?The Proof of the Puding is in the Eating?: Sweeney Todd and the Modern Revenge 
Tragedy 
 
by 
 
Mary M. Mechler 
 
 
 
 
A thesis submited to the Graduate Faculty of 
Auburn University 
in partial fulfilment of the 
requirements for the Degree of 
Master of Arts 
 
Auburn, Alabama 
May 14, 2010 
 
 
 
Keywords: 
[revenge tragedy, cannibalism, alienation, Marx, melodrama, madnes] 
 
Copyright 2010 by Mary M. Mechler 
 
 
Approved by 
 
Anna Riehl, Chair, Asistant Profesor of English 
Marc Silverstein, Profesor of English 
Alicia Carroll, Asociate Profesor of English
i 
 
 
 
 
 
Abstract 
 
 
Revenge tragedies create a world where corruption leads to retribution through personal 
rather than civil channels.  Although many have connected Stephen Sondheim?s Sweney Todd 
and the revenge tradition, few have explored how the adaptation recreates the genre in a modern 
theatrical context.  This thesis discusses the various adaptations of Sweeney Todd leading to 
Sondheim?s musical, with particular atention to the combination of revenge and melodramatic 
theatrical forms with modern theory and criticism. Through Bertolt Brecht?s theories on epic 
theatre, one may discover the techniques that serve to separate the audience from the revenger?s 
plight alowing examination of revenge?s effects on the revenger. Karl Marx and Friedrick 
Engels? ideas on clas struggle offer a lens to explore the social injustice that feeds the genre.  
When combined, these elements define a modern version of the revenge tragedy the functions as 
a more radical social critique recreating the revenger as a revolutionary figure.  
ii 
 
 
 
 
 
Table of Contents 
 
 
Abstract.........................................................................................................................................i 
Introduction...................................................................................................................................1 
Motifs and Motivation  ................................................................................................................3 
Audience and Alienation   ..........................................................................................................13 
Clas Conscious Cannibalism  ...................................................................................................30 
Conclusion  ................................................................................................................................46 
References  .................................................................................................................................50 
 
 
 
1 
Introduction 
Depending on the source, Sweney Todd, also known as the demon barber of Flet 
Street, may be viewed as an actual historical figure, an exemplary fictional vilain, or a 
sympathetic antihero. Petr Haining holds that the ?real? Sweney Todd is a young man born in 
Brick Lane, Stepney, in 1756, who led a life of crime only to end up in Newgate Prison where he 
learned his barbering trade.
1
 The printed version of Sweney Todd?s story begins in the 
serialized Victorian genre of the Penny Dreadful.  He emerges as one of many characters in the 
anonymously writen The String of Pearls: A Romance, which began serialized publication in 
1846 by Edward Lloyd in The People?s Periodical and Family Library (Kilburn 1).
2
  Dick 
Collins notes that The String of Pearls warrants the label of ?clasic? for its introduction of the 
demon barber to literature, and recognizes the debt that characters like Mr. Hyde and Count 
Dracula owe to the character Sweney Todd.  The story proved so popular that it was produced 
on stage prior to the completion of the serial publication.  Although it was common for these 
?dreadfuls? to be pirated by theatres, as wel as the pres, this premature production distinguishes 
The String of Pearls from other stories of the genre (Collins vi).   
In The String of Pearls, as in the stage adaptations by Frederick Hazelton and George 
Dibden-Pit, the story occurs in a recognizable London, but in times past; the writer specificaly 
dates the tale by describing the ?state of things, AD 1785, as regarded Sweney Todd? (3). 
Robert Mack notes the tradition of gothic novelists, like Walpole, Radcliffe, and Lewis, seting 
their narratives in the past (17).  So The String of Pearls follows this tradition, as wil the later 
versions of the play writen in the twentieth century, but set in the ninetenth century.  The story 
                                                 
1
 This and further detailed discussion of Haining?s findings may be found in: Sweney Todd: the real story of the 
demon barber of Flet Stret. 
2
 Studies peculate the authorship based on writers that often worked for Lloyd, but point out that these works often 
changed hands many times before completion (Mack 143). 
2 
situates itself in a variety of traditions; in addition to drawing on elements of the gothic novel, 
the narrative incorporates characteristics of melodrama and terms itself ?a Romance.?  The term 
?romance? refers to works containing any combination of high adventure, thwarted love, 
mysterious circumstances, arduous quests, and improbable triumphs; The String of Pearls 
certainly delivers on al counts (Murfin, Ray 414-5). While situated in gothic and romance 
traditions, the story is, first and foremost, a melodrama. The setings are as familiar as the stock 
characters portrayed within them.  As Michael R. Booth notes, this ?familiarity was an esential 
aspect of melodramatic appeal? (155).  Although the opening pages establish that the story 
occurs in the past, the continual reference to specific London landmarks offers a sense of 
imediacy.   The characters, like the streets, range a variety of clases, but incorporate the urban 
working-clas into the story. Although the stage melodramas condense the story, key elements 
remain the same. 
In 1968 while working with the Victoria Theatre, Christopher Bond recreates the story as 
a revenge tragedy by incorporating elments of The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas 1844), The 
Spanish Tragedy (Kyd 1580s), and The Revenger?s Tragedy (Middleton
3
 1607) (Bond 
?Introduction? 3-4).
4
  Eleven years afterward, Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheelr adapt 
Bond?s version of the tale into a musical.
5
  In each incarnation the story becomes a slightly 
different genre. While the adaptations keep elements of the melodrama, Sondheim?s musical 
takes the play further toward the early modern revenge tradition, in the meantime, altering the 
function of that genre by incorporating modern theatrical theory into the play?s production.  
                                                 
