Cyril Tourneur
Encyclopedia
Cyril Tourneur was an English dramatist who enjoyed his greatest success during the reign of King James I of England
. His best-known work is The Revenger's Tragedy
(1607), a play which has alternatively been attributed to Thomas Middleton
.
in the Netherlands. Tourneur too served in the Low Countries
, for in 1613 there is a record of payment to him for carrying letters to Brussels
. He enjoyed a pension from the government of the United Provinces
, possibly by way of compensation for a post held before Brielle was handed over to the Dutch in 1616.
In 1625, he was appointed by Sir Edward Cecil, whose father had been a former governor of Brielle, to be secretary to the council of war. This appointment was cancelled by Buckingham, but Tourneur sailed in Cecil's company to Cádiz
. On the return voyage from the disastrous expedition, he was put ashore at Kinsale
with other sick men and died in Ireland on 28 February, 1626. (M.BR.)
on the death of Prince Henry
, son of James I of England, is the latest. The two plays on which his fame rests, The Revenger's Tragedy and The Atheist's Tragedy
, were published respectively in 1607 and 1611. Tourneur's only other known works are a lost play, The Nobleman, some contributions to Sir Thomas Overbury
's Book of Characters, and an epicede on Sir Francis Vere
. This poem conveys the poet's ideal conception of a perfect knight or happy warrior, comparable, by those who may think fit to compare it, with the more nobly realized ideals of Chaucer and of Wordsworth
.
If Tourneur had left on record no more memorable evidence of his powers than might be supplied by the survival of his elegies, he would not claim a high place among English writers. His fame indeed rests on his two surviving plays. Little is known about their composition and The Atheist's Tragedy may well have been written earlier than The Revenger's Tragedy, although it was published later. From a literary viewpoint, The Atheist's Tragedy is generally considered as weaker than its counterpart because it is relatively clumsy and straightforwardly moralistic. It confidently reproduces themes and conventions which are characteristic of medieval Morality play
s and of Elizabethan memento mori
emblems. More interestingly perhaps, it uses these conventions in the context of Calvin
's Protestant theology.
By contrast, The Revenger's Tragedy has long been recognized as a far more original dramatic work that takes its cue from the achievements of contemporary playwrights, notably Shakespeare. The theme of revenge is pastiched from Hamlet
, but the play focuses on the atrocities of blood retribution instead of developing philosophical reflection. Vindice's macabre pose with the skull of his beloved is farcically inspired from Hamlet's contemplation of Yorick
's skull.
Of this play, the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica says,
Perhaps this ecstatic response should have to be directed to somebody else than Tourneur. As the play was published anonymously, and as Tourneur was only described as the author in a 1650s booklist, the attribution of The Revenger's Tragedy to him is increasingly in question. External and internal evidence strongly suggests that the true author was the more distinguished Jacobean playwright Thomas Middleton. In the Stationers' Register of 1607, The Revenger's Tragedy and A Trick to Catch the Old One can be found in the same double entry. In every other double entry of this register, the plays prove to be by the same author, and we are certain that A Trick was written by Middleton. It is also known from contemporary records that Middleton composed another play called The Viper and her Brood, of which nothing survives. Some scholars think that Viper and The Revenger's Tragedy are in fact one and the same play.
Until a relatively recent period, many stage directors considered The Revenger's Tragedy and The Atheist's Tragedy as oddities whose Gothic horrors made completely alien from modern taste. Things have changed for The Revenger's Tragedy, which has been performed with increasing frequency and success since the 1980s, both in Britain and elsewhere. In 2003, this play even inspired a movie called Revengers Tragedy
. However, stagings of The Atheist's Tragedy remain few and far between. If, as seems likely, it is his only surviving play, he can no longer be ranked among the greatest playwrights.
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
. His best-known work is The Revenger's Tragedy
The Revenger's Tragedy
The Revenger's Tragedy is an English language Jacobean revenge tragedy, in the past attributed to Cyril Tourneur but is sometimes considered to be the work of Thomas Middleton by "Middletonians"...
