The Tragedy of Hoffman by Henry Chettle - The first step to revenge

His father hanged by the neck until dead for the high crime of piracy, Hoffman vows Revenge! on the duke who executed his father.  By chance the duke’s son is shipwrecked exactly where Hoffman is keeping Hoffman, Sr.’s corpse hanging on the wall of a cave, so Hoffman tortures and murders his enemy, thus ending Henry Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman or a Revenge for a Father (1602).  Thus ending Act I, Scene 1, I mean.

LORRISQUE [A turncoat, evil servant]: He’s gone.

HOFFMAN:  Go, let him.  Come, Lorrique:

This but the prologue to the ensuing play,

The first step to revenge.  This scene is done

Father, I offer thee thy murderer’s son.    Exeunt.  (I.1, 252)

Theatrical!  He ends the first act in the same literal way: “So shut our stage up; there is one act done” (I.3, 258).  The revenge tragedy’s conventional play-within-a-play appears to take place in Hoffman’s head.

Chettle, one of the great hack playwrights of this time, messes with the revenge tragedy in many interesting ways.  One key aspect of the genre since Kyd invented it is delay; the revenger for some reason cannot just challenge his enemy to a duel or whatnot.  Shakespeare, in Hamlet, finds high psychological interest in the genre cliché.  Chettle abandons it in the first scene, and afterward his villain methodically carves through his remaining enemies until he is finally undone  by being distracted by lust:  “but I deserve it [his death] that have slacked revenge” (V.3, 324).

The revenger is typically seeks genuine justice and is delayed by the political power of his target.  Chettle’s revenger is a psychotic villain whose father was executed within a legitimate justice system for well-understood crimes.  My understanding is that this purely villainous revenger, who will become a staple of later revenge tragedies, is a genuine innovation of Chettle’s.

Since The Tragedy of Hoffman is available in a New Mermaids edition I thought it would be easily available in the usual places, but no, it was a bit of a pain to get.  So sorry about that, to any cheapskates (like me) chasing after a readable copy.  I ended up with the highly interesting but consumer-unfriendly Penguin edition – Five Revenge Tragedies (2012).  The other four plays are The Spanish Tragedy, Antonio’s Revenge, Hamlet, and The Revenger’s Tragedy, all terrific but do you really need another copy of The Spanish Tragedy or Hamlet?

That edition tells the story of the rise of Hoffman, though.  The book is perfect for half of a university course on revenge tragedies, or these days, if I believe the grim news, an entire semester.  What a good class.  The Tragedy of Hoffman is the dumbest play of the bunch, but I can see how it is highly teachable, especially after Hamlet, which it shamelessly loots.  Students who have worked their way through Kyd and Marston and Hamlet will dismantle and rebuild Hoffman with facility.

Hoffman, I will note, is a marvelously Gothic play, sometimes reminding me of Thomas Lovell-Beddoes’s Death’s Jest Book in its Halloween qualities.  What a great stage direction:

[Hangs up Otho’s skeleton.]  (I.3, 257)

This is from the first scene, with Hoffman talking to the corpse of his dead father:

But thou dear soul, whose nerves and arteries

In dead resoundings summon up revenge,

And thou shalt ha’t; be but appeased, sweet hearse,

The dead remembrance of my living father.  (I.i, 245)

Hoffman shamelessly rips off Hamlet, including an Ophelia-like character who goes mad but who, in an amazing and ridiculous twist, reveals Hoffman’s schemes to the other characters by leading them to the cave where Hoffman keeps his collection of corpses.  Then her sanity returns!  Wonderfully silly stuff.

Next up is John Marston’s revenge comedy The Malcontent, available everywhere, and as I remember it a great play.  I hope I do not take so long to write it up.