ANTONIO'S REVENGE, or
circa 1599–1600
It seems Andrugio and Piero were once rivals for Maria's love (several decades since), and Andrugio won her. Piero is still jealous of Andrugio and hates Antonio, Andrugio's son out of Maria. This Antonio was set to marry Mellida. Piero is told that Maria is on her way even now to be reunited with her husband and son. Piero plans to kill the husband, disenfranchise the son, and marry the mother.
I.ii On the road, her servants cheer Maria. Her long turmoil and worry over the welfare of her husband and son is over and she will soon see them again, her servants insist. She shrugs off her long-wonted grief and begins to anticipate the reunion.
Antonio rises and, with the gentlemen of the court, goes to Mellida's window and sings an aubade. On the way he tells his companions of his disturbing dream. Two ghosts came to him-one with a gaping chest wound and one who looked like Andrugio. They cried, "revenge!" He woke, went to the window and saw a blazing comet, and then his nose began to bleed—all bad omens. The gentlemen talk him out of his melancholy, reminding him that he is soon to be a bridegroom.
At Mellida's window Antonio is reunited with his newly arrived mother, Maria. The gents sing their aubade, but Mellida does not come to her window. The curtains are drawn aside to reveal the mutilated body of Feliche hanging in Mellida's casement.
Piero, still bloody, enters and tells them that he caught Feliche in bed with Mellida ("the strumpet"), and killed him. Antonio tries to stab Piero for the insult to Mellida, but Maria stops him. A messenger enters with the news that Andrugio has died in his sleep. Piero acts surprised. Maria faints at the news and is carried off stage. Piero convinces them that he had to kill Felice, Pandulpho's son, for his own honor—Pandulpho takes the news with a stoic "Ha, ha, ha" reminiscent of Titus Andronicus.
II.i begins with a dumb show depicting the funeral of Andrugio. Piero secretly gloats at his victory over his enemy and past rival for Maria. Balurdo, the foolish gentleman and logophile, enters trying to glue on a beard and makes comments relevant to the profession of play-acting, and in particular the children's companies. Balurdo loves to use big words—retort and obtuse, endear and intimate, pathetical and unvulgar—though he has a tendency to misuse them to unintentional comic effect.
Piero approaches Pandulpho, who believes his son guilty of lechery with Mellida, and tries to convince him to swear that he heard Antonio plotting his own father's (Andrugio's) death. The stoical Pandulpho rejects the immoral suggestion to perjure himself, flouts Piero for suggesting such a thing, and is banished by Piero from the city. The stoic exclaims that the body but not the soul may be "tripped" by temporal dukes.
II.ii Antonio is trying to find comfort by reading philosophy, in particular Seneca's De Providentia, but finds little comfort there. He speaks his undying devotion to Mellida through the grating of her prison. He tells her that he still believes in her innocence, that she is not guilty of lechery with Feliche. Mellida warns him that it is all a plot and admonishes him to escape the city. Piero finds Antonio weeping and secretly gloats. Maria enters, and Antonio upbraids her for considering marriage to Piero.
Piero plots with his henchman, Strotzo, to swear that he bore false witness against Mellida at Antonio's bidding. Piero further instructs him to swear that Antonio paid Strotzo to strangle Andrugio. Piero's plan is that Strotzo should dash in during Mellida's trial with a noose about his neck, as if he had seen the error of his way, make a full confession, and beg for immediate death. Piero says he will take up the rope as if to kill Strotzo, but at the last minute have a change of heart and release Strotzo for having the nobility to make a clean breast of it. Further, Piero tells Strotzo, he will give Strotzo a place of honor in court for being such an honest and conscientious man. Strotzo agrees to the plot.
III.i begins with a dumb show depicting Piero paying off Maria's nurse and serving man, Nutriche and Lucio, to counsel Maria to marry Piero. The scene then opens at midnight in St. Mark's church. Antonio has gone to grieve at his father's grave. The ghost of Andrugio rises, tells Antonio of Mellida's innocence and of Piero's guilt. He orders Antonio to avenge his murder. Maria enters as the ghost disappears. She is worried about Antonio being out so late. Antonio assures her that he will come to bed (with obvious double entendre indicating his own death), but he will come to bed only after he has seen Piero, Maria, Strotzo, and Julio (Piero's young son) to bed (again with the same double entendre ). Maria, not understanding, is satisfied with his answer. Again alone, Antonio hears the voices of Pandulpho and the ghosts of Feliche and Andrugio crying, "murder." This resolves him.
