shakemenu.GIF - 5152 Bytes

Elizabethan Revenge in Hamlet

        Hamlet is a play written by William Shakespeare that very 

closely follows the dramatic conventions of revenge in Elizabethan 

theater. All revenge tragedies originally stemmed from the Greeks, who 

wrote and performed the first plays. After the Greeks came Seneca who 

was very influential to all Elizabethan tragedy writers. Seneca who 

was Roman, basically set all of the ideas and the norms for all 

revenge play writers in the Renaissance era including William 

Shakespeare. The two most famous English revenge tragedies written in 

the Elizabethan era were Hamlet, written by Shakespeare and The 

Spanish Tragedy, written by Thomas Kyd. These two plays used mostly 

all of the Elizabethan conventions for revenge tragedies in their 

plays. Hamlet especially incorporated all revenge conventions in one 

way or another, which truly made Hamlet a typical revenge play. 

�Shakespeare�s Hamlet is one of many heroes of the Elizabethan and 

Jacobean stage who finds himself grievously wronged by a powerful 

figure, with no recourse to the law, and with a crime against his 

family to avenge.� 



        Seneca was among the greatest authors of classical tragedies 

and  there was not one educated Elizabethan who was unaware of him or 

his plays. There were certain stylistic and different strategically 

thought out devices that Elizabethan playwrights including Shakespeare 

learned and used from Seneca�s great tragedies. The five act 

structure, the appearance of some kind of ghost, the one line 

exchanges known as stichomythia, and Seneca�s use of long rhetorical 

speeches were all later used in tragedies by Elizabethan playwrights. 

Some of Seneca�s ideas were originally taken from the Greeks when the 

Romans conquered Greece, and with it they took home many Greek 

theatrical ideas. Some of Seneca�s stories that originated from the 

Greeks like Agamemnon and Thyestes which dealt with bloody family 

histories and revenge captivated the Elizabethans. Seneca�s stories 

weren�t really written for performance purposes, so if English 

playwrights liked his ideas, they had to figure out a way to make the 

story theatrically workable, relevant and exciting to the Elizabethan 

audience who were very demanding. Seneca�s influence formed part of a 

developing tradition of tragedies whose plots hinge on political 

power, forbidden sexuality, family honor and private revenge. �There 

was no author who exercised a wider or deeper influence upon the 

Elizabethan mind or upon the Elizabethan form of tragedy than did 

Seneca.� For the dramatists of Renaissance Italy, France and England, 

classical tragedy meant only the ten Latin plays of Seneca and not 

Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles. �Hamlet is certainly not much like 

any play of Seneca�s one can name, but Seneca is undoubtedly one of 

the effective ingredients in the emotional charge of Hamlet. Hamlet 

without Seneca is inconceivable.� 



        During the time of Elizabethan theater, plays about tragedy 

and revenge were very common and a regular convention seemed to be 

formed on what aspects should be put into a typical revenge tragedy. 

In all revenge tragedies first and foremost, a crime is committed and 

for various reasons laws and justice cannot punish the crime so the 

individual who is the main character, goes through with the revenge in 

spite of everything. The  main character then usually had a period of 

doubt , where he tries to decide whether or not to go through with the 

revenge, which usually involves tough and complex planning. Other 

features that were typical were the appearance of a ghost, to get the 

revenger to go through with the deed. The revenger also usually had a 

very close relationship with the audience through soliloquies and 

asides. The original crime that will eventually be avenged is nearly 

always sexual or violent or both. The crime has been committed against 

a family member of the revenger. � The revenger places himself outside 

the normal moral order of things, and often becomes more isolated as 

the play progresses-an isolation which at its most extreme becomes 

madness.�  The revenge must be the cause of a catastrophe and the 

beginning of the revenge must start immediately after the crisis. 

After the ghost persuades the revenger to commit his deed, a 

hesitation first occurs and then a delay by the avenger before killing 

the murderer, and his actual or acted out madness. The revenge must be 

taken out by the revenger or his trusted accomplices. The revenger and 

his accomplices may also die at the moment of success or even during 

the course of revenge.  



        It should not be assumed that revenge plays parallel the moral 

expectations of the Elizabethan audience. Church, State and the 

regular morals of people in that age did not accept revenge, instead 

they thought that revenge would simply not under any circumstances be 

tolerated no matter what the original deed was. � It is repugnant on 

theological grounds, since Christian orthodoxy posits a world ordered 

by Divine Providence, in which revenge is a sin and a blasphemy, 

endangering the soul of the revenger.� The revenger by taking law into 

his own hands was in turn completely going against the total political 

authority of the state. People should therefore never think that 

revenge was expected by Elizabethan society. Although they loved to 

see it in plays, it was considered sinful and it was utterly 

condemned. 



