SOURCE: Kerrigan, John. “‘Remember Me!’: Horestes, Hieronimo, and Hamlet.” In Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon, pp. 170-192. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

In the essay below, Kerrigan discusses the ambiguous role that remembrance plays in Elizabethan revenge tragedies—especially The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet—tracing this motif to the classical Greek dramatic theme of introspection.

At the start of The Libation Bearers, Orestes stands beside his father's tomb, thinking about the past. Apparently sunk in passive grief, he offers Agamemnon a lock of hair and laments that he was not in Argos to mourn at his funeral. Then, however, retrospection modulates into a cry for revenge: ‘Zeus, Zeus, grant me vengeance for my father's / murder. Stand and fight beside me, of your grace’ (17-18). Exactly the same movement of feeling is experienced by Electra when she, in turn, comes to the tomb with the chorus of libation bearers. Recalling the...