Among the many shadowy figures in the ranks of English Renaissance dramatists, Cyril Tourneur is one of the most elusive. Very little is known about his life, and we cannot even be sure that he actually wrote the work for which he is most celebrated, The Revenger's Tragedy (first performed in 1606). Yet despite the almost complete absence of biographical facts concerning Tourneur, he seems to come alive through his works and to speak with one of the most distinct voices in Renaissance drama. Tourneur is arguably the quintessential Jacobean playwright, the one in whom the dark vision we associate with early-seventeenth-century drama achieves its purest form. He is a master of intricate plotting and counterplotting and cseems to share his characters' delight in intrigue and deception. He played a key role in the development of the revenge play; no longer accepting the conventions of the genre uncritically, he...