Civil Vengeance

What is revenge, and what purpose does it serve? On the early modern English stage, depictions of violence and carnage—the duel between Hamlet and Laertes that leaves nearly everyone dead or the ghastly meal of human remains served at the end of Titus Andronicus —emphasize arresting acts of revenge that upset the social order. Yet the subsequent critical focus on a narrow selection of often bloody "revenge plays" has overshadowed subtler and less spectacular modes of vengeance present in early m