A blackly camp tragedy - Hamlet without the narcissism - set in a court corrupted by lust and self-interest, this play is both fascinated and repelled by its own depravity.

The Revenger's Tragedy: Thomas Middleton

This series of six lectures introduces six plays from the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. Once popular and now little-known, they can tell us a lot about what their first audiences enjoyed, aspired to and worried about - from immigrants in early modern London to the role of women in the household, from what religious changes might mean for attitudes to the dead to fantasies of easy money and social elevation.



Each lecture outlines the play so there is no assumption you have already read it, then goes on to try to understand its historical context and its dramatic legacy, drawing parallels with modern film and contemporary culture as well as with Elizabethan material. The lecturer's aim with students in the room and with interested online listeners is to broaden our understanding of the theatre Shakespeare wrote for by thinking about some non-Shakespearean drama, and to recreate some of the excitement and dramatic possibilities of the new, popular technology of Renaissance theatre.

Education

This series of six lectures introduces six plays from the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. Once popular and now little-known, they can tell us a lot about what their first audiences enjoyed, aspired to and worried about - from immigrants in early modern London to the role of women in the household, from what religious changes might mean for attitudes to the dead to fantasies of easy money and social elevation. Each lecture outlines the play so there is no assumption you have already read it, then goes on to try to understand its historical context and its dramatic legacy, drawing parallels with modern film and contemporary culture as well as with Elizabethan material. The lecturer's aim with students in the room and with interested online listeners is to broaden our understanding of the theatre Shakespeare wrote for by thinking about some non-Shakespearean drama, and to recreate some of the excitement and dramatic possibilities of the new, popular technology of Renaissance theatre.

This series of six lectures introduces six plays from the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. Once popular and now little-known, they can tell us a lot about what their first audiences enjoyed, aspired to and worried about - from immigrants in early modern London to the role of women in the household, from what religious changes might mean for attitudes to the dead to fantasies of easy money and social elevation.



Each lecture outlines the play so there is no assumption you have already read it, then goes on to try to understand its historical context and its dramatic legacy, drawing parallels with modern film and contemporary culture as well as with Elizabethan material. The lecturer's aim with students in the room and with interested online listeners is to broaden our understanding of the theatre Shakespeare wrote for by thinking about some non-Shakespearean drama, and to recreate some of the excitement and dramatic possibilities of the new, popular technology of Renaissance theatre.

Share The Revenger's Tragedy: Thomas Middleton

Sign up to save your podcasts

The Revenger's Tragedy: Thomas Middleton

The Revenger's Tragedy: Thomas Middleton

More shows like Not Shakespeare: Elizabethan and Jacobean Popular Theatre

History Extra podcast

Dan Snow's History Hit

Science Magazine Podcast

Pod Save America

Approaching Shakespeare

Morbid

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

The Rest Is History

Let's talk e-cigarettes

Middle East Centre Booktalk

In The Footsteps of Marie-Antoinette

Valentine's Day at Oxford

OxPeace Conference 2009: The Serious Study of Peace

Gut Instinct: GI research update

Gone Medieval

Centre for Personalised Medicine

Folk Tunes and Englishness

The Oxford Seminars in Cartography: Women and Maps

The Rest Is Politics

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

The News Agents

The Rest Is Entertainment

The Oxford Saïd Entrepreneurship Forum