Antonio's Revenge by John Marston: Hamlet like you've never seen it before!

Join us for a rare opportunity to engage deeply with a work that challenges, entertains, and astonishes. Spaces are limited for this intimate, interactive journey into one of the boldest, blood-soaked Renaissance revenge tragedies ever written.

See Julie’s blog post here.

At the dawn of the 17th century, two London poet-playwrights turned their minds to revenge drama. The result was two plays with striking parallels: a ghost urging his son to avenge his death by poison; an outraged son rejecting the chance to stab the murderer in secret; a charged ‘closet scene’ with avenger, spectral father, and living mother; and a melancholic revenger.

One is, of course, Hamlet. The other is John Marston’s outrageous drama, Antonio’s Revenge. Which came first is anyone’s guess. Simultaneously different and the same, Marston’s play sets its avenging son in a nightmarish world of poison, mayhem and murder. The play crackles with parodic energy, mixing the conventions of English Renaissance revenge tragedy with elements that feel closer to the sensationalism of a Wild West melodrama or the eye-watering violence of a Tarantino film. This despite it being written for a children’s theatre company: The Children of Paul’s.

In this seven-week study, participants will enter a world where revenge isn’t brooded over. It is shouted, stabbed, decapitated and served with a tongue firmly planted in one cheek. Marston discards Hamlet’s moral and existential weight, instead heightening the genre’s conventions to delirious extremes: poisoned letters, severed heads, twisted villains, and blackly comic mayhem. His inventive verse is furious and kinetic, making this a play that demands to be read aloud.

Together we’ll explore the wildest edges of Renaissance theatre, tracing Marston’s audacious parody of the revenge tradition and his unflinching fascination with the macabre. Each session combines close analysis with spirited discussion, offering participants both the thrill of discovery and a sharper appreciation of how Antonio’s Revenge both honours and subverts its genre.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Six meeting live online study led by Dr Julie Sutherland
• 7 January – 11 February 2026
• Wednesdays, 5.00-7.00 pm (UK time)
• £210 per participant, including pre-session notes
• Recommended text: Five Revenge Tragedies (Penguin Classics, 2012, ed. Emma Smith) ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0141192277

REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.