Three Revenge Tragedies - The White Devil & The Revenger's Tragedy & The Changeling

These three plays are among the finest examples of Jacobean Revenge Tragedy. By the early seventeenth century Renaissance humanism had reached a crisis. The period of mental unrest, and the sense of moral corruption and ambiguity that followed, provoked the Jacobean dramatists to embittered satire and images of tragic retribution. John Webster (c 1570-1625) in The White Devil paints a sinister and merciless world ruled by all the refinements of cunning and intrigue, while in The Revenger's Tragedy, one of the most powerful of the Jacobean tragedies, Cyril Tourneur (c. 1570-1626) displays in a macabre ballet the emotional conflicts and vices typical of the age. The Changeling is perhaps the supreme achievement of Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) - a masterpiece of brooding intensity.