He hides as Piero enters looking for Maria. Julio, frightened by bad dreams, joins Piero. They leave—leaving Julio behind (for some reason left unknown). Antonio emerges from the dark and takes the child. He explains his love for the child but his hatred for Piero's blood—the blood that flows through Julio. He must kill Julio because of that. Julio seems to accept this explanation and allows Antonio to kill him.
III.ii Next morning, Maria weeps; Nutriche chastises her for crying the day before her wedding. Maria laments the death of Andrugio; Balurdo enters and sings a humorous song to cheer her, then leaves with Nutriche—leaving Maria alone. Maria goes to her bed and draws the bed curtains aside to reveal the ghost of Andrugio. Andrugio chastises her for being disloyal to her oath of fidelity to him. He tells her of Piero's guilt in his murder and instructs her to join with Antonio in avenging the wrong. Antonio enters spattered with Julio's blood (as Piero entered at the beginning of the play spattered with Feliche's blood). Andrugio instructs him to pardon his mother's ignorance. He goes on to tell Antonio that Piero will kill him if he does not disguise himself.
IV.i Antonio has disguised himself as a fool. Both Maria and Alberto disapprove of the disguise as being below Antonio's station, but Antonio insists that the fool is the perfect disguise since it allows him to approach monarchs and speak his mind. In addition, Piero will not spend good money to have his spies watch a fool. He instructs Alberto to pass the rumor around that Antonio has died.
Piero enters with the heads of state and calls for Mellida's trial to begin. At the trial Strotzo rushes in as planned and makes his confession. Piero grabs up the noose and begins to strangle Strotzo. But, instead of changing his mind at the last minute as supposedly planned, Piero kills Strotzo. He lets Mellida go free. He calls for Antonio to be found and brought to court to answer the accusations laid upon him by Strotzo (who, as planned, claimed to work at Antonio's behest). Alberto comes in with news that Antonio drowned himself for loss of Mellida. Mellida faints. She is carried from the room and the fool—Antonio in disguise—follows.
Piero tells Alberto to take the body of the wrongly accused Feliche to his banished father, Pandulpho. Alberto asks if Pandulpho's banishment will be rescinded and Pandulpho be allowed back into the court. Piero says no. Alberto asks if his lands will be returned. No. Will Piero allow him at least to live in the city? No again. Alberto is cast from the court for his insolence.
Piero secretly plots to marry Mellida to Galeatzo of Florence. Then, with his marriage to Maria of Genoa, he will be ruler of Venice, Florence, and Genoa. Balurdo upbraids Piero's ill treatment of Alberto and Piero sends him to the dungeon.
Maria enters to tell the court that Mellida is dead. She died in the arms of her fool. Maria's description indicates that Mellida saw through Antonio's disguise at the end and died happy in his arms.
Piero insists that he will not put off his marriage because of the death of his daughter.
IV.ii Pandulpho and Antonio join forces against Piero. Pandulpho breaks his stoical facade and weeps for Feliche. They bury Feliche on stage (in the trap?)
V.i begins with a dumb show depicting the secret plotting of Alberto, Maria, and Galeatzo who has joined them. The people turn against Piero secretly. Andrugio's ghost gloats.
The scene opens with a monologue by the ghost of Andrugio. He tells the audience that letters found in Strotzo's room have exposed Piero's crimes, though Piero is unaware of the discovery. Galeatzo and the Venetian people have turned against Piero.
V.ii Balurdo escapes from the dungeon (under the stage-crawling out at the trap door?) He swears enmity to Piero and sings. He meets Antonio and Alberto, who are in masque attire. Alberto sends the nearly starved Balurdo to his room for clean clothes and a good meal and tells him to meet them at the masque to avenge himself on Piero. Balurdo exits. Pandulpho joins Antonio and Alberto, and the three exit "twin'd together."
V.iii At the masque, Piero and Maria are preparing to celebrate their upcoming marriage, though Maria indicates in asides that she is only luring him into a trap. During the dance, Andrugio's ghost enters to watch. The masquers entreat Piero to stay and eat with them after he sends away his courtiers. Piero, suspecting nothing, agrees. The masquers (Antonio, Pandulpho, Alberto, and Balurdo, joined by Maria) unmask and tie up Piero.
