Revenge tragedy

Revenge tragedy (less commonly referred to as revenge drama, revenge play, or tragedy of blood) defines a genre of plays made popular in early modern England. Ashley H. Thorndike formally established this genre in his seminal 1902 article "The Relations of Hamlet to Contemporary Revenge Plays," which characterizes revenge tragedy "as a tragedy whose leading motive is revenge and whose main action deals with the progress of this revenge, leading to the death of the murderers and often the death of the avenger himself." Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (c.1580s) is often considered the inaugural revenge tragedy on the early modern stage. However, more recent research extends early modern revenge tragedy to the 1560s with poet and classicist Jasper Heywood's translations of Seneca at Oxford University, including Troas (1559), Thyestes (1560), and Hercules Furens (1561). Additionally, Thomases Norton and Sackville's play Gorbuduc (1561) is considered an early revenge tragedy (almost twenty years prior to The Spanish Tragedy). Other well-known revenge tragedies include William Shakespeare's Hamlet (c.1599-1602) and Titus Andronicus (c.1588-1593) and Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy (c.1606).