3
 Although much scholarship atributes The Revenger?s Tragedy to Cyril Tourneur, the version cited in this text is 
taken from a Norton Anthology that atributes the play to Thomas Middleton (Bevington et al. 1302). 
4
 Brian J. Burton also wrote a musical adaptation of the story in 1962, but makes no atempt to alter the 
melodramatic form. 
5
 Although Sondhei and Wheelr worked together on the musical adaptation, the work has a higher ratio of lyric to 
book so I wil refer primarily to Sondheim throughout this thesis. 
3 
While the play?s position as a revenge tragedy has been discussed by many, specific examination 
of the shifts in function acompanying the changes in genre are lacking.  The following 
discussion explores the elments and motifs that transition the melodrama into a revenge tragedy, 
as wel as Sondheim?s particular choices that create a modern revenge tradition by incorporating 
early modern conceptions with those of contemporary theatrical practice.  The examination wil 
conclude with a specific inquiry into the relationship betwen madnes and acts of cannibalism 
within the revenge tradition, and how these elements function as Marxist critique within 
Sondheim?s musical Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Flet Stret. When combined, these 
elments define a modern version of the revenge tragedy that functions as a more radical social 
critique than its predecesors recreating the revenger as a revolutionary figure. 
Motifs and Motivation 
The popularity of melodrama in the ninetenth-century derived from its ?strong emotion, 
?suspenseful plot, ? sharply delineated stock characters, domestic sentiment, the reward of 
virtue and the punishment of vice? (Booth 151). Although Sweeney Todd begins its life as a 
melodrama, changes in fundamental elments of the story recreate it as a revenge tragedy. 
Whereas melodramas cling to clear delineations betwen virtuous and imoral, the lines become 
blurred in the revenge tragedy.  The characters gain more depth, and motives shift to make the 
qualification of one as good and another evil more difficult. The play maintains aspects of 
melodrama, but also incorporates motifs of revenge tragedy to create something more 
complicated and difficult to clasify.  The characters function to fulfil singular purposes, but 
they are more complex than the stock characters of melodrama. The play is no longer a romance 
in the sense that we focus on seing virtuous love rewarded, the protagonist is the revenger and 
his purpose must be fulfiled.    By drawing on previous revenge tragedies as a model for his 
4 
adaptation, Bond incorporates motifs common to those plays that bridge the gap betwen the two 
genres. Sondheim?s musical adaptation of the play moves it further into the realm of revenge 
tragedy. In The Revenger?s Madnes, Charles and Elaine Halet discuss elements that distinguish 
the revenge tragedy from other early modern plays.  The incorporation of these motifs clearly 
alters the genre of the play. Characters develop beyond stock types, shifting motivations and 
relationships, while the key elments of fixation, ghosts, and masque identify the new version as 
a revenge play. 
Although Sondheim insists that the characters in Sweeney Todd are larger than life and 
that this roots them in melodramatic traditions, the characters have more depth in both Bond and 
Sondheim?s versions of the play than in the ninetenth-century melodramas (?Larger? 5).
6
  
Character development becomes easier as both contemporary playwrights reduce the number of 
characters greatly, which also serves to simplify the plot. The version credited to Dibden-Pit has 
a cast of twenty characters, not including those grouped by type: kepers of ?madmen? and 
?spectators in the courtroom? (15). Hazelton?s 1862 version has a cast of fiften. Bond reduces 
the cast to twelve characters, which Sondheim further reduces to ten, adding a chorus that serves 
to supply the various Londoners needed to tel the tale. With fewer characters to follow, the 
background of the main characters becomes clearer and offers deeper examination of motivation. 
This compresion of cast alows for more exposition of the character?s backgrounds, which, in 
turn, alows for a more sympathetic barber. 
In The String of Pearls, the only background that readers encounter on Sweney Todd is 
the depth of his criminal enterprise.  The agreement betwen Mrs. Lovet and Sweney has been 
established prior to the story?s beginning, and the people working with him are either asets or 
                                                 
6
 Sondheim supplies his own definition of melodrama stating that he thinks of it ?simply as being high theater? 
theater that is larger than life? (3). 
5 
threats.  Sweney cares for no one but himself.  He has no emotional atachments at present, nor 
are readers led to believe he ever has had these atachments. He is emotionaly isolated and 
skiled in cruelty. The same holds true for Dibden-Pit and Hazelton?s depiction of the character.  
With Bond?s alterations, Sweney gains motivation for his actions through the addition of a 
family.  No longer a solitary man whose only asociations are those who benefit him in busines, 
Sweney now has a wife, preyed upon by Judge Turpin, and a daughter, taken by Turpin as his 
ward. To gain aces to Lucy Todd, Turpin removes Sweney to prison. Sweney?s razor aims at 
the throat of ?those who moralize,? not because he is evil, but because they are false (Sondheim 
24).  The character may take drastic action, but as he points out ?these are desperate times, Mrs. 
Lovet, and desperate measures are caled for? (Sondheim 105).  The emotions that drive 
Sweney?s action, as those that motivate any revenger, are intense, transformative, and ?can 
provoke in us a conflict betwen sympathy and moral presupposition that ensure imaginative 
involvement with his predicament at the depest level? (McAlindon 29).  The failure of justice 
and tyranny of the powerful detrmine his reaction. Circumstances, not greed, drive this 
Sweney.  
Sweney gains complexity from transition in form, but to maintain the play in its new 
format other characters must also have depth.  Judge Turpin, though easily cast off as the vilain, 
acknowledges his corruption when he scourges himself seking contrition.  His lines even cal 
the audience to recognize their own faults; he enters reading from the Bible, ?let him who is 
without guilt cast the first stone,? following this verse with the question, ?can there be such a 
man? (Bond 10).  As Sweney wil do later in the play, Turpin recognizes his own faults as those 
shared by al humanity, but, as he is meant to stand on the side of justice, Turpin also serves to 
demonstrate the corruption of the government and order. Sondheim akes this scene more 
6 
complex by adding one smal detail.  Rather than hearing Johanna singing off-stage, Turpin 
whips himself while ?he peers through the keyhole of the door to Johanna?s room? (68).  
Although this scene was eliminated from the Broadway staging, the script stil includes the song 
Turpin sings as he atempts to purge himself of his lustful felings for his ward.  The 
juxtaposition of Sweney with Turpin serves the transition from pure melodrama to revenge 
tragedy since ?the tyrant and noble revenger emerge as complementary types and interacting 
extremes ? law without justice and justice without law ? through which the dramatists can 
explore the major evils that threaten man-in-society? (McAlindon 29).  The corruption of 
authority connects the story securely with the early modern tradition and its Roman antecedents. 
In the Sweney Todd melodramas, motivation within the story serves to delineate the 
good characters from those who are evil.  A clear line distinguishes these groups and no one 
pases from one to the other; personal gain motivates the evil characters. While characters in the 
later versions of the play may be acused of single-mindednes, the depth of their development 
prevents them from being sen as the stock characters encountered in melodrama.  The 
personalities of the characters that develop them beyond the stock ?types? of melodrama drive 
the transition to revenge tragedy.  As Bowers notes, the audience?s interest in the revenger?s 
personality and ?specific dominating motive? carry this legacy to future writers (106).  Sondheim 
observes that practicality, combined with greed, defines Mrs. Lovet, and that Sweney ?is a man 
bent on revenge, he thinks of nothing else; that is his dimension? (?Larger? 12).  Although this 
may be true, the adapted Sweney?s vengeance comes from a deeper place than the greed that 
motivates the melodramatic Sweney; and while Mrs. Lovet works in response to her own 
greed, she also loves Sweney.  So their purposes may be singular, but their motivations cannot 
be defined as simplistic.   
7 
Bond?s Sweney begins with an understandable motivation for his actions, but we se, 
through the development of the play, that the focus on the singular purpose of revenge blinds 
Sweney to al else.  The Beggar Woman, who frequents the area, turns out to be Sweney?s 
wife, Lucy, who, Mrs. Lovet asured Sweney, was deceased.
7
 Sweney?s intense focus on 
revenge prevents him from distinguishing one individual from another.  He encounters Lucy 
more than once, first when he arrives in London and she sems to recal his face.  Bond 
constructs the Beggar Woman as a victimized character, a portrayal continued in Tim Burton?s 
2007 film adaptation of the musical, but Sondheim makes this character even more complex.  On 
her first encounter with Anthony and Sweney, she begs for alms, but follows the begging with 
offers to both men for ?A litle jig jig, / A litle bounce around the bush? (30).  No longer simply 
a ?beggar woman,? she also works as a prostitute.  Her aggresive manner complicates audience 
responses of pity for her plight.  Although Anthony offers her money and reacts with 
embarrasment at her sexual aggresion, Sweney dismises her on al acounts and becomes 
enraged when she says, ?Hey, don?t I know you, mister? (30).  Sweney?s desire for anonymity 
first causes his mistake, once he believes Lucy to be dead; his desire for vengeance blinds him to 
al else.  It is only when Turpin has finaly been kiled that Sweney ses Lucy?s face in that of 
the Beggar Woman.  Scott Miler notes that the play does not intend to leave the audience 
?happy and safe in the knowledge that good always triumphs over evil? (205).  By taking justice 
into his own hands, Sweney has eliminated the corruption of Judge Turpin and the Beadle, but 
he has slain the very innocent person on whose behalf he acted.  Sweney?s mania has blinded 
him to the extent that he becomes the perpetrator of the death he sought to avenge.   
                                                 