They tear out his tongue. They taunt him and remind him of the wrongs he has done them. Pandulpho glories at Piero's weeping, Piero's blood not being enough to satisfy Pandulpho. They uncover a dish heaped with the mutilated remains of Julio. They make to stab Piero, but stop at the last moment in order to torture him with fear. Antonio at last stabs Piero and the rest fall on Piero with rapiers. Andrugio glories in Piero's demise.
The courtiers reenter to investigate the commotion. They find Piero dead and ask who is responsible. All the conspirators want the credit, but finally admit it was a joint effort. They are congratulated. The Senator offers to give them anything they want of Venice, but Pandulpho says they have agreed to enter some religious order and live "most content votaries."
Antonio entreats them to cleanse their hands of Piero's blood and to purge their hearts of hatred so they might bury Mellida. He vows to live a chaste life, his love being killed when Mellida died. The story ends with Antonio approving the possible retelling of his story by some inspired future writer (an obvious self-aggrandizement on the part of Marston). Then a song ends the play.
Pandulpho is the "senseless" stoic who allows vengeance to transform him into a passionate avenger.
Balurdo is the "senseless" fool who allows vengeance to transform him into the self-righteous avenger.
Piero Sforza, unlike his character in Antonio and Mellida (q.v.), becomes the Machiavel indeed, and the comic villain who, in I.i. requires the adulation of his henchman for the crimes he has committed.
Strotzo, the henchman, is the tool of evil. Like Pedringano in The Spanish Tragedy, he is executed when he outlasts his usefulness.
The Ghost of Andrugio is the spirit of vengeance who compels the avengers to their actions—at least in the cases of Antonio and Maria.
Maria, Antonio's mother and Andrugio's widow, is Gertrude-like before she learns the truth behind Andrugio's murder, then she, too, becomes a remorseless avenger.
Julio is the innocent, a victim killed mainly to give Piero a Thystes/Titus Andronicus-like meal in Act V.
Mellida becomes victim. She appears in only two scenes, dies offstage, and has little or nothing to do with the main theme of revenge other than to add another reason for Antonio to kill Piero.
Feliche, who was important as the malcontent in Antonio and Mellida, is murdered just before the play begins and spends most of the play hanging in full view—"stabbed thick with wounds." He is probably played by a set piece like a wax dummy.
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Another point of interest in this, as in other children's plays, is the self-conscious nature of the actor qua actor. By IV.ii Pandulpho, upon learning of Feliche's innocence, weeps at last. He says, "Why, all this while I ha' but play'd a part, / Like some boy that acts a tragedy, speaks burly words and raves out passion; / But when he thinks upon his infant weakness, / He droops his eye. I . . . am less than a man" (IV.ii.70-75). Antonio, in like vein, says to Mellida, "I will not swell like a tragedian, / In forced passion of affected strains" (II.ii.105-6). And again at II.i.33 when Balurdo says, "Many men can utter that which no man but themselves can conceive; but, I thank a good wit, I have the gift to speak that which neither any man else nor myself understands", making comment upon child actors, like the boy playing Balurdo himself, who memorize words they do not fully understand themselves.
Feliche's body is discovered hanging at I.ii.194. At II.i. 75 ("Look at those lips") the gestive language indicates that Feliche is still hanging in view of the audience. It isn't until IV.i.233 that Piero gives Alberto leave to "[g]o, take [Feliche's body] down and bear him to his father; let him be buried." This would seem to indicate that Feliche hangs in full view-presenting both a memento mori and an emblem of tragedy (like the black drapes hung onstage during an Elizabethan tragedy). The image would be striking, and a close examination of the text might reveal how the dangling corpse influences other characters and controls the metaphor of the play itself.
