At once a genre definer and a subversion of the genre it defines, The Revenger's Tragedy is impossible to pin down.
Superficially a condemnation of both immorality and revenge, the 17th-century play nonetheless takes enormous glee in the latter, and can be read as either a value-free splatterfest, a devastating social critique, a high-camp satire or a conservative appeal to traditional values; the disputed authorship only adds to the enigma.
Its appeal today could derive precisely from the slippery nature of its moral tone, which makes the play seem curiously, anachronistically modern.
Set in an Italian court, Vindici (many of the names in The Revenger's Tragedy are about as subtle as those in the average Martin Amis novel - Ambitioso, Lussurioso, Spurio, Sordido, and so on) seeks revenge against the corrupt, sexually depraved duke for the murder of a lover. The duke's assortment of sons, stepsons and illegitimate sons are all as power-crazed and machiavellian as he is, and the plot unfolds powered by a ridiculous number of intersecting sub-plots, stratagems, tricks and intrigues.
Everyone has a hidden agenda - and they like to tell the audience about it in asides. The result is one of the most indiscriminate bloodbaths ever committed to paper. Like a Jacobean Quentin Tarantino film, it is bloodthirsty, amoral and shot through with black comedy, and culminates with a pile-up of corpses.