7
 Bond?s version has Mrs. Lovet tel Sweney that Lucy is dead (5), but Sondheim?s Mrs. Lovet only tels Sweney 
that Lucy took poison (40). 
8 
Bond?s and Sondheim?s adaptations use relationships to motivate action, but in The 
String of Pearls, as in the Hazelton and Dibden-Pit plays, profit motivates the barber.  A 
gentleman entering the shop with cash or other valuables is certain not to be sen again.  Material 
objects, not relationships, motivate the action of the story.  Sweney?s colection of hats, canes, 
and jewels belonging to his victims confirms Tobias? suspicions that something odd is happening 
in the barber?s shop. The pearls that Mark Ingestre sends to Johanna seal Thornhil?s fate.  This 
string of pearls also serves to cal atention to Sweney?s actions. Colonel Jefferies knows that 
Thornhil had the pearls in his possesion and that the last place he was sen was Sweney?s 
shop.  The only connection to material possesions that receives emphasis in Bond?s and 
Sondheim?s adaptations is the connection of Sweney to his razors.  These tools of his trade offer 
him the strength to strike back at the injustice he has suffered.  He does not sek reparation, but 
retribution.  Just as love of his wife and daughter motivate his revenge, his ?friends,? the razors 
provide solace through their potential to destroy his enemies. 
Sweney?s quest for revenge is motivated by love for his family and their meories.  
Fredson Bowers observes that Kyd?s leson, in developing the early modern form of revenge 
tragedy, was that no simpler method of motivating a conflict exists than ?the revenge of a 
personal injury? (101).  While personal injury may be the most powerful motivator, acts of 
revenge are anything but simple.  Halet and Halet observe that playwrights of revenge tragedy 
?definitely understood revenge to be an emotion that could easily present itself as having a claim 
on the reasonable as wel as the irrational, and on the moral as wel as the evil? (7).  The impetus 
to action in revenge plays often comes from a ghost.  This ghost may be an actual specter, as in 
Hamlet and The Spanish Tragedy, or the meory of a wronged loved one as in The Revenger?s 
Tragedy and Sweeney Todd.  Whether a meory or a supernatural being, the ghost conveys to 
9 
the audience that, ?the impulse to revenge originates outside of man, as a force in the universe 
resembling that force which the Greeks personified in the Furies? (Halet, Halet 8).  The 
motivation driving the revenger exceds his control because it is an external force created by 
extreme emotion. 
Sweney seks to destroy Judge Turpin, not for his wrongful imprisonment, but for the 
Judge?s actions toward Sweney?s wife and daughter.  Sweney returns to London hoping he 
might find a ?loving wife and child,? but instead hears of his wife?s rape (Sondheim 40). 
Although Sweney is far from happy when the play opens, he does not return to London to 
pursue revenge.  Only after Mrs. Lovet reveals this background does he declare his intention to 
sek vengeance. Once back, Sweney?s story incorporates ghosts as memories, which eventualy 
drive his actions.  Bond?s version permits Mrs. Lovet the first use of the word ?ghost? in 
asociation with Sweney; as he enters her shop, she asks ?are you a ghost? (3).  Sondheim 
makes the connection more direct alowing Sweney to tel Anthony that he ?feel[s] the chil of 
ghostly shadows everywhere? (31).  As in Bond?s play, Sondheim?s version shows that Mrs. 
Lovet first believes Sweney to be a ghost, but more importantly Sondheim clarifies the nature 
of the ghosts that drive Sweney through Mrs. Lovet?s comment that people believe the room 
over her shop is haunted.  While this observation adds to the overal mystery of the piece, it 
connects the ghosts to the specter of Sweney?s past.  The apparently empty room contains the 
meory of his once happy life.  These memories serve the symbolic purpose of the ghost motif 
that Halet and Halet view as integral to the form. 
Sweney?s memories may be an indirect incarnation of the ghost as the spirit of revenge, 
but they do fulfil the function of that trope.  Halet and Halet explain that the clasic Kydian 
form incorporates a ghost that embodies the impulse for revenge, ?its demands are unambiguous, 
10 
imoderate, and recognize no obligations in the direction of mercy or forgivenes? (21).   
Although these memories do not physicaly cal out for vengeance in the same manner as 
Hamlet?s father or Don Andrea, they do affect Sweney in the way that those supernatural ghosts 
do other avengers.  These meories result in Sweney?s altered perceptions and ?transform his 
relations with other characters? (Halet, Halet 21).  While focused on his task, Sweney cannot 
?release the angers of the past,? and his obsesion consumes him to the point that he becomes 
isolated from the present (Fraser 238).  This alienation from individuals in his present prevents 
him from recognizing Lucy when he encounters her.  Sweney fels only numbnes now that 
Lucy, his ?reason and his life,? has become only his reason for revenge (Sondheim 32).  The one 
way that Sweney might be swayed from his task would be this recognition, but as she remains a 
meory for him, this memory drives his actions against Judge Turpin and the Beadle. 
Sweney?s family meories also provide the material for the play-within-a-play, another 
motif integral to the revenge tragedy.  As with the manifestation of the ghosts, Sondheim and 
Bond?s versions alter the motif to suit their needs.  Exposition of Lucy?s fate comes in the form 
of a dumb show.  As Sweney ?watches,? Mrs. Lovet tels him how Turpin finaly violates 
Lucy?s virtue.  In both Hal Prince?s staging of Sondheim?s version and Burton?s film adaptation, 
the action begins in the space above Mrs. Lovet?s shop.  By using the stage space in this 
manner, the connection of Turpin?s haunting crime to the location of Sweney?s vengeful spirit 
solidifies. Although other plays use masques as the tool of revenge, the play-within-a-play in 
Sweeney Todd provides the impetus for action.  Judge Turpin?s rape of Lucy occurs during a 
masked bal.  The use of masks underscores the duality of characters, but also indicates the 
connection to masques used in the early modern revenge tragedies.  This masque or dumb show 
alows Sweney to ?se? what has happened to his wife and the cruelty of the people who would 
11 
not help a woman in distres.  The action serves dual purposes: it connects the audience to 
Sweney in that both learn Lucy?s fate at the same time and it is Sweney?s observation of the 
action that brings forth the specter of revenge that wil drive him throughout the play.  
Halet and Halet note fixation on the masques that enact revenge often draws atention 
from other performative elments within the revenge tragedies (90).  Just as Kyd uses the ghost 
of Don Andrea and the spirit of Revenge to frame the entire play as a performance, Sondheim 
uses his chorus of balad singers to frame the performance of Sweney?s tale.  The play opens 
with the prologue imploring the audience to ?atend the tale of Sweney Todd? (23).  Throughout 
the musical, the chorus provides commentary on the action, functioning in the same manner that 
Kyd uses Don Andrea and Revenge and just as the chorus of Greek and Roman tragedy would.  
Individuals break from the chorus to interact with Sweney and perform roles within the tale. In 
the final scene, the chorus even resurrects Sweney after his death.  The epilogue begins with the 
survivors caling once again for the audience to ?atend the tale,? one by one Sweney?s victims 
return to stage and join the song.  Finaly, through the recounting of Sweney?s tale, the chorus 
brings Sweney back from the grave.  His tory lives on through the teling of tale of revenge 
and madnes. 
The revengers themselves take on roles in order to achieve their ends.  Hamlet, 
Hieronimo, and Titus perform madnes in the proces of obtaining their revenge.  Just as Vindice 
disguises himself as Piato to gain aces to the Duke, Benjamin Barker takes on the role of 
Sweney Todd, concealing his true identity to reclaim what he might of his former life.
8
 Once 
Barker learns that the Judge has raped his wife, he maintains his new identity as Sweney Todd. 
Sondheim makes the moment clear, having him declare, ?Not Barker! Not Barker! Todd now! 
                                                 
