User:DecreasingQuisby/Revenge play

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Most scholars argue that the revenge tragedies of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries stemmed from Roman tragedy, in particular, Seneca's Thyestes. Seneca's tragedies followed three main themes: the inconsistency of fortune (Troades), stories of crime and the evils of murder (Thyestes), and plays in which poverty, chastity and simplicity are celebrated (Hippolytus).

In Thyestes, Seneca portrayed the evil repercussions of murder. In order to exact revenge on his brother Thyestes for adultery with his wife, Atreus lures him to Argos under the pretext of a shared rule, but instead tricks him into eating the cooked flesh of his own children. Seneca's criminals (in this case Thyestes) are always deserving of their punishment unless they repent, since he believed the will to do evil is entirely in the hands of the individual, who must therefore be appropriately punished. This ethical logic becomes complicated, however, since the revenging murder is also a crime, transforming the revenger into a criminal, and thus prompting retribution on behalf of the punished.

While taken from Greek and roman source material, many early Elizabethan plays with revenge themes had those themes exacerbated by the English translators. That is to say, the original stories were vengeance focused, but when rewritten and staged in England, they had an even greater focus on gruesome revenge.