Early Modern Theatrical Violence and The Bloody Banquet

 Cross-posted from Brave Spirits Theatre

by Charlene V. Smith
Artistic Director

I’ve long been fascinated by violence on the early modern stage, not just its prevalence, but its variety too. The Dictionary of Stage Directions, a resource recounting stage directions found in English plays from 1580-1642, notes over 380 fights, 180 kills, around 60 beatings, and about the same number of instances of pistols or dags (Dramaturg Claire Kimball discussed firearms in The Bloody Banquet previously). Around 30 plays are listed with a stage direction of stabbing. Several plays also including dragging characters in or out by their hair. It should also be noted that these example all come from extant plays; we’ve lost numerous scripts from the early modern theatre that would no doubt increase these numbers.

The first time I read The Bloody Banquet was while researching whether Titus Andronicus was truly a violent play in comparison to the work of the era, or whether such gruesome works were typical. In terms of body count, Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare’s bloodiest play; thirteen characters are killed. In many revenge plays, the body count tends to be around 6-8. Titus Andronicus’s acts of violence range from the common, such as stabbing, to the uncommon, such as cannibalism, but none of them is unique.

The early modern theatre contains other, more creative, acts of violence. Braining, for instance, occurs in four plays. In Tamburlaine Part One, Bajazeth “brains himself against the cage” and his wife then “runs against the Cage and brains herself.” In Seven Champions a figure “beats out his own brains.” Most cruelly, in Alphonsus of Germany “he dashes out the Child’s brains.” A personal favorite of mine is the curious ending of The Atheist’s Tragedy, in which D’Amville is preparing to execute Charlemont and Castabella but “as he raises up the ax, strikes out his own brains.”

In The Devil’s Charter, one of the dumb shows has Gismond enter “wounds gaping … holding a dagger fixed in his bleeding bosom.” In Selimus, the title character removes the eyes of Aga, orders his hands cut off, and then “Opens his bosome and puts them in.” When Aga returns blind and mutilated to his king Bajazet, he says “Witnesse the present that he sends to thee, / Open my bosome, there you shall it see.” The stage direction tells us “Mustaffa opens his bosome and takes out his hands.”

One of the most horrifying moments in Titus Andronicus is watching Tamora being fed her own sons baked into a pie. In Antonio’s Revenge by John Marston, Antonio points to a table of sweetmeats, saying:

Fall to, good Duke. O these are worthless cates.
You have no stomach to them. Look, look here:
Here lies a dish to feast thy father’s gorge.
Here’s flesh and blood which I am sure thou lovest.

Antonio then uncovers a dish containing the limbs of Julio, the Duke’s son.

The Bloody Banquet’s scene of cannibalism presents a twist on the theme of parents eating their children unknowingly. Instead the Young Queen must knowingly consume the flesh of her lover as punishment for her adultery. Armatrites, her tyrannical husband, says, “Thou shalt not die as long as this is meat, / Thou killed a buck with thou thyself shall eat.” The Queen confused asks, “Dear sir?” and the Tyrant repeats, “Here’e deer struck dead with thy own hand / Tis venison for thy own tooth.” Tymethes is drawn and quartered, and his body is hung up and displayed. When the usurped King of Lydia returns to the castle he remarks, “What horrid and inhuman spectacle is younger that presents itself to sight?” Fidelio responds “It seems three quarters of a man hung up.” The Bloody Banquet not only stages the act of cannibalism, but the text also suggests the body parts are placed within view of the characters and thus the audience as well.

Jessica Aimone and Darius McCall as the Queen and King of Lydia
photo by Claire Kimball

Perhaps the most horrifying characteristic of the human race is our propensity towards violence. One of the reasons I direct and produce early modern drama is because it confronts this ugliness head on, all the while doing so in a spectacularly theatrical way. When I first read the ending of The Bloody Banquet five years ago I knew it was a play I had to stage. I’m thrilled that our run at the 2015 Capital Fringe Festival was so popular that we are able to remount the production this weekend, August 20 – 22. Until Brave Spirits, the play hadn’t been professionally produced since the Restoration and we couldn’t be more pleased that we get to offer audiences four more chances to see this neglected work. I hope I’ll see you this weekend and at future productions–perhaps of some of the gruesome works mentioned above.