8
 Bond does not provide Sweney?s ?old? name in his version, so I wil use Sondheim?s here since he maintains this 
motif in the musical and it ofers easier comunication of the idea. 
12 
Sweney Todd!? (40).  He rejcts the na?ve identity in favor of a wiser one who ?wil have no 
mercy either? (Bond 4).  Sweney does only what others do throughout the play. Turpin puts on 
the face of a just magistrate, although his actions testify to the opposite. Alfonso Pireli also 
demonstrates the necesity of performance within this corrupt world.
9
  In addition to his 
profesional showmanship, Pireli has learned how useful the cultivation of two identities may be 
in a world that punishes those who are too straightforward.  The story holds up the danger of 
exposing one?s ?true self? through Pireli?s death.  Once Pireli reveals his true identity, Sweney 
kils him.  His death enables Sweney to maintain his own performance and keep his former 
identity from exposure. Although focus generaly fals on the performance of vengeance through 
the play-within-a-play, these other layers of performance within revenge drama help make the 
plays complex and help continue the genre. 
The motifs explored by Bowers and the Halets are common to most plays of the revenge 
genre; however, as more dramatists take up the form, they utilize the motifs to varying extents.  
By incorporating these motifs into the melodramatic tale of Sweney Todd, Bond transforms the 
play into a far more complex work.  The changes in genre alter more than the story of Sweney 
Todd; they shift the genre and develop function of the form.  Taking up the revenge tragedy 
motifs and incorporating them into musical theatre makes new changes in the function of the 
drama.  Instead of a simple batle betwen forces of good and evil, audiences witnes a 
complicated tale of a man tortured by grief and memories of his once happy life.  Sondheim 
further develops the play by incorporating Brechtian elements of alienation, that while present to 
some extent in early modern revenge tragedies, work within the musical to create a critique of 
the social conditions within the play.   
                                                 
9
 Diferent ?real? names are provided for Pireli by Bond and Sondheim. Bond names him Alf Spiral (14), while 
Sondheim give hi the name Danny O?Higgins (78). 
13 
Audience and Alienation 
Scholarship on revenge tragedy examines its origins both in early modern England and 
the earlier incarnations present in Seneca?s works. Although Thomas Kyd is given credit for 
beginning the revenge tradition on the Elizabethan stage, the concept reaches back to Greek and 
Roman tragedy and continues in modern stage and film.
10
 Key elements common to the tragedies 
are examined and used to include and exclude works within the genre.
11
 Halet and Halet?s work 
focuses on madnes and other motifs that tie the genre together, but concentrates on the necesity 
of madnes and its function within the plays. Others examine the importance of law, justice, and 
their function within the genre. Molly Easo Smith examines the conflation of theatre and 
punishment as spectacle within Kyd?s The Spanish Tragedy.  Katherine Maus points out that 
these plays ?testify to an apparently ineradicable yearning for justice - a yearning that abides 
even, or especialy, in the most unfairly victimized persons? (ix). Michael Neil ses the plays as 
a ?vehicle for exploring deeply felt anxieties about the very possibility of justice in a falen 
world? (343).   The alienation of protagonists within the world of the play often draws the focus 
of critics.
12
 The plays present a world in which corrupt justice leaves a presumably law-abiding 
citizen with no recourse within the acepted order. When the corruption and powerlesnes 
combine to feed the avenger?s obsesion, the single act of vengeance becomes an uncontrollable 
bloodlust. 
As a revenger, Sweney Todd reacts to his powerlesnes by striking out at Judge Turpin, 
who has prevented him from living the dream of his formerly happy life.  Characters situated 
                                                 
