Page "The Revenger's Tragedy" Paragraph 28

This trend towards court-based tragedy was contemporary with a change in dramatic tastes toward the satiric and cynical, beginning before the death of Elizabeth I but becoming ascendant in the few years following.

The episcopal ban on verse satire in 1599 appears to have impelled some poets to a career in dramaturgy ; writers such as John Marston and Thomas Middleton brought to the theaters a lively sense of human frailty and hypocrisy.

They found fertile ground in the newly revived children's companies, the Blackfriars Children and Paul's Children ; these indoor venues attracted a more sophisticated crowd than that which frequented the theaters in the suburbs.