Queen Elizabeth 1 Research Paper

In the course of English leadership, the sixteenth century citizens of the island nation were long accustomed to an ever-revolving door of institutions, families, and people struggling to gain and maintain power, particularly with the volatile temperament of King Henry VIII and instability of the reigns of his first two children. However, Queen Elizabeth I served as a stable, much-beloved pause in the wheel of authority that provided the country with a dependable figurehead for a 45-year reign. English citizens felt the deafening hardship of her death all the more as a result. Because Elizabeth I did not leave an heir with close consanguineal ties, history suggests a return to the revolving door of governance with a Scotsman newly on the English

throne. As literature often reflects the sentiments of its contemporary society, Thomas Middleton pens in The Revenger’s Tragedy a story of nostalgia, corruption, and mortality in the wake of the main character complicating his own identity. While there are other characters in the play whose names open a space for clear allegorical representation, Vindice—the revenger—dons multiple identities as he struggles to balance his moral needs and desires for vengeance against the Duke and royal family. Through the multidimensional character Vindice, Middleton’s Tragedy expresses the struggle of the English people to come to terms with their identity and develop a sense of national unity in the advent of major change.
On March 24, 1603, Queen Elizabeth I is believed to have died of septicemia (Death), an infection considered fatal even in the eyes of modern medicine.

The infection is also sometimes referred to as blood poisoning and characterized by chills, rapid breathing, and an overall ill complexion (Septicemia). This depiction of a frail, infirm woman presents a much different identity from the one of regal stability Elizabeth had become known for. The queen is both the origin point and explanation for the identity crisis among her nation. In the forethought of nostalgia, Middleton christens the skull of Vindice’s former beloved Gloriana, a name attributed to the late queen. In Edmund Spencer’s “The Faerie Queene”, the title character is an allegory for Queen Elizabeth, “the ‘glorious-one,’” (Finin) an apt characterization of the monarch’s public image. In Tragedy, Middleton’s use of the same name “invokes Elizabeth’s royal persona” and “an idealized reference…[which] suggests a nostalgia for this queen who reigned for nearly half a century”(Finin). Doing so provides Gloriana with several identities within the play: Gloriana the character, Gloriana the prop, Gloriana the Faerie Queen, and Gloriana as Queen Elizabeth. Just as the English nation is facing a crisis of identity with the demise of their queen, Vindice faces the same crisis with the demise of his Gloriana, struggling between the character and the prop skull. This creates a juxtaposition for Vindice evident in his opening

speech. He describes the character as “Once the bright face of my betrothed lady” (1.1.16) with eyes like “two heaven-pointed diamonds” (1.1.19) and a natural beauty “So far beyond the artificial shine of any woman’s bought complexion” (1.1.21-22). Though he is addressing the character Gloriana, in reality it is the prop in Vindice’s immediate visual space. His words for the prop are as harsh as his words for the character are loving. Addressing the skull, he laments “Thou sallow picture of my poisoned love…thou shell of death” (1.1.14-15) and identifies her “ragged imperfections” (1.1.18) as the “unsightly rings” of her eyes, a feature he praised of diamond beauty for the character Gloriana one line earlier. Vindice’s contemplation of his lost love, riddled with combatting emotions, embodies the struggle of the English people as they too faced the deterioration and inevitable loss of their Virgin Queen.
Other characters in the play are not as troubled with their identity. Lussurioso, the Duke’s legitimate son and heir, maintains his identity in parallel to his name, the meaning of which is lust and excess (Dessen, 299). Lussurioso lusts after Castiza in the modern sense of the word and unknowingly employs her brother Vindice to persuade the chaste lady into wicked sheets solidifying Vindice as an enemy. He demonstrates excess in the fact that Lussurioso is unwilling to marry Castiza for a place in her bed. When Vindice pushes the subject, the heir to the dukedom replies, “Marriage is good, yet rather keep a friend./ Give me my bed by stealth; there's true delight” (1.3.104-105), more infatuated with the sin than with the woman. Rather than being satisfied with traditional means of begetting a sexual relationship—marriage—he pushes the venture over the top and into other desires of depravity. Lussurioso also lusts after his father’s kingdom in both the modern sense of desire and the Elizabethan sense of luxury and title. Lussurioso’s barely restrained joy at his father’s death is expressed in an aside, “Welcome, sweet titles!” and is quickly followed by an address of indulgence to his nobles: “Talk to me, my lords,/ Of sepulchers and mighty emperors' bones;/ That's thought for me” (5.1.147-149). He clearly focuses on what the situation gains for him rather than what the kingdom has lost. In the vein of covetous actions being a sin, Lussurioso’s death by Vindice is a delivery of karmic punishment.
Similarly to his brother, the Duke’s bastard Spurio also syncs identity with his name, one in which Middleton leaves no mystery.

Spurio, short for spurious, has an expansive manner of implications—bastardry, superficiality, and counterfeit—all revolving around the word false (“Spurious, adj.”). In his essay “Bastardy, Counterfeiting, and Misogyny in The Revenger’s Tragedy”, Michael Neill fittingly characterizes Spurio as “a kind of living emblem for the usurping appetite which dominates…[the] world of courtly counterfeits” (389). Spurio’s anger stems from his father’s adultery, a bastardization of lovemaking which resulted in a false son and prevented the inheritance of the dukedom even before his birth. Eventually persuaded by the feminine wiles of the duchess and a nock at his manhood, the bastard is induced to “be revenged of such a father” (1.2.157) by means of incest and cuckoldry. However, even Spurio’s pretense of interest for the duchess is false despite their threadbare union. Alone on stage, he declares, “Stepmother, I consent to thy desires./ I love thy mischief well, but I hate thee” (1.2.93-94). This occurs shortly after Spurio professes, “Adultery is my nature” (1.2.179), leaving no question to the audience where his loyalties lie. Being born of deception and finding revenge in deception, it is no surprise that Spurio’s death comes at the hand of an armsman when he falsely lays claim to the title of

duke.
The Duchess’ sons also bear namesake identities. Junior Brother is simply that: the youngest of the three sons. Though no less corrupt than the rest of his royal family, Junior Brother serves to provide a strong motivation for the Duchess’ hatred of the duke and to solidify the older brothers’ hatred of Lussurioso. The brothers, Ambitoso, meaning ambition, and Supervacuo, meaning superfluous or vain, are readily interchangeable for the most part. The brothers’ overconfidence in their own abilities results in a mix-up at the prison and Junior Brother’s death. Their declaration that the youngest “Shalt be revenged, i'faith” (3.6.103) is resolved ironically—the two older brothers who are at fault for the youngest’s death attack one another over the dukedom. In their confidence and vanity, neither brother suspects the depth of the other’s desire to be the duke nor pays Spurio’s claim to the throne enough attention. The result is a chain of deaths—Supervacuo’s at the hand of Ambitoso and Ambitoso’s at the hand of Spurio. The long series of deaths that take place in the banquet hall end the Duke’s family line.