The Revenger's Tragedy

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Revenger's Tragedy is a Jacobean Revenge play written in 1606 by (scholars now believe) Thomas Middleton.

It's convoluted, disgusting and full of over-the-top gory acts of vengeance. Some people think that it was intended as a parody of the revenge-tragedy genre so popular at the time. And of Hamlet in particular (see Take That, below).

There is a 2002 film adaptation which sets the play in post-apocalyptic Liverpool (or just Liverpool), and stars Christopher Eccleston as Vindice.


Tropes used in The Revenger's Tragedy include:

Is there no thunder left, or is't kept up
In stock for heavier vengeance?
[thunder rolls]
There it is!

Vindice: Why, brother, it is fate!
Hippolito: It is, but whose? His or yours?
Vindice: I set my fate at naught, so that I have revenge.