        The Spanish Tragedy written by Thomas Kyd was an excellent 

example of a revenge tragedy. With this play, Elizabethan theater 

received its first great revenge tragedy, and because of the success 

of this play, the dramatic form had to be imitated. The play was 

performed from 1587 to 1589 and it gave people an everlasting 

remembrance of the story of a father who avenges the murder of his 

son. In this story, a man named Andrea is killed by Balthazar in the 

heat of battle. The death was considered by Elizabethan people as a 

fair one, therefore a problem occurred when Andrea�s ghost appeared to 

seek vengeance on its killer. Kyd seemed to have used this to parallel 

a ghost named Achilles in Seneca�s play Troades. Andrea�s ghost comes 

and tells his father, Hieronimo that he must seek revenge. Hieronimo 

does not know who killed his son but he goes to find out. During his 

investigation, he receives a letter saying that Lorenzo killed his 

son, but he doubts this so he runs to the king for justice. Hieronimo 

importantly secures his legal rights before taking justice into his 

own hands. The madness scene comes into effect when Hieronimo�s wife, 

Usable goes mad, and Hieronimo is so stunned that his mind becomes 

once again unsettled. Finally Hieronimo decides to go through with the 

revenge, so he seeks out to murder Balthazar and Lorenzo, which he 

successfully does. Hieronimo becomes a blood thirsty maniac and when 

the king calls for his arrest, he commits suicide.



        As well as the fact that Elizabethan theater had its rules 

about how a revenge tragedy had to be, so did Thomas Kyd. He came up 

with the Kydian Formula to distinguish revenge tragedies from other 

plays. His first point was that the fundamental motive was revenge, 

and the revenge is aided by an accomplice who both commit suicide 

after the revenge is achieved. The ghost of the slain watches the 

revenge on the person who killed him. The revenger goes through 

justifiable hesitation before committing to revenge as a solution. 

Madness occurs due to the grieve of a loss. Intrigue is used against 

and by the revenger.  There is bloody action and many deaths that 

occur throughout the entire play. The accomplices on both sides are 

killed. The villain is full of villainous devices. The revenge is 

accomplished terribly and fittingly. The final point that Thomas Kyd 

made about his play was that minor characters are left to deal with 

the situation at the end of the play.



        The Spanish Tragedy follows these rules made by Kyd very 

closely, simply because Kyd developed these rules from the play. The 

fundamental motive was revenge because that was the central theme of 

the play. The ghost of Andrea sees his father kill the men who 

murdered Andrea originally. Hieronimo hesitates first because he goes 

to the king and then he is faced with Isabella�s madness which is 

caused by Andrea�s death. The play is filled with all kinds of bloody 

action and many people die throughout the course of the play. The 

accomplices in the play also all end up dead. Lorenzo who is the true 

villain, is full of all kinds of evil villainous devices. The revenge 

works out perfectly, in that both Lorenzo and Balthazar get murdered 

in the end by Hieronimo. The minor characters were left to clean up 

the mess of all of the deaths that occurred during the play. The 

Spanish Tragedy also follows the conventions of Elizabethan theater 

very closely. The murder was committed and Hieronimo had to take 

justice into his own hands, because true justice just simply wasn�t 

available. Hieronimo then delays his revenge for many different 

reasons that occur in the play. The ghost of Andrea appeared and 

guided Hieronimo to the direction of his killer. Also at the end of 

the play, both Hieronimo and his accomplices die after they were 

successful in committing the revenge.



        In Hamlet, Shakespeare follows regular convention for a large 

part of the play. In the beginning, Shakespeare sets up the scene, 

having a ghost on a dark night. Everyone is working and something 

strange is happening in Denmark. It is as if Shakespeare is saying 

that some kind of foul play has been committed. This sets up for the 

major theme in the play which is of course revenge. The ghost appears 

to talk to Hamlet. It is quite obvious that the play had a gruesome, 

violent death and the sexual aspect of the play was clearly introduced 

when Claudius married Hamlet�s mother Gertrude. The ghost tells Hamlet 

that he has been given the role of the person who will take revenge 

upon Claudius. Hamlet must now think of how to take revenge on 

Claudius, although he doesn�t know what to do about it. He ponders his 

thoughts for a long period of time, expecting to do the deed 

immediately, but instead he drags it on until the end of the play. 

