Let’s recap, shall we? We have a crazy, over the top tragedy, complete with very aptly named characters, a man who turns his mother into a bawd for his sister, a semi-incestuous relationship, adultery, rape, intertwining plots as a cluster of characters seek revenge and a fair bit of misogyny. Oh, what quaint devises used in this play! Throw in a man who always seems to have a dead body laying around for when he needs it, and you’ve got a performance for the ages.

Now that I’ve got your attention, I would actually like to talk about the end of the play. As you all know, the play ends in a bloodbath in which someone is killed almost every other line. However, the only other scene that features the death of a character is in the third act, when the Duke was killed. It makes me wonder, does having the play set up in this way do something for the plot? Does it have some deeper meaning  in the story? Or is it all just for the sake of good theatre?

Let’s think about this for a moment, shall we? If Thomas Middleton were to pace himself, and spread out the deaths throughout the play, it would seem to make more sense and would make the play a lot less cartoonish. Unfortunately, it would also make the intertwining plots of revenge less obvious. To have one group of masked revengers come in and act out their plots, and then have another group come in to find their foes already defeated not only makes the play funnier and more interesting, but it blatantly displays the overlapping and intertwining plots.I feel this cluster of deaths is necessary for the humour of the play. It makes it sort of a parody of revenge tragedies, the Scary Movie of its time, if you will.