Background
He was perhaps the son of Captain Richard Turner, water-bailiff and subsequently lieutenant-governor of Brill in the Netherlands.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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(Following the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign in the early...)
Following the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign in the early seventeenth century, the new court of King James was beset by political instability and moral corruption. This atmosphere provided fertile ground for the dramatists of the age, whose plays explore the ways in which social decadence and the abuse of power breed resentment and lead inexorably to violence and bloody retribution. In Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy, the debauched son of an Italian Duke attempts to rape the virtuous Gloriana - a veiled reference to Elizabeth I. Webster's The White Devil depicts a sinister world of intrigue and murderous infidelity, while The Changeling, perhaps Middleton's supreme achievement, powerfully portrays a woman bringing about her own unwitting destruction. All three are masterpieces of brooding intensity, dominated by images of decay, disillusionment and death.
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(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ The Plays And Poems: The Revengers Tragaedie. The Transformed Metamorphosis; Volume 2 Of The Plays And Poems; John Churton Collins Cyril Tourneur John Churton Collins Chatto and Windus, 1878
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He was perhaps the son of Captain Richard Turner, water-bailiff and subsequently lieutenant-governor of Brill in the Netherlands.
Cyril Tourneur also served in the Low Countries, for in 1613 there is a record made of payment to him for carrying letters to Brussels. He enjoyed a pension from the government of the United Provinces, possibly by way of compensation for a post held before Brill was handed over to the Dutch in 1616. In 1625 he was appointed by Sir Edward Cecil, whose father had been a former governor of Brill, to be secretary to the council of war. This appointment was cancelled by Buckingham, but Tourneur sailed in Cecil's company to Cadiz. On the return voyage from the disastrous expedition he was put ashore at Kiijsale with other sick men, and died in Ireland on the 28th of February 1626. An allegorical poem, worthless as art and incomprehensible as allegory, is his earliest extant work; an elegy on the death of Prince Henry, son of James I, is the latest. The two plays on which his fame rests, and on which it will rest for ever, were published respectively in 1607 and 1611, but all students have agreed to accept the internal evidence which assures us that the later in date of publication must be the earlier in date of composition. His only other known work is an epicede on Sir Francis Vere, of no great merit as poetry, but of some value as conveying in a straightforward and masculine style the poet's ideal conception of a perfect knight or " happy warrior, " comparable by those who may think fit to compare it with the more nobly realized ideals of Chaucer and of Wordsworth. But if Tourneur had left on record no more memorable evidence of his powers than might be supplied by the survival of his elegies, he could certainly have claimed no higher place among English writers than is now occupied by the Rev. Charles Fitzgeoffrey, whose voluminous and fervent elegy on Sir Francis Drake is indeed of more actual value, historic or poetic, than either or than both of Tourneur's elegiac rhapsodies. The singular power, the singular originality and the singular limitation of his genius are all equally obvious in The Atheist's Tragedy, a dramatic poem no less crude and puerile and violent in action and evolution than simple and noble and natural in expression and in style. The executive faculty of the author is in the metrical parts of his first play so imperfect as to suggest either incompetence or perversity in the workman; in The Revenger's Tragedy it is so magnificent, so simple, impeccable and sublime that the finest passages of this play can be compared only with the noblest examples of tragic dialogue or monologue now extant in English or in Greek. There is no trace of imitation or derivation from an alien source in the genius of this poet. The first editor of Webster has observed how often he imitates Shakespeare; and, in fact, essentially and radically independent as is Webster's genius also, the sovereign influence of his master may be traced not only in the general tone of his style, the general scheme of his composition, but now and then in a direct and never an unworthy or imperfect echo of Shakespeare's very phrase and accent. But the resemblance between the tragic verse of Tourneur and the tragic verse of Shakespeare is simply such as proves the natural affinity between two great dramatic poets, whose inspiration partakes now and then of the quality more proper to epic or to lyric poetry. The fiery impulse, the rolling music, the vivid illustration of thought by jets of insuppressible passion, the perpetual sustenance of passion by the implacable persistency of thought, which we recognise as the dominant and distinctive qualities of such poetry as finds vent in the utterances of Hamlet or of Timon, we recognise also in the scarcely less magnificent poetry, the scarcely less fiery sarcasm, with which Tourneur has informed the part of Vindice-a harder- headed Hamlet, a saner and more practically savage and serious Timon. He was a satirist as passionate as Juvenal or Swift, but with a finer faith in goodness, a purer hope in its ultimate security of triumph. This fervent constancy of spirit relieves the lurid gloom and widens the limited range of a tragic imagination which otherwise might be felt as oppressive rather than inspiriting. His grim and trenchant humour is as peculiar in its sardonic passion as his eloquence is original in the strenuous music of its cadences, in the roll of its rhythmic thunder. As a playwright, his method was almost crude and rude in the headlong straightforwardness of its energetic simplicity; as an artist in character, his interest was intense but narrow, his power magnificent but confined; as a dramatic poet, the force of his genius is great enough to ensure him an enduring place among the foremost of the followers of Shakespeare.
(Following the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign in the early...)
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)