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Castabella has been married to D'Amville's son
Rousard. Charlemont confronts his uncle and fights with Sebastian, D'Amville's younger son; Charlemont wins the duel but spares his cousin's life. D'Amville has Charlemont arrested. Sebastian, at heart a decent and well-meaning fellow, uses money given him by D'Amville to bail Charlemont from prison. D'Amville feigns a reconciliation with his nephew, but secretly plans his murder; he also attempts to rape Castabella, but is interrupted.
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D'Amville, facing the collapse of his dynastic ambitions, begins to lose his reason. In the play's climactic scene, Charlemont and
Castabella are on the scaffold, facing their death sentences; but D'Amville smashes his own skull with the axe intended for them. With his dying breaths he confesses his murder of Montferrers and his other crimes. Charlemont and Castabella are freed, and can marry, as originally intended, at the play's end.
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Levidulchia is sensuous and unprincipled where
Castabella remains virtuous. Levidulchia pursues an adulterous relationship with Sebastian, and attempts to seduce another man too. Her affair results in a duel that causes the deaths of both participants, her lover Sebastian and her husband Baron Belforest. In its aftermath, Levidulchia commits suicide.
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He engineers the murder of his brother, the Baron
Montferrers, and schemes to ruin his nephew Charlemont, who is away on military service, and to possess the nephew's inheritance. When Charlemont (the "honest man" of the subtitle) returns home, he finds that he has been declared dead, and his fiancée
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Charlemont kills his intended assassin. D'Amville is able to arrange the arrest of
Charlemont and Castabella on a false charge of adultery. But the aristocrat's machinations begin to sour; Sebastian is killed in a duel with his lover's husband, Baron Belforest, and the sickly Rousard dies as well.
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The primary plot is supported by a second-level action centring on
Levidulchia, Castabella's stepmother. Levidulchia and Castabella represent the alternative negative and positive responses to similar situations: both have unwanted and unloved husbands, and both are attracted to other men. But
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later that year by the booksellers John
Stepneth and Richard Redner. Some copies of the quarto have the date altered to 1612. The title page of the quarto states that the play "hath often been Acted" in "divers places", though no specific productions or performances are known.
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theology and "Baconian rationalism" among other issues. The play's complex three-level plot structure has also been studied. Critics have debated possible sources of
Tourneur's plot, though no certain and unambiguous source has been identified.
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No firm data on the play's date of authorship has survived. Scholars have conjectured a date of authorship sometime in the first decade of the 17th century—either early in the decade, based on allusions to contemporary events like the
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The play takes a negative view of personal vengeance, stressing instead divine judgement upon sinners and wrongdoers. The ghost of
Montferrers appears in the play—but to comply with Christian requirements and unlike the ghost in
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and first published in 1611. It is the only dramatic work recognised by the consensus of modern scholarship as the undisputed work of
Tourneur, "one of the more shadowy figures of Renaissance drama."
223:, and also a hypocrite who is tangentially involved in both the superior plots as a willing stooge for both D'Amville and Levidulchia. His attempted seduction of Soquette is a ridiculous failure.
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A tertiary comic subplot features the clownish Languebeau Snuffe, who attempts to seduce Soquette, Castabella's servant. Snuffe is Baron Belforest's chaplain; he is a
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is the most modern of the Shakespeare plays because it is the play which most departs from, or overlays, the medieval model. Shakespeare wrote many plays after
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Also, no revivals of the play are recorded between its own era and modern times. Productions have been staged in England, for instance in 1979 (
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was accumulated over the past two centuries, especially on the drama's place in the evolution of Jacobean tragedy and the
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must have been written first, because it seems less developed and more crude. For those who attribute
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by providence alone, financial precautions and provisions for one's earthly future, and acts on his
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The New Intellectuals: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama,
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and other plays of the era (which draw on the precedents of the revenge ghosts in the plays of
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237:), Montferrers' ghost counsels Charlemont to abjure revenge, to leave it in the hands of
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Renaissance Revivals: City Comedy and Revenge Tragedy in the London Theatre, 1576–1980,
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maxim, which ends his memorable monologue in the poetic form of a rhyming
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Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1977; pp. 248 and 267–73.
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D'Amville is a wealthy French nobleman and a cynical, ruthless,
395:, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1971; pp. 75–85, 154–8.
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Those scholars who have considered Tourneur the author of both
324:. Cambridge Companions to Literature (reprint ed.).
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4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 3, p. 499.
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The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Tragedy
134:. Scholars have considered the play's relationship to
451:: Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
302:Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1986; p. 56.
18:The Atheist's Tragedy, or the Honest Man's Revenge
350:"The Atheist's Tragedy, White Bear Theatre Club"
393:The Multiple Plot in English Renaissance Drama
154:, who exchanges metaphysical and theological
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257:Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, eds,
186:And their succession shall for ever live,
196:Let all men lose, so I increase my gain.
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126:A large body of critical commentary on
98:on 14 September 1611, and published in
83:, such considerations are irrelevant.
71:(published in 1607) have assumed that
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200:I have no feeling of another's pain.
193:To add to life as much of happiness.
184:There's my eternity. My life in them
320:; Sullivan, Jr, Garrett A. (eds.).
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270:Logan and Smith, pp. 264 and 271.
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55:The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois
188:And in my reason dwells the
112:Birmingham Repertory Theatre
382:Logan and Smith, pp. 263–7.
87:Publication and performance
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326:Cambridge University Press
468:English Renaissance plays
314:"Tragedy and performance"
116:White Bear Theatre Club
360:. 2004. Archived from
284:The Elizabethan Stage,
77:The Revenger's Tragedy
68:The Revenger's Tragedy
312:Potter, Lois (2010).
128:The Atheist's Tragedy
94:was entered into the
92:The Atheist's Tragedy
73:The Atheist's Tragedy
63:The Atheist's Tragedy
358:Blueeyes Productions
178:(shown in italics):
96:Stationers' Register
410:"Hamlet = Apostasy"
406:Williamson, Richard
25:-era stage play, a
408:(5 January 2019).
391:Richard L. Levin,
235:Seneca the Younger
182:Here are my sons.
122:Critical responses
335:978-0-521-51937-3
239:divine providence
203:— Act 1, scene 1
168:divine providence
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416:. No. 599.
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478:1600s plays
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29:written by
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428:22 January
424:Initiative
368:22 January
341:22 January
245:References
190:providence
136:Calvinist
110:), 1994 (
49:King Lear
164:heredity
156:eternity
143:Synopsis
23:Jacobean
221:Puritan
176:couplet
152:atheist
27:tragedy
446:Romans
444:— See
439:Hamlet
435:Hamlet
422:Marcel
420:: St.
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230:Hamlet
100:quarto
449:12:19
316:. In
21:is a
430:2019
370:2019
343:2019
330:ISBN
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