Natural Phenomena Symbol Analysis

The Revenger’s Tragedy contains instances and mentions of natural phenomena from the sky—e.g. comets, stars, thunder, and lightning—which are a typical feature of the revenge tragedy genre, often as markers of some sort higher power. Middleton, however, playfully disrupts their usual meaning so that such phenomena highlight the lack of any broader presence of justice in the world of his play. Thunderstorms, for example, come from the sky and are therefore often associated with god/the gods and instances of divine intervention (this is true from the Ancient Greeks to Christianity). The sky, then, is usually some kind of external force that humanity can rely on to ensure that a degree of fairness is maintained among those on the earth. But Middleton subverts this typical understanding: Vindice frequently appeals to the heavens for intervention (“Has not heaven an ear? is all the lightning wasted?”) but receives nothing. In fact, on the few occasions when thunder does arrive on cue, it comes across as darkly comic and more representative of the hopelessness of appealing to the heavens for justice than the arrival of divine help. This lack of a reliable religious framework is one of the reasons Vindice feels he has to take matters into his own hands and pursue revenge himself.

In the final scene, a “blazing star” appears; this is a comet, traditionally viewed around the time of the play’s writing as a harbinger of doom. Lussurioso, who near the end of the play becomes the newly-crowned Duke, acknowledges this, and even has the arrogance to accuse the comet of committing “treason” (by suggesting his rule might not go well or, for that matter, last long). But because of Vindice’s earlier futile appeals to the sky for divine justice, the comet feels like a hollow symbol rather than a true prediction of doom and terror. In fact, as the last scene’s bloodbath plays out, the fault of the numerous deaths in the play comes across very much as the responsibility of the people within it—the star acts more as an innocent bystander, a light illuminating the tragic conclusion of the plays’ events.