Book contents
- Time and Gender on the Shakespearean Stage
- Time and Gender on the Shakespearean Stage
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Texts
- Introduction: The Actions and Delays of Gendered Temporalities
- Chapter 1 Virtuous Delay: The Enduring Patient Wife
- Chapter 2 Transgressive Action: The Impatient Prodigal Husband
- Chapter 3 Waiting and Taking: The Temporally Conflicted Revenger
- Chapter 4 The Delay’s the Thing: Patience, Prodigality and Revenge in Hamlet
- Conclusion: Echoes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 3 - Waiting and Taking: The Temporally Conflicted Revenger
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2020
- Time and Gender on the Shakespearean Stage
- Time and Gender on the Shakespearean Stage
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Texts
- Introduction: The Actions and Delays of Gendered Temporalities
- Chapter 1 Virtuous Delay: The Enduring Patient Wife
- Chapter 2 Transgressive Action: The Impatient Prodigal Husband
- Chapter 3 Waiting and Taking: The Temporally Conflicted Revenger
- Chapter 4 The Delay’s the Thing: Patience, Prodigality and Revenge in Hamlet
- Conclusion: Echoes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the revenge tragedies of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period, the negotiation between the prodigal urge to act and, conversely, the necessity of patiently resisting action, is central to the presentation of the gendered identities of revenging characters and to the theatrical experience itself. In this chapter, I develop and complicate the ideas and arguments about patience and prodigality explored in Chapters 1 and 2 by analysing a number of revenge tragedies. The Spanish Tragedy (1585-89), Titus Andronicus (1590-92), Antonio’s Revenge (1600-1), The Tragedy of Hoffman (1602), Othello (1603-4), The Atheist’s Tragedy (1607-11), The Duchess of Malfi (1612-14) and The Changeling (1622) in different ways draw attention to both the patience and prodigality of the revenger. This chapter argues that male revengers are authorised whether they achieve vengeance (thus asserting their masculine authority and carrying out the filial duty which upholds patriarchal norms) or whether they delay revenge (and in doing so express a degree of Christian piety). Female revengers, on the other hand, seem to be denigrated whether they act to revenge (exposing themselves to accusations of sexual impropriety) or delay vengeance (therefore establishing their ineffectiveness and cruelty).
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- Time and Gender on the Shakespearean Stage , pp. 148 - 197Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020