SOURCE: “Chastity and Justice in The Revenger's Tragedy,” in Sexuality and Politics in Renaissance Drama, edited by Carole Levin and Karen Robertson, The Edwin Mellen Press, 1991 pp. 215-36.

In the following essay, Robertson argues that in The Revenger's Tragedy there is a connection between misused sexuality and ill rule, and that Tourneur shows with his play that in a corrupt court that attacks chastity there can be neither virtue nor justice.

The court of Cyril Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy (1607-1611)¹ is a place of sexual and economic circulation, where women fall behind the arras, in bedchambers, in banqueting halls. The rare women who resist seduction by word or gold become targets of aggression, frequently victims of murder. In the central act of vengeance in the play, Vindice offers a poisoned skull to the Duke, who eagerly and fatally kisses the ‘bony lady’ (3.5.120). Vindice has been interpreted by a...