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Chapter 12 - ‘In such a whisp’ring and withdrawing hour’: Speaking Solus in Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy and The Lady’s Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2018

A. D. Cousins
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney
Daniel Derrin
Affiliation:
Durham University
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Summary

This chapter investigates the changing status and functions of the dramatic soliloquy and its associated forms in two Middleton tragedies: The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606) and The Lady’s Tragedy (1611). Middleton does not neglect the soliloquy: he can often draw upon its resources to dynamise his dramatic narratives, to excite audience interests and allegiances, and to diversify the portrayal of lived experience onstage. While in many accounts of early modern drama, the soliloquy is deciphered in terms of the heroic alienation or even sociopathic status of the speaker, this chapter indicates how the Middleton soliloquy, like the aside and the confession, are repeatedly shown to excite further the speaker’s implication in society: his or her course remain irrevocably wedded to the larger movements of collective destiny. Thus, the Middleton soliloquy need not, as in so many early modern dramas, stress spiritual disconnection or the loss of a field of social action. It can, and frequently does, serve to confirm the imperatives of engagement in the political realities of a wider vita activa.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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