Untying and Deconstructing the text in Post- Shakespearean Renaissance Tragedies

Abstract

There is a case to be made that the Jacobean dramatist namely, Thomas Middleton, Cyril Tourneur, John Webster and John Ford were changing the scope of tragedy as generally perceived away from both Senecan and Aristotelian models. In this, they included elements of self-parody, where the capacity of the self to fashion itself is satirized. Out of this generic polyphony, something distinctive emerged.

My contention is that a distinction should be made between the Shakespearean stage and the non-Shakespearean Jacobean drama. Whereas the Shakespearean stage could be seen as essentially centripetal-upholding a sense of moral order and the official conception of monarchy, the non-Shakespearean Jacobean drama which aimed at a more diverse audience, can be seen as closer to the novel in its mingling of centrifugal and centripetal tendencies. Viewed from a Bakhtinian critical perspective, Jacobean drama, stages a multiplicity of diverse heteroglot voices and world views which in turn state multiple truths for a diverse audience, and, as such, should not be dismissed as flawed by its moral ambiguity.