Although what was important to note was that all tragic heroes of 

plays at that time delayed their actual revenge until the end of the 

play. In most revenge plays, the revenger was often anonymous and well 

disguised, stalking the enemy about to be killed, but Hamlet started a 

battle of wits with Claudius by acting mad and calling it his �antic 

disposition�, although the whole thing was a ploy to get closer to 

Claudius to be able to avenge his father�s death more easily. The 

tactic was a disadvantage in that it drew all attention upon himself. 

More importantly though it was an advantage that his �antic 

disposition�, isolated him from the rest of the court because of the 

people not paying attention to what he thought or did because of his 

craziness.

        

        One important part of all revenge plays is that after the 

revenge is finally decided upon, the tragic hero delays the actual 

revenge until the end of the play. Hamlet�s delay of killing Claudius 

takes on three distinct stages. Firstly he had to prove that the ghost 

was actually telling the truth, and he did this by staging the play 

�The Mousetrap� at court. When Claudius stormed out in rage, Hamlet 

knew that he was guilty. The second stage was when Hamlet could have 

killed Claudius while he was confessing to god. If Hamlet had done it 

here then Claudius would have gone to heaven because he confessed 

while Hamlet�s father was in purgatory because he did not get the 

opportunity to confess. So Hamlet therefore decided not to murder 

Claudius at this point in the play. The third delay was the fact that 

he got side tracked. He accidentally killed Polonius which created a 

whole new problem with the fact that Laertes now wanted Hamlet dead. 

After he commit this murder he was also sent off and unable to see the 

king for another few weeks until he could finally do the job. �What 

makes Hamlet stand out from many other revenge plays of the period is 

not that it rejects the conventions of its genre but that it both 

enacts and analyses them.� 



        It can be easily understood that Hamlet very closely follows 

the regular conventions for all Elizabethan tragedies. First Hamlet is 

faced with the fact that he has to avenge the murder of his father and 

since there is no fair justice available, he must take the law into 

his own hands. The ghost of his father appears to guide Hamlet to 

Claudius and inform Hamlet of the evil that Claudius has committed. 

Then Hamlet constantly delays his revenge and always finds a way to 

put it off until he finally does it in Act V, Scene 2. Hamlet at the 

same time continues to keep a close relationship with the audience 

with his seven main soliloquies including the famous, �To be, or not 

to be...�(Act 3 Scene 1). The play also consists of a mad scene where 

Ophelia has gone mad because her father Polonius had been killed and 

because Hamlet was sent off to England. The sexual aspect of the play 

was brought in when Claudius married Gertrude after he had dreadfully 

killed Old Hamlet and taken his throne. Hamlet also follows almost 

every aspect of Thomas Kyd�s formula for a revenge tragedy. The only 

point that can be argued is that the accomplices on both sides were 

not killed because at the end of the play, Horatio was the only one to 

survive, although if it wasn�t for Hamlet, Horatio would have commit 

suicide when he said, � I am more an antique Roman than a Dane. Here�s 

some liquor left.�(Act V Scene 2, 346-347). If Horatio had killed 

himself, then Hamlet would have followed the Kydian formula as well as 

the regular conventions for Elizabethan revenge tragedy.



        Hamlet is definitely a great example of a typical revenge 

tragedy of the Elizabethan theater era. It followed every convention 

required to classify it as a revenge play quite perfectly. Hamlet is 

definitely one of the greatest revenge stories ever written and it was 

all influenced first by Sophocles, Euripides and other Greeks, and 

then more importantly by Seneca. Hamlet as well as The Spanish Tragedy 

tackled  and conquered all areas that were required for the 

consummation of a great revenge tragedy. Revenge although thought to 

be unlawful and against the Church was absolutely adored by all 

Elizabethan people. � The Elizabethan audience always insisted on 

seeing eventual justice, and one who stained his hands with blood had 

to pay the penalty. That no revenger, no matter how just, ever wholly 

escapes the penalty for shedding blood, even in error.� This was also 

a very important point that was also dealt with brilliantly by 

Shakespeare in finding a way to kill Hamlet justly even though he was 

required to kill Claudius. Hamlet was written with the mighty pen of 

Shakespeare who once again shows people that he can conjure up any 

play and make it one of the greatest of all time. Hamlet was one of 

the greatest of all time.

Back To the Top ] [ Back To Essay Page ]
Complete Works Cliff Notes Free Papers! Biography Shakespeare Links Shakespeare discussion