(1607), a play which has alternatively been attributed to Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as among the most successful and prolific of playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in...
.
Life
Cyril Tourneur was possibly the son of Captain Richard Turner, a water-bailiff and, later, lieutenant-governor of BrielleBrielle
Brielle , also called Den Briel is a town and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland, on the north side of the island of Voorne-Putten, at the mouth of the New Maas. The municipality covers an area of 31.12 km² of which 3.63 km² is water...
in the Netherlands. Tourneur too served in the Low Countries
Low Countries
The Low Countries are the historical lands around the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers, including the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western Germany....
, for in 1613 there is a record of payment to him for carrying letters to Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
. He enjoyed a pension from the government of the United Provinces
Dutch Republic
The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands , the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic and ultimately...
, possibly by way of compensation for a post held before Brielle was handed over to the Dutch in 1616.
In 1625, he was appointed by Sir Edward Cecil, whose father had been a former governor of Brielle, to be secretary to the council of war. This appointment was cancelled by Buckingham, but Tourneur sailed in Cecil's company to Cádiz
Cádiz
Cadiz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the homonymous province, one of eight which make up the autonomous community of Andalusia....
. On the return voyage from the disastrous expedition, he was put ashore at Kinsale
Kinsale
Kinsale is a town in County Cork, Ireland. Located some 25 km south of Cork City on the coast near the Old Head of Kinsale, it sits at the mouth of the River Bandon and has a population of 2,257 which increases substantially during the summer months when the tourist season is at its peak and...
with other sick men and died in Ireland on 28 February, 1626. (M.BR.)
Writings
A difficult allegorical poem called The Transformed Metamorphosis is his earliest extant work; an elegyElegy
In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.-History:The Greek term elegeia originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaphs for tombs...
on the death of Prince Henry
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales
Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales was the elder son of King James I & VI and Anne of Denmark. His name derives from his grandfathers: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Frederick II of Denmark. Prince Henry was widely seen as a bright and promising heir to his father's throne...
, son of James I of England, is the latest. The two plays on which his fame rests, The Revenger's Tragedy and The Atheist's Tragedy
The Atheist's Tragedy
The Atheist's Tragedy, or the Honest Man's Revenge is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy written by Cyril Tourneur and first published in 1611. It is the only dramatic work recognized by the consensus of modern scholarship as the undisputed work of Tourneur, "one of the more shadowy figures of...
, were published respectively in 1607 and 1611. Tourneur's only other known works are a lost play, The Nobleman, some contributions to Sir Thomas Overbury
Thomas Overbury
Sir Thomas Overbury was an English poet and essayist, and the victim of one of the most sensational crimes in English history...
's Book of Characters, and an epicede on Sir Francis Vere
Francis Vere
Sir Francis Vere was an English soldier, famous for his career in Dutch service.He was the son of Geoffrey Vere of Crepping Hall, Essex, and nephew of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford.-Military career:...
. This poem conveys the poet's ideal conception of a perfect knight or happy warrior, comparable, by those who may think fit to compare it, with the more nobly realized ideals of Chaucer and of Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
.
If Tourneur had left on record no more memorable evidence of his powers than might be supplied by the survival of his elegies, he would not claim a high place among English writers. His fame indeed rests on his two surviving plays. Little is known about their composition and The Atheist's Tragedy may well have been written earlier than The Revenger's Tragedy, although it was published later. From a literary viewpoint, The Atheist's Tragedy is generally considered as weaker than its counterpart because it is relatively clumsy and straightforwardly moralistic. It confidently reproduces themes and conventions which are characteristic of medieval Morality play
Morality play
The morality play is a genre of Medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment. In their own time, these plays were known as "interludes", a broader term given to dramas with or without a moral theme. Morality plays are a type of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of...
s and of Elizabethan memento mori
Memento mori
Memento mori is a Latin phrase translated as "Remember your mortality", "Remember you must die" or "Remember you will die". It names a genre of artistic work which varies widely, but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their own mortality...
emblems. More interestingly perhaps, it uses these conventions in the context of Calvin
John Calvin
John Calvin was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530...
