The Genres of Renaissance Tragedy

Tragedy is the most versatile of Renaissance literary genres. The pinnacle of tragic drama in the period, Hamlet, has become the most famous play, and indeed arguably the most famous work of literature of any genre, ever to have been written; tragedies dealing with historical figures such as Julius Caesar or Richard III have made definitive contributions to the general perception of those personages; and some tragedies contain moments of wild and weird wit or humour which make them funnier than many comedies of the period. Renaissance tragedy as a whole enables exploration of issues ranging from gender to race to religious conflict, and provides us with the first dramatic representations of the lives of ordinary Englishmen and women. This collection of newly commissioned essays mixes perspectives from emerging scholars with those of established ones and offers the first systematic examination of the full range and versatility of Renaissance tragedy as a literary genre. Each chapter employs a case study to offer not only a definition of a particular kind of Renaissance tragedy but also new research into a particularly noteworthy or influential example of that genre. Collectively the essays examine the work of a wide range of dramatists and offer a critical account of the extraordinary variety of material that falls into the broad category of Renaissance tragedy.