In a similar vein, Andrugio's coffin is brought onstage during the dumb show introducing Act II, but does not become an object of action until III.i when Antonio comes to St. Marks to do his observance to his father. Then, as Antonio is sprinkling the hearse with holy water and burning incense, Andrugio, at III.i.31 rips open his shroud and emerges from the coffin. Although, speaking practically, it is possible that the boy playing Andrugio could have been placed into the coffin during the act break between II and III to save him having to lie still throughout Act II (and to insure against his falling asleep and missing his cue as well)—he then would have to lie patiently in the coffin for the thirty-one lines leading up to his dramatic appearance—the point to be made is that the coffin, like the hanging body of Feliche, can act as a somber reminder of the play's darker side, especially when one considers the tiny dimensions of the St. Paul's stage ("Never more woe in lesser plot was found." V.iii.176—"plot", of course, standing for both "story" and "plot of ground" or "stage space.")
In the same scene (III.i), after the murder of Julio, Antonio changes his incense and holy water for the child of Piero's blood. First, Antonio says, "[T]hy father's blood [meaning Piero's blood which ran in the veins of Julio] / I thus make incense of, to Vengeance." And, in opposition to Hunter's note that "[Antonio] sprinkles the tomb with blood", Antonio obviously puts the blood in his censer, making an olibanum of it. Support for this argument comes from the text; Antonio invokes Andrugio, "Ghost of my poison'd sire, suck this fume" (III.ii.207 [emphasis added]), indicative of a "blood incense"—perhaps some theatre magic which allows the smoke to turn from its original white to a red (or perhaps black) hue after Julio's blood is added. Also, Antonio says to the ghost, "[P]erfume thy circling air / With smoke of blood" (III.ii.209 [emphasis added]). Only after this does Antonio say, "I sprinkle round his [Piero's via Julio] gore / And dew thy hearse with these fresh-reeking drops" (III.ii.209-10).
Another interesting piece of stage suggestion is the pit, or "hell" of St. Paul's. Though Hunter suggests that Mellida, in II.ii.73, appears at a grate in the back wall, the text clearly says she is in "the dungeon" (II.i.47). It seems odd, if Mellida were at a grate in the back wall, that Antonio would have to ask her to "reach me thy hand" (II.ii.111). Furthermore, Antonio's action after speaking to Mellida is obviously one that would leave him lying on the floor—"Behold a prostrate wretch laid on his tomb" (II.ii.132). In Antonio and Mellida he is almost constantly throwing himself on the ground in misery, but that character trait is missing in Antonio's Revenge, and, indeed, is not in keeping with the serious nature of the tragedy, as it would have been in the comedy.
Finally, when Balurdo is sent to "the dungeon" (IV.i.273), he is actually seen to escape from the dungeon by crawling out through "hell"—see s.d. "Balurdo from under stage" (V.ii.1) and his line "Ho, who's above there, ho?" (V.ii.1 [emphasis added]). During his speech, he obviously crawls onto the stage, "O now, Sir Jeffery, show thy valor: break prison" (V.ii.4). Nor can it be convincingly argued that he crawled upon the stage from one side, the stage direction at IV.ii.87 during the burial of Feliche's body ("They strike the stage with their daggers, and the grave openeth") indicates that a working "hell" was present on the St. Paul stage. If, then, there was a working "hell", and Balurdo uses that "hell" to effect his escape from "the dungeon", then it is reasonable to assume the Mellida's appearance "at a grate" must mean a grate over "hell" because she, like Balurdo, is in "the dungeon." Synopsis:
I.i Piero, the duke of Venice, enters with his henchman, Strotzo. He has blood on his arms and a poniard in his hands. He brags about having poisoned his bitter enemy, Andrugio (the father of Antonio) with a goblet of wine used to drink his health. On this very night (it is two in the morning and he began his dirty work at midnight) Piero and Strotzo have murdered Feliche and hung his body at Mellida's (Piero's daughter's) casement while she slept. Piero says he has done this for secret the hatred he has harbored for Andrugio. Characterization:
Antonio is the man of common sense who allows vengeance to transform him into a blood avenger. Notes of Interest:
Marston has a love of rhetoric, but seems to know when he has gone too far. Here as in Antonio and Mellida and The Malcontent he has characters fly into rhetorical extravagance only to be checked by another character or by himself. See especially I.ii.187 "Nay, leave hyperboles." Pandulpho, at I.ii.312 says, "Would'st have me run raving up and down / For my son's loss? Would'st have me turn rank mad, / Or wring my face with mimic action, / Stamp, curse, weep, rage, and then my bosom strike? / Away, 'tis apish action, player-like."