‘Now’ of Genre,” looks at four film and television representations of female revenge that serve as ways into the early modern representations in the chapters that follow: the #MeToo Western Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), the grindhouse sexploitation classic I Spit On Your Grave (1978), Tarantino’s pastiche Kill Bill, Vols. 1 & 2 (2003-4), and the dystopian series The Handmaid’s Tale (2016-). Chapter 2, “Female Revenge and the Case for Tyrannicide,” groups plays that use female revengers to assassinate despots. Acknowledging that fantasies of state justice and identity have played out on the female body since antiquity (e.g. Lucrece), the mothers and lovers of kings in Gorboduc (1561), Titus Andronicus (c. 1592-3), and The Maid’s Tragedy (1610) become legible as horrible but necessary solutions to the problem of tyranny. In Chapter 3, “Domestic Revenge Tragedy: Warnings for White Devils,” I compare the husband-murder plays Arden of Faversham (c. 1592) and Women Beware Women (c. 1621). While the plays’ homiletic frames insist that Alice, Livia, and Bianca are to be condemned, the representation of these female revengers is surprisingly ambivalent.The tension between the scene of the crime––which exhibits the female revenger as object––and the scene of the mind––which exhibits her as subject––inscribes the plays’ divergent reception possibilities. Chapter 4, “‘We Have Galls’: Revenge as Comic Counterfactual” explores female revenge as the humorous impossibility of a female educative force exerted on the male will. The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed (1611), Patient Grissil (c. 1599), and Epicene, Or The Silent Woman (1609) temporarily flip the script on marital norms as shrews tame the husbands who would tame them. Through a marriage of husband-taming and the female revenge plot, these comedies encourage audiences to laugh at women, which leads them to laugh at (and critique) the men they oppose. Lastly, Chapter 5, “Toward Revenge Comedy,” argues that The Winter’s Tale (1611) subverts the revenge tragedy template to make female revenge redemptive, speculating on what lies beyond a culture––and a theater––of retribution.