SOURCE: Jacobs, Henry E. “Shakespeare, Revenge Tragedy, and the Ideology of the Memento Mori. Shakespeare Studies 21 (1993): 98-108.

In the following essay, Jacobs argues that, unlike his contemporaries who codified their skepticism of religious orthodoxy in the memento mori tradition in their plays, Shakespeare actually remained true to the medieval tradition and to orthodoxy in his revenge plays.

The severed hand, the skull beneath the skin, the blood-soaked handkerchief, and other such gruesome relics of human carnage show up repeatedly on the English stage between 1585 and 1640 in Renaissance revenge tragedy.¹ The memento mori of a revenger may be quite literal: Hieronimo keeps Horatio's rotting corpse, Hoffman preserves his father's skeleton, and Vendice clutches Gloriana's death's head.² These tableaux of the living and the dead are derived, at least in part, from well-established medieval traditions. In most cases, they represent a displacement of orthodox religious ideology and a superscription of...