's Protestant theology.
By contrast, The Revenger's Tragedy has long been recognized as a far more original dramatic work that takes its cue from the achievements of contemporary playwrights, notably Shakespeare. The theme of revenge is pastiched from Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
, but the play focuses on the atrocities of blood retribution instead of developing philosophical reflection. Vindice's macabre pose with the skull of his beloved is farcically inspired from Hamlet's contemplation of Yorick
Yorick
Yorick is the deceased court jester whose skull is exhumed by the gravedigger in Act 5, Scene 1, of William Shakespeare's Hamlet.Yorick may also refer to:* Yorick...
's skull.
Of this play, the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica says,
[I]t is so magnificent, so simple, impeccable and sublime that the finest passages of this play can be compared only with the noblest examples of tragic dialogue or monologue now extant in English or in Greek. There is no trace of imitation or derivation from an alien source in the genius of this poet ... [T]he resemblance between the tragic verse of Tourneur and the tragic verse of Shakespeare is simply such as proves the natural affinity between two great dramatic poets, whose inspiration partakes now and then of the quality more proper to epic or to lyric poetry. The fiery impulse, the rolling music, the vivid illustration of thought by jets of insuppressible passion, the perpetual sustenance of passion by the implacable persistency of thought, which we recognise as the dominant and distinctive qualities of such poetry as finds vent in the utterances of Hamlet or of TimonTimonTimon is a genus of wall lizards of the family Lacertidae.-Species:*Timon lepidus*Timon pater*Timon princeps*Timon tangitanus...
, we recognise also in the scarcely less magnificent poetry, the scarcely less fiery sarcasm, with which Tourneur has informed the part of Vindice--a harderheaded Hamlet, a saner and more practically savage and serious Timon. He was a satirist as passionate as Juvenal or SwiftJonathan SwiftJonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
, but with a finer faith in goodness, a purer hope in its ultimate security of triumph. This fervent constancy of spirit relieves the lurid gloom and widens the limited range of a tragic imagination which otherwise might be felt as oppressive rather than inspiriting. His grim and trenchant humour is as peculiar in its sardonic passion as his eloquence is original in the strenuous music of its cadences, in the roll of its rhythmic thunder. As a playwright, his method was almost crude and rude in the headlong straightforwardness of its energetic simplicity; as an artist in character, his interest was intense but narrow, his power magnificent but confined; as a dramatic poet, the force of his genius is great enough to ensure him an enduring place among the foremost of the followers of Shakespeare.
Perhaps this ecstatic response should have to be directed to somebody else than Tourneur. As the play was published anonymously, and as Tourneur was only described as the author in a 1650s booklist, the attribution of The Revenger's Tragedy to him is increasingly in question. External and internal evidence strongly suggests that the true author was the more distinguished Jacobean playwright Thomas Middleton. In the Stationers' Register of 1607, The Revenger's Tragedy and A Trick to Catch the Old One can be found in the same double entry. In every other double entry of this register, the plays prove to be by the same author, and we are certain that A Trick was written by Middleton. It is also known from contemporary records that Middleton composed another play called The Viper and her Brood, of which nothing survives. Some scholars think that Viper and The Revenger's Tragedy are in fact one and the same play.
Until a relatively recent period, many stage directors considered The Revenger's Tragedy and The Atheist's Tragedy as oddities whose Gothic horrors made completely alien from modern taste. Things have changed for The Revenger's Tragedy, which has been performed with increasing frequency and success since the 1980s, both in Britain and elsewhere. In 2003, this play even inspired a movie called Revengers Tragedy
Revengers Tragedy
Revengers Tragedy is a film adaptation of the 1606 play The Revenger's Tragedy . It was directed by Alex Cox and adapted for the screen by Cox's fellow Liverpudlian, Frank Cottrell Boyce...
. However, stagings of The Atheist's Tragedy remain few and far between. If, as seems likely, it is his only surviving play, he can no longer be ranked among the greatest playwrights.