Signs of the Crimes: Topography, Murder, and Early Modern Domestic Tragedy

Abstract

I]t seems to have been the constant practice of the dramatists of that day, to avail themselves (like ballad-makers) of any circumstances of the kind, which attracted attention, in order to construct them into a play, often treating the subject merely as a dramatic narrative of a known occurrence, without embellishing, or aiding it with the ornaments of invention.-John Payne Collier, The History of English Dramatic Poetry (1831)Police are toning down the bright yellow street signs used in the British capital to mark the sites of murders, robberies and assaults following complaints that they increase public fear of violent crimes. -The Advertiser (2002)In the century following John Payne Collier's discussion of domestic tragedies as a generic group, each of which originates "in a recent tragical incident," critics have continued to comment upon the plays' fidelity to reality (Collier 3:50).'In 1906 John Addington Symonds noted the plays' "sombre realistic detail" (329); in 1975 Andrew Clark wrote about their "realism of the most unrefined and sensational kind" (155); in the final decade of the twentieth century Frances E. Dolan discussed their "grim journalistic detail" ("Gender" 211) and Peter Holbrook their "quasi-documentary feel" (93); and at the turn of the twenty-first century, almost 170 years after Collier, Richard Helgerson remains fascinated by domestic tragedy's "extraordinary realism" (2).Though they share 1 I am enormously indebted to Margreta de Grazia, whose comments on earlier versions of this essay helped considerably to shape its final form.For their input and support, I am grateful to Jean E.

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