Fitzgrave’s Jewel

Abstract

One of the most vexing problems for modern teachers and students of early modern drama is the too-tidy ending, where an ostensibly moral order is suddenly and arbitrarily restored—where compellingly antisocial characters are rounded up and expelled while bland figures of authority reassert themselves and stamp out the last embers of theatrical energy. Such moments in their sheer prevalence seem to call attention to the different expectations and desires of audiences “then” and audiences “now.” Are we supposed to be glad that Vindice is punished at the end of The Revenger’s Tragedy! Were audiences in 1607 glad, and if so, should we feel bad that we are not? Does Malcolm, or Richmond, really deserve our enthusiasm as the successor to Macbeth, or Richard III? Approaching the problem through irony—interpreting sudden and tidy endings as satirical or self-undermining—can be so easy as to seem disingenuous or expedient; but taking these endings at face value and reading them as transparent expressions of the playwright’s, and his culture’s, view of the relationship between morality and dramatic form is both aesthetically and ideologically unsatisfying.