10
 Katherine Maus? introduction to Four Revenge Tragedies notes not only ?Grek and Latin? forbearers of 
Renaisance revenge plays, but also the descendants found in modern film genres like Westerns and detective 
thrilers. Others have explored the genre in conjunction with fils like Grenaway?s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife 
and Her Lover, and Tarantino?s Kil Bil. 
11
 Se Fredson Thayer Bowers? Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1587-1642. 
12
 For example se Michael Neil?s, "English Revenge Tragedy" and C. L. Barker, Creating Elizabethan Tragedy. 
14 
outside the social mainstream and given to feelings of powerlesnes may be sen in other 
Sondheim musicals including Asassins (1976) (Lovensheimer 212). Most scholars agree that 
there is something different about Sondheim?s approach to musical theatre.  His compositions 
have drawn interest for Bernard Hermann?s influence.
13
 Barbara Means Fraser discusses his use 
of the Greek Chorus, while Mari Cronin explores the social isues highlighted in his works.  The 
interest in social commentary, sen in Sondheim?s works, connects him to revenge tragedy, a 
genre ?through which the dramatists can explore the major evils that threaten man-in-society? 
(McAlindon 29).   In addition to Sondheim?s focus on social outsiders, Jim Loversheimer 
examines his use of pastiche ? ?the presence of music and/ or musical styles from various 
sources in a single work? (207).  Although Loversheimer refers to pastiche in a musical sense, 
the same melding of style may be sen in Sondheim?s approach to Sweney Todd. Sondheim 
takes the structure and motifs of the revenge tragedy and creates a contemporary version of the 
genre by incorporating modern ideas on theatre and its function.   
Aristotle provided the template for tragedy to early modern dramatists in the Poetics. 
These tragedies, through dramatic rather than narrative form, atempted to achieve ?through the 
representation of pitiable and fearful incidents, the catharsis of such pitiable and fearful 
incidents? (63). Early modern audiences expected to feel what the characters might fel, and 
through the experience of these emotions purge themselves through empathy.  This establishes 
the function of theatre as one that creates felow feeling betwen the audience and the characters.  
Through camaraderie with these characters, the audience may gain insight and understanding.  In 
Aristotle?s view the function, or one of the functions, of tragedy was an elimination of these 
emotions through vicarious experience of the emotions.  Aristotle?s view of tragedy particularly 
                                                 
13
 Se Craig M. cGil, The ?Hitchcock/Hermann? Chord and Cinematic Devices in Stephen Sondheim?s Sweney 
Todd. 
15 
emphasizes the importance of emotional connection; in the twentieth-century, the theatrical 
theories of German playwright and director Bertolt Brecht directly oppose this emphasis on 
emotional connection as a means of purgation. 
Brecht?s ideas aimed at taking theatre in a different direction by eliminating uncritical 
emotional response. The changes Brecht suggests shift the spectator to an objective role through 
techniques that alienate the audience rather than alowing an indulgent emotional connection to 
the stage action.  He emphasizes that epic theatre forces the spectator to ?face something? rather 
than be involved, and that the spectator ?stands outside, studies? rather than sharing the 
experience (37).  The audience should not empathize with the characters through experience but 
learn from them through scientific observation.  Epic theatre may not encourage felow feeling or 
atempt catharsis, but should rouse the audience to act based on the unnecesary sufferings of 
those at the center of the narrative (37,71).   
Although these theories differ in their opinions of emotional connection in tragedy, the 
interests of tragedy do not shift; the form remains a means of inquiry into humanity and 
experience (Brocket, Pape 9).  If we choose to emphasize the modern in early modern theatre, it 
becomes fruitful to interrogate the function of the works within Brecht?s conception of the 
modern theatre as the epic theatre.
14
  Sondheim?s works have often ben tied to Brecht?s 
theories, and the connections betwen the elments present in Sweeney Todd and other revenge 
plays show that these approaches had been utilized in the early modern works.
15
 Just as 
scholarship that focuses on the concern over law and justice xamines revenge tragedy as work 
with contemporary social implications, Brecht ses the necesity of theatre as a means to move 
                                                 
14
 Brecht?s theoretical writings make frequent reference to Shakespeare and the Elizabethan stage, including the 
acknowledgement that this ?dynaic, idealisticaly-oriented kind of drama, with its interest in the individual, was in 
al decisive respects more radical when it began life (under the Elizabethans)? (45). 
15
 Sondheim does not profes that his hows are Brechtian, as observed by Scott Miler: ?Sondheim has frequently 
said quite strongly that he does not think that his hows are Brechtian? (207). 
16 
audiences to consider the world around them and their involvement in it.  Brecht expreses that it 
is ?theatre, art and literature which have to form the 'ideological superstructure' for a solid, 
practical rearrangement of our age's way of life? (23).  Looking at the social function of revenge 
tragedies, both the early modern incarnation and the contemporary version sen in Sondheim?s 
Sweeney Todd, the questioning of the societal function of law and justice becomes apparent.  The 
plays function acording to the rules of the epic theatre and involve the audience in a social 
inquiry by complicating their view of the revenger?s situation and actions. 
The position of the spectator is integral to Brecht?s construction of epic theatre; for 
theatre to shift from dramatic to epic, the spectator must be in a position to observe the action 
rather than experience it. Theatre remains a means of discovery for the audience, but rather than 
the cathartic experience championed by Artistotle, the action forces the audience into a critical 
evaluative experience.  For the function of epic theatre to be fulfiled, the spectator must not be 
alowed to empathize with the protagonist, but Brecht also recognizes the necesity of some 
identification with the characters. Revenge tragedies utilize multiple levels of spectator 
involvement.  Most obviously the theatrical audience watches the play?s action, but the motifs of 
revenge plays require a play-within-a play to move the revenge plot forward.  So the theatrical 
audience watches the characters, the characters watch a masque, and finaly the revenger has an 
audience of conspirators within the play.  The pursuit of revenge undergoes scrutiny on many 
levels imploring the theatrical audience to consider the actions of the play.  While, as with 
Aristotle, the characters in Brecht?s epic theatre stil connect with the audience, the connection 
may not be pasive. 
Judith Schlesinger points out that, ?the characters? concerns must resonate with our own 
before we care what happens to them? (126).  In his discussion of revenge in The Spanish 
17 
Tragedy, Gregory M. Colon Semenza points out that, ?there is no such thing as a clean act of 
revenge? (51).  If there is no clean act of revenge, then how do playwrights construct a 
protagonist from the avenger that the audience wil support? While revenge tragedies may 
function in both of these capacities, it must be remebered that acts of vengeance stem from 
feelings of love. Brecht notes the importance of the 1928 production of The Threpenny Opera 
as the first succesful demonstration of epic theatre, and he streses that, ?the play showed the 
close relationship betwen the emotional life of the bourgeois and that of the criminal world? 
(85).  The protagonists in these plays are not criminals as those at the center of The Threpenny 
Opera, but through their suffering the revengers, who become criminals, display the conditions 
common betwen themselves and the audience.  By establishing the desire for revenge as 
emanating from the wrongful death of a loved one, revenge plays work in the same manner as 
Brecht ses The Threpenny Opera functioning. The emotional field is leveled; no mater a 
person?s background, the violent death of a loved one wil awaken primal urges. The audience 
must feel that the revenger?s need for blood originates as a justifiable impulse that might be felt 
by any one else in the audience.
16
    
