Howard Brenton, Revenge

Ian Foakes (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1969

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

Howard Brenton's Revenge (Royal Court, 1969) is a companion to his better-known Christie in Love, and portrays the revenge of the arch-criminal, Eastender Adam Hepple, on Assistant Commissioner of Police McLeish. The police and criminals are partial mirror images of one another, sharing moral ambiguity amid a Jacobean sense of a decadent and corrupt society – by the end of the play, everyone has died violently. The play's ethos is anarchist, and its sense of a decadent society suggests that past traditions and customary ways of thinking are effectively dead.

Originally billed as a “Romantic Melodrama in the Theatre Upstairs”, Revenge opened on 2 September 1969. Similarities have been drawn …

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1081 words

Citation: Foakes, Ian. "Revenge". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 April 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16760, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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