The Revenge Tragedy flourished in Britain during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The classic ingredients of the genre are a quest for vengeance, mad scenes, a play within a play, and carnage. Each of the four plays here subverts the genre, and deals with fundamental moral questions about justice and the individual, while registering the strains of life in an increasingly fragile social hierarchy. This edition includes Thomas Kyd's
The Spanish Tragedy
, the anonymous
The Revenger's Tragedy
(variously ascribed to Cyril Tourneur and Thomas Middleton),
The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois
by George Chapman, and Tourneur's
The Atheist's Tragedy
.