The more heinous the injustice ndured, the more the audience may se the revenger as a 
victim justified in the action he undertakes; so what may be sen as gratuitous violence actualy 
serves to excite the audience?s support of the revenger in his actions. In these plays, the suffering 
of the revenger is laid bare before the audience. Hieronimo ses his son Horatio?s body hanging 
in his arbor, having ben stabbed repeatedly and left for Hieronimo ?to drown [the] with an 
ocean of [his] tears? (II.iv.23).  Like Horatio?s murder, Lavinia?s rape and mutilation occur 
during the course of the play. We se Titus? imediate response to the brutality inflicted upon 
                                                 
16
 In this case the feling is one of sympathy or pity, not empathy. The audience should not fel that they fully 
comprehend the protagonist or experience his emotions vicariously. 
18 
his daughter.  He hystericaly cals for a sword to cut off his hands that ?have fought for Rome, 
and al in vain?they have served [him] to effectles use? (III.i.73-6).  These grieving fathers 
crumble in the face of their children?s fates, and their visceral reactions atempt to connect with 
the theatrical audience in the same manner the characters sek connection with the judges who 
might bring them justice.  Even when the event does not ocur during the action of the play, as it 
does in The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus, we se the lasting effect of criminal trespas 
on the revenger. Vindice keeps the ?salow picture of [his] poisoned love? as a reminder of the 
?Once ? bright face of [his] betrothed lady? kiled for resisting the Duke?s ?palsy lust? to whom 
he stil speaks devotedly as the play opens (I.i.14, 16, 34).  His faithfulnes to his dead bride 
makes him pitiful, so the time past only heightens the drama of his situation. 
Just as in The Revenger?s Tragedy, the events that form Sweney?s outlook ocur prior to 
the play?s opening.  The beginning of the musical finds Sweney returning from Botany Bay, 
having been sent there on a false charge by Judge Turpin.  Through his response to Anthony?s 
positive comparison of London to the Daredeneles and Peruvian mountains, the audience ses 
his contrasting worldview.  Sweney views London as ?a hole in the world / Like a great black 
pit? inhabited by the ?vermin of the world? where ?morals aren?t worth/ what a pig could spit? 
(32).  The lines that folow show that his image of the city has changed in response to his 
experience.  The first verse transitions through the explanation that the ?privileged few? at the 
top turn ?beauty into filth and greed? and through his song we understand that this transition has 
occurred in Sweney?s life as wel (32).  But Sweney?s suffering is not at an end. He has 
struggled to return from Botany Bay to sek out his family only to hear the tale of Lucy?s rape 
from Mrs. Lovet, to which he responds with ?a wild shout? and the decision to make those 
responsible pay for what they have done (40).  But as Cronin acknowledges, ?Sondheims?s 
19 
vision is a complex one. He ses al sides of an isue. There are no easy solutions to the 
characters? problems in his musicals? (145).  This complexity connects the work with Brecht?s 
own work.  His plays present isues for consideration by the audience, to which he provides no 
answers.  That Sweeney Todd may be viewed as ?both social commentary and horror story, a 
musical Twilight Zone set in ninetenth century England? demonstrates that the play provides the 
complexity necesary to support its connection to Brecht?s epic theatre (Miler 205). 
As witnes to the acts perpetrated against the revenger, and often the continued 
corruption of the individuals comiting these crimes, the theatre audience pases judgment in 
favor of the avenger?s impulse to action when witneses within the plays remain unmovable. 
This identification is imperative to the revenge tragedy. Hieronimo, the Knight Marshal, seks to 
avenge the brutal murder of his son; Vindice, a nobody at court, to avenge Gloriana?s murder; 
Titus, a victorious and loyal general, the death of his sons as wel as the rape and mutilation of 
his daughter; and Sweney, a barber returned from a penal colony, his own wrongful 
imprisonment, but also the death of his wife and esential kidnap of his daughter by the crooked 
Judge Turpin. No mater what the revenger?s background, the audience recognizes him as the 
sufferer of injustice.  The powerlesnes of the revenger overshadows whatever position he may 
hold; there is stil another in power over him inhibiting his aces to justice. These criminal 
actions must be punished, and, as law-abiding citizens the audience recognizes that the only 
recourse the wronged individuals have is private justice.   So the audience watches these 
characters experience incidents constructed by the writer.  As the audience views the narrative, 
they connect with the story through the artist?s medium.  Schlesinger suggests this creates a kind 
of ?shared paranoid disorder? (125).  The characters, artists, and audience identify with one 
20 
another through the work, al acepting this temporary ?madnes? of a fictional world.
17
  The 
audience agres to a pact with the artists by watching these events and believing them, although 
this is not a belief in their veracity, but a belief that what happens on stage could happen in life 
under the proper circumstances.  The audience connects to the characters by acepting the terms 
of this contract.  This identification involves the audience in the plot and complicates their 
thinking about the mater; as a result of this connection they cannot remain pasive.  
Brecht ses the necesity of the audience?s active involvement in the plays, stating, ?the 
spectator, instead of being enabled to have an experience, is forced as it were to cast his vote? 
(39).  The shift from Aristotelian to Brechtian theatre occurs in the way that the audience 
engages with the play.  Both theories require a connection betwen audience and characters, but 
Aristotle ses pasive absorption into the emotion of the material, while Brecht requires an active 
participation in the narrative.  This engagement of the audience in a new way, which forces them 
to consider the action and question the play?s action, creates the beginnings of change.  These 
plays do not addres isues of justice in a way that can be viewed in clear black and white terms. 
The audience is forced into a realm of gray by their involvement and sympathy with the victim/ 
revenger.  In discussing the difficulties of epic theatre, Brecht acknowledges that the point of this 
theatre is ?that it appeals les to the feelings than to the spectator?s reason? at the same time it 
would be quite wrong to try and deny emotion to this kind of theatre? (23).  The audience?s 
emotions and reason combine, both are appealed to and they serve to make the isues more 
complex.  In his notes to The Threpenny Opera, Brecht states that the play reports life as the 
spectator would like to se it, but the inclusion of things that he would rather not se causes him 
to se his wishes both fulfiled and critiqued (43).  Maus presents some of the questions the 
audience must ask: ?How, then, do we evaluate the actions of the revenger? Does the 
                                                 
