Cyril Tourneur (; died 28 February 1626) was an English soldier, diplomat and dramatist who wrote '' The Atheist's Tragedy'' (published 1611); another (and better-known) play, '' The Revenger's Tragedy'' (1607), formerly ascribed to him, is now more generally attributed to

Thomas Middleton Thomas Middleton (baptised 18 April 1580 – July 1627; also spelt ''Midleton'') was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. He, with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson, was among the most successful and prolific of playwrights at work in the Jac ...

Life

Cyril Tourneur was the son, or possibly the grandson, of Edward Tournor of Canons, Great Parndon (

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

), and his second wife, Frances Baker. He served in his youth Sir Francis Vere and Sir Edward Cecil. His literary activities seem to be concentrated in the period 1600–1613. In 1613 and 1614 he was employed in military and diplomatic service in the

Low Countries The term Low Countries, also known as the Low Lands ( nl, de Lage Landen, french: les Pays-Bas, lb, déi Niddereg Lännereien) and historically called the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlanden), Flanders, or Belgica, is a coastal lowland region in N ...

. In 1625 he was appointed to be secretary to the council of war for the Cádiz Expedition. This appointment was cancelled, but Tourneur sailed in Cecil's company to

Cádiz Cádiz (, , ) is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the Province of Cádiz, one of eight that make up the autonomous community of Andalusia. Cádiz, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe, ...

. On the return voyage from the disastrous expedition, he was put ashore at Kinsale with other sick men and died in Ireland on 28 February 1626.

Writings

A difficult allegorical poem called ''The Transformed Metamorphosis'' (1600) is Tourneur's earliest extant work; an elegy on the death of Prince Henry, son of James I of England, is the latest (1613). Tourneur's other non-dramatic works include a prose pamphlet, ''Laugh and Lie Down'' (1605), some contributions to Sir

Thomas Overbury Sir Thomas Overbury (baptized 1581 – 14 September 1613) was an English poet and essayist, also known for being the victim of a murder which led to a scandalous trial. His poem ''A Wife'' (also referred to as ''The Wife''), which depicted the ...

's ''Book of Characters'' and an epicede on Sir Francis Vere. This poem conveys the poet's ideal conception of a perfect knight or happy warrior. Tourneur's primary dramatic work is ''The Atheist's Tragedy, or The Honest Man's Revenge'' which was published in 1611. A case has been made by Johan Gerritsen that Tourneur is the author of the first act of ''The Honest Man's Fortune'' (1613), a play from the Beaumont & Fletcher canon usually attributed to John Fletcher, Philip Massinger and Nathan Field. In addition there is a lost play, ''The Nobleman'', and the lost ''Arraignment of London'' written with Robert Daborne. Tourneur's current reputation however rests on ''The Atheist's Tragedy''. It confidently reproduces themes and conventions which are characteristic of medieval

morality play The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts ( ...

s and of Elizabethan ''

memento mori ''Memento mori'' (Latin for 'remember that you ave todie'emblems. It uses these conventions in the context of

Calvin Calvin may refer to: Names * Calvin (given name) ** Particularly Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States * Calvin (surname) ** Particularly John Calvin, theologian Places In the United States * Calvin, Arkansas, a hamlet * Calvin T ...

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

theology. This and Tourneur's other uncontested works, show him to be "a traditional Christian moralist, with a consistent didactic bent." The play recalls Jonson's ''The Alchemist'' and ''Volpone'' in the character of Languebeau Snuffe, and may also be a response to ''The Revenge of Bussy D'Amboise.'' As regards ''The Revenger's Tragedy'', the play was published anonymously, and was first attributed to Cyril Tourneur by Edward Archer in 1656. The attribution was also made by Francis Kirkman in lists of 1661 and 1671. Critics supporting Tourneur's authorship attribution argued that the tragedy is unlike Middleton's other early dramatic work, and that internal evidence, including some idiosyncrasies of spelling, points to Tourneur.Gibbons, B. (2008). ''The Revenger's Tragedy'' (3rd ed., pp. xxiii-xxiv). London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. However, the consensus of modern scholarship attributes the play to Middleton, citing stylistic similarities to Middleton's other work and contextual evidence. Modern stagings of ''The Atheist's Tragedy'' remain few and far between.

Works of Tourneur

* ''The Atheists Tragedie; or, The Honest Mans Revenge'' (1611) * ''A Funeral Poeme Upon the Death of the Most Worthie and True Soldier, Sir Francis Vere, Knight..'' (1609) * ''A Griefe on the Death of Prince Henrie, Expressed in a Broken Elegie ...'', printed with two other poems by John Webster and Thomas Haywood as ''Three Elegies on the most lamented Death of Prince Henry'' (1613) * ''The Transformed Metamorphosis'' (1600), an obscure satire * ''The Nobleman'', a lost play entered on the Stationers Register (Feb. 15, 1612) as "A Tragecomedye called The Nobleman written by Cyrill Tourneur", the MS. of which was destroyed by John Warburton's cook * ''Arraignment of London'' (1613), stated in a letter of that date from Robert Daborne to Philip Henslowe that Daborne had commissioned Cyril Tourneur to write one act of this play.

References

;Notes ;Sources * Gibbons, Brian, (ed). (1991). ''The Revenger's Tragedy; New Mermaids edition (2nd edition)''. New York: Norton, 1991 * * This includes Swinburne's critical assessment of the writer. * ;Other reading * Parfitt, George, ed. ''The Plays of Cyril Tourneur''. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978. * Higgins, Michael H. 'The Influence of Calvinistic Thought in Tourneur's ''Atheist's Tragedy, ''Review of English Studies'' XIX.75 (Jul 1943), 255-262. {{DEFAULTSORT:Tourneur, Cyril 1626 deaths Military personnel from Essex English Renaissance dramatists People from Essex English soldiers English diplomats Year of birth unknown