SOURCE: Baines, Barbara J. “Antonio's Revenge: Marston's Play on Revenge Plays.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 23, No. 2 (Spring 1983): 277-94.

In the following essay, Baines contends that Marston utilized an unconventional dramatic structure in Antonio's Revenge in an effort to parody the predictable revenge tragedy form.

Perhaps no play of the Renaissance is more derivative and at the same time more original than Marston's Antonio's Revenge. G. K. Hunter notes that the similarities between Marston's play and Hamlet “are greater than those between either play and any other surviving Elizabethan drama.”¹ It is clear that Marston derived his characters and plot from the old plays of the public stage. The echoes from The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet (old or new), Titus Andronicus, and Richard III have been well documented in Reavley Gair's new edition of the play.² Marston's intention, however, in patterning his play so conspicuously on those of the...