17
 Schlesinger cals this folie partagee ? shared crazines (125). 
21 
Protagonist?s victimization exonerate him, partialy or fully? Do we condone crimes that retaliate 
for previous crimes?? (x).  The spectator?s sympathy for the revenger?s condition implicates him 
in the acts in a manner that prevents him from pasing easy moral judgment; the topic must be 
studied and carefully considered. 
It is important to recal that the acts of vengeance viewed by the spectator are not taken 
by a lone individual. The revenger may be the driving force, but, just as the response of the 
theatrical audience is complicated by the revenger?s actions, those characters within the play who 
are initialy complicit in the revenge plot eventualy find themselves involved in actions that 
have exceded the brutality of the initial act.  The conspirators may have a personal interest in 
seing the revenger?s plans fulfiled.  Mrs. Lovet?s interest in supporting Sweney?s desire for 
revenge is primarily self-serving. She loves Todd and does not want to anger him, but she also 
earns a comfortable living as a result of his labor.  She feels that she has control over him, but 
when Toby questions the actions taking place in the tonsorial parlor, she must choose betwen 
the people she cares for and her self-love wins out, sealing Toby?s fate.  Likewise, Bel-Imperia 
asists Hieronimo and urges him to pursue vengeance, because she too has been affected by the 
murderous actions of Lorenzo and Balthazar.  She takes her fate into her own hands, choosing 
suicide when Hieronimo has rewriten the end of his play to spare her.  Vindice has numerous 
acomplices, although not al of them are involved as deeply in the plot as he and his brother. 
The Duke?s son has wronged a noble and virtuous woman, angering a large portion of the 
population.  Vindice finds support because the Duke has failed to enforce justice on her part. 
Even though Antonio supports Vindice?s actions on his wife?s behalf, once Vindice admits to 
murder, Antonio?s complicity ends.  At some point each acomplice must make a decision to 
continue working with the avenger, or to operate based on his/her own interests.  Just as with the 
22 
internal audience, the spectators must make a choice in regard to the avenger?s actions.  Brecht 
explains that ?alienation? is necesary to al understanding? (71).  For the audience to benefit 
from the actions they witnes, distance must be restored. This distance wil offer the audience an 
opportunity for objectivity.  After having carefully constructed protagonists that the audience 
wil support, how do the playwrights then atempt to achieve alienation? 
To force the audience away from empathy and into their appropriate role as distanced 
observer, the playwrights use a number of tactics. The audience must be reminded that the play is 
a narrative. One method of achieving this distance is the use of a chorus.  The original chorus of 
Greek tragedy functioned in a number of ways. The members of the chorus might represent a 
character, an ideal spectator, set the mood of the play, add spectacle, discuss what has happened, 
what may happen, or individual members might step out of the chorus to participate as a 
character in the action of the play.
18
  In addition, the chorus also serves to establish social and 
ethical framework for a standard of judgment, and a spectator reacting to events as an internal 
audience (Brocket, Hildy 23).
19
  The reactions of the chorus may be sen as a means of directing 
the audience to think or feel a particular way about the action. Claude Calme notes that the 
tragic horus may exhibit ?tension betwen a powerful emotional implication and a critical 
distance that alows for universalizing comentary? (229).  If the reaction of the chorus and the 
drive of the protagonist are at odds, even if the audience fels compeled by the chorus to react to 
the action of the play in a particular manner, a tension stil exists that prohibits simply 
empathizing with the characters. While Kyd restricts his chorus to verse speech, Sondheim?s 
chorus sings their commentary on Sweney and his actions.   
                                                 
18
 Brocket and Hildy note that the occasions for an individual chorus meber stepping out to speak lines were rare 
(23). 
19
 The Grek chorus served a number of additional functions including seting rhythm, and although these apply in 
some ways to the choric elments of the Revenge Tragedy, they are les pertinent to the alienation efect achieved 
through the use of choric haracters. 
23 
Kyd?s chorus in The Spanish Tragedy is comprised only of Revenge and Don Andrea?s 
ghost, while Sondheim?s is composed of the entire company, including Sweney Todd.  Both 
playwrights make use of the chorus to establish the play as a narrative that they wil witnes 
along with the audience.  After Don Andrea?s explanation of his death and travels to the 
underworld, Revenge informs him that they wil sit to ?se the mystery/ And serve for chorus in 
this tragedy? (I.i.90-1).  Although he reveals litle regarding the outcome, other than its tragic 
nature, Revenge establishes himself as knowledgeable regarding the events that wil pas on the 
stage.  The only plot point that Revenge reveals is that Don Andrea ?wil se the author of [his] 
death,/ ?/ Deprived of life by Bel-Imperia,? but he pases judgment by referring to the narrative 
as a tragedy (I.i.87-9).  Although this outcome should be joyous to Don Andrea, we are told that 
the story wil be tragic.  Through the label of tragedy, Revenge points the audience toward the 
tension of the play. If Balthazar wil be kiled by Bel-Imperia, and Balthazar deserves death for 
his part in Don Andrea?s murder, why would the play be tragic?  Tragedy, defined by its ?serious 
or sorrowful character,? may only have a ?fatal or disastrous conclusion? (OED).  By making the 
declaration that the play wil be a tragedy, Revenge indicates that the audience wil not be 
pleased with the outcome of the play, despite the acomplishment of Don Andrea?s desired 
revenge. 
Like Revenge, the chorus in Sweney Todd has foreknowledge of what wil ocur in the 
play.
20
  We are told from the beginning of the play that Sweney Todd should be sen as a 
?demon.?  The chorus clearly describes Sweney as someone who differs from what they 
consider the norm. We are told, ?his skin was pale and his eye was odd,? and that he ?heard 
music that nobody heard? (23, 25). Neither description indicates an individual with whom one 
                                                 
