The Revenger's Tragedy Theme of Violence

Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese, watch your backs—The Revenger's Tragedy has an impressive body count and a series of ornate and creepy ways to die. Is the play exploiting violence for cheap thrills? Is it showing the ill effects of violence to convince us not to engage in it? It kind of seems like a mixed bag to us, as though by going so far over the top with violence, the play is using it to both lure us into its spectacle and then, once we're there with our mouths hanging open, prove that violence only ever begets more violence.

• Is the play merely exploitative in its over-the-top and sometimes comedic violence? Or is there some deeper purpose served by all the shock?
• Is Vindice justified in using violence against the corrupt Duke's family? Or should he find some other form of revenge? Is there such thing as nonviolent revenge? Use the text in your answer.
• Is Antonio, as the new Duke, justified in using violence against Vindice and Hippolito? Is there a difference between a private individual exacting violent revenge and a government doing so?
• Are there places within the play that are less prone to violence than others? For instance, is a character safer in the country than at court?

In this play, the state is only violent and never just.

In this play, the only nonviolent characters are women—violence is all tangled up with masculinity.