The Revenger's Tragedy Reactions

About 22 hours ago, I finished The Revenger's Tragedy, my third and final book (well, play in this case) for my outside reading project. Before I give my thoughts on this play, there is one unusual thing about this play. That is the fact that the authorship of the play is unclear, in that there are two playwrights who are credited this play. While most critics credit the work to Thomas Middleton, some critics credit the play to Cyril Tourneur. This unclear authorship is something unique of this play that I wanted to point out.

Overall, I enjoyed the play. This is a straight forward revenge story, just like the master piece The Count of Monte Cristo. It is about a man named Vindice who is trying to avenge his lovers death by killing the Duke. He does everything to accomplish task, be it selling his sister into prostitution for the Duke's son or giving himself a fake identity to go by. In the end, Vindice does get revenge on the Duke, making it a "happy ending" for the play, even though the play ends with a massacre.

The fact that this story was a play had both its merits and demerits. Being it a play makes it slightly harder to read, but it makes the reading shorter in terms of page length. I believe if this play were a book instead, it would lose its appeal since the style of the play fit in well with the work as a whole. Unlike The Count of Monte Cristo, I believe this work does not need as much detail compared to Dumas' masterpiece.

If I get the chance, I would love to see The Revengers Tragedy actually played out. While it was exciting enough to read it on the pages, I know it would be overwhelming to see all the greed and killing be acted out right in front of my eyes.

As a end of a year field trip, I say we take the class to go watch the The Revengers Tragedy!