SOURCE: “The Ethical Design of The Revenger's Tragedy,” in English Language History, Vol. 21, No. 2, June, 1954, pp. 81-93.

In the following essay, Ornstein argues that in The Revenger's Tragedy Tourneur depicts a world of moral rogues in which ethical law is absent or ineffectual but in which an ethical design operates through the processes of human psychology, and that this moral order, like Tourneur himself, is disillusioned in its outlook on life but orthodox in its values.

Although a just appreciation of Tourneur's artistry has replaced the nineteenth century celebration of him as a master of satanic revels, recent critical attention has centered more upon explaining the mind that created The Revenger's Tragedy than upon analyzing the play as dramatic literature. We need not inveigh, however, against “irrelevant conjectures,” for after paying homage to Tourneur's management of plot and dramatic irony and to his poetic genius, the critic must...