Revenge Plays, Madness, Murder, and Ghosts

Revenge Tragedy is a genre of plays, applied posthumously to Shakespeare's works. Just like modern day film and tv has genres like romance, western, or comedy, plays of Shakespeare’s lifetime had these categories, too, and today we're going to explore a particular subcategory of tragedy known as Revenge Tragedies. While the genre itself didn't exist in Shakespeare's lifetime, the plays and what they are known for, were a very popular form of entertainment in both Elizabethan and Jacobean England. In fact, many consider Shakespeare’s Hamlet to the best example of Revenge Plays from this period. We are delighted to welcome back to the show Rhona Silverbush and Sami Plotkin to talk with us the ghosts, madness, and other spooky elements that constituted a good revenge play, what made them so popular for Shakespeare’s lifetime, and which playwrights in addition to Shakespeare, were penning this category into history for the 16th and 17th century.

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