20
 Sharon Aronofsky Weltman also notes the inclusion of a chorus in Pit?s version of Sweney Todd, but 
acknowledges that this chorus serves a primarily comic purpose ?offering no moral analysis and no disturbance of 
the fourth wal? (307). 
24 
might want to asociate.  Sweney is an outsider; by establishing Sweney as someone apart, 
Sondheim atempts to distance us from the protagonist.   What follows the description of 
Sweney as a man differentiated from the norm, wil offer the audience a glimpse of the 
?phenomenon in al its strangenes and incomprehensibility? (Brecht 27).  Sondheim establishes 
Sweney?s unusual nature and then presents the audience with the tale by which they may make 
their judgments regarding the mater.  
Both Kyd and Sondheim make use of the chorus repeatedly during the play. Don Andrea 
and Revenge?s conversations bridge the acts and the two remain on stage throughout the action 
of the play.  Their commentary questions the action and provides a continuous drive toward the 
end of the play.  Don Andrea grows impatient with the action that Revenge reveals, asking 
Revenge, ?Brought?st thou me hither to increase my pain? (II.vi.1).  His friend has been slain 
rather than his enemy and Bel-Imperia suffers abuse at Lorenzo and Balthazar?s hands. Kyd 
reiterates the narrative control of the chorus by permiting Don Andrea to determine the fate of 
those who have been slain in the pursuit of his cause.  Just as Hieronimo controls the fates of the 
court through his masque, Don Andrea uses the play in which he has watched Hieronimo 
perform to determine the afterlives of the players.  Those who have wronged Don Andrea, as 
wel as his friends, are sent into the afterlife where he detrmines their eternal fates sending some 
to suffer and some to etrnal joy. 
Sondheim?s chorus interjects with songs throughout the play.  They set the stage in the 
prologue with ?The Balad of Sweney Todd,? reminding the audience that what they wil 
witnes ?is a story, that it?s not real? (Miler 206).  The choric interjections both summarize plot 
for the audience and ?protect us from it? (Schlesinger 130).  As Scott Miler points out, story 
teling dominates throughout the play: Sweney conveys his tale to Anthony and Mrs. Lovet 
25 
relates the story of Lucy?s rape to Todd when they first met.  The chorus sems to have insight 
into what wil occur and what Sweney is thinking. Mrs. Lovet has more information 
concerning Sweney?s quest than he does, just as the chorus knows more than Sweney does 
regarding the outcome of the tale and Revenge knows more than Don Andrea or Hieronimo.  
They are the storytelers and the continual input from these choric characters prevents the 
audience from sinking into the story and leting emotion have fre reign.  Whether providing 
moral comentary or narrative insight, the chorus prevents the maintenance of the fourth wal by 
directly addresing the audience.  The elimination of this fourth wal prevents the audience?s 
pasive reaction to the play by involving them in the plot and repeatedly requiring judgment. 
Sondheim then takes his atempt at creating alienation one step further.  Sweney speaks 
of himself in the third person when the audience first mets the character.  This serves to 
?introduce the spectator to the person whom he [wil] be watching acting and being acted upon 
for some hours? (Brecht 59).  Brecht acknowledges the importance of this method in Helne 
Weigel?s performance as Vlasova in Die Mutter.  Following the model set by Weigel, Todd 
steps out from the chorus and begins to sing along with the company: 
Atend the tale of Sweney Todd. 
He served a dark and a vengeful god. 
(He continues alone) 
What happened then ? wel, that?s the play, 
And he wouldn?t want us to give it away, 
Not Sweney, 
(with company) 
Not Sweney Todd, 
26 
The Demon Barber of Flet Street. (25) 
He begins as a member of the chorus, speaking of himself as a separate person, so the actor 
introduces the character that he wil play throughout the narrative.  In this moment, he does not 
pretend or claim to be the character that he wil play (Brecht 58).  Approaching Sweney?s 
introduction in this manner prevents ?the spectator from transferring himself to a particular 
room, as habit and indifference might demand? (Brecht 58).  For the play to function 
succesfully, the audience must be made to decide.  Brecht?s use of habit and indifference 
highlight the key elments of the epic theatre?s function.  The habit that audiences have of 
sinking into their seats and becoming lost in the world of the play must be broken because this 
habit enables the audience to continue to experience the play without intelectual involvement. 
The playwrights infuse the stories with humor as a method to prevent the audience?s 
emotional atachment to the characters.  The humor often presents itself in a kind of disonance 
betwen mode and mater.  Twice, scenes involving justice and the Duke?s family become 
comedies within the structures of The Revenger?s Tragedy. While Junior Brother sits awaiting 
his sentence for raping Antonio?s wife, he takes the execution of justice for such a joke that his 
answers verge on comic one-liners.  When asked why he commited the crime, his honest answer 
gets taken for a ?jest? by Lussurioso (I.ii.49). The Duches and her other sons plead for Junior 
Brother to be shown mercy while he only mocks the court, seming to believe firmly that he wil 
be favored as a result of his status and that his crime is minor since he could not resist 
temptation: ?My fault being sport, let me but die in jest? (I.i.66).  Later, when Ambitioso and 
Supervacuo contrive to seal Lussurioso?s doom, a comedy of errors ensues. With death warrant 
and royal signet in hand, the brothers arrive at the prison ignorant of the fact that the Duke has 
freed Lussurioso.  The brothers, intent on ensuring their own succesion to the dukedom, deliver 
27 
the death order directly to the officers and order their brother?s ?present death? completly 
ignorant that they have ordered Junior Brother?s execution (III.ii.3).  These comic scenes serve 
both to break the gravity of the play?s action, and to emphasize the miscarriage of justice in a 
realm where social influence trumps proper enforcement of law. 
The use of comedy as a tool for alienation continues in the revenger?s gleful enactment 
of vengeance.  Although not presented comicaly in al revenge tragedies, the revenger?s pleasure 
in his actions serves effectively to break the audience from their complicity with his actions.  
Vindice responds to the Duke?s inquiry ?What are you two,? by mockingly reminding him that 
they are ?Vilains al thre? (III.v.152-3).  His joy at finaly avenging Gloriana?s death echoes his 
Act One direction for her to ?Be merry, merry? (I.i.44).  However, because he continues in his 
quest to enforce justice, he fals victim to the pleasure he takes in his own clevernes.  When 
Antonio questions the circumstances of the Duke?s death, Vindice is so pleased with himself that 
he responds ? ?Twas somewhat wity carried? and ?Nay ?twas wel managed? (V.ii.117, 120).  
The audience knows that Vindice should not share this information, but his perception of his 
actions has been so altered that he believes that treason should be excusable.  Both Vindice and 
Titus set up their revenge as entertainment. Vindice carefuly sets the stage and dreses 
Glorianna?s skull for her performance.  Titus sets an elaborate table at which he wil serve 
Tamora?s sons to her in a pie.  Once vengeance has been taken, they sing out their gle.  Vindice 
tels the Duke ?Alas, poor lecher, in the hands of knaves! / A slavish duke is baser than his 
slaves? (III.v.158-9).  Titus informs Tamora that she has eaten her sons in a tidy rhyming 
couplet, then stabs her, caling the knife to witnes his act: 
 Why, there they are, both bak?d in this pie, 
 Whereof their mother daintily hath fed, 
28 
 Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred. 
 ?Tis true, ?tis true; witnes my knife?s sharp point. (V.ii.60-3) 
 The couplets, followed by his quick action against Tamora, create a disonance that shocks the 
spectator. Vindice and Titus create an impish tone in the reveal of their crimes insisting that 
atention be paid to the action in a way that emotional reaction wil not permit. 
 Sondheim uses a similar tactic in Sweney Todd, although he utilizes actual song rather 
than the singsong rhythm of rhyming couplets.  The disonance that shocks the audience to 
atention in Sondheim?s revenge play comes from the difference betwen what the characters 
sing and how it is sung.  When Anthony has interrupted Sweney?s first chance at Judge Turpin, 
Sweney sings his harsh, grating ?Epiphany? that ends with his claim to be ?ful of joy? (103).  
Only moments later, Sweney and Mrs. Lovet break into the peppy ?A Litle Priest.?  Their 
discussion of the flavors that the pies wil come in takes on the patern of a rhyming batle of 
wits.  Sweney chalenges Mrs. Lovet to match his tastes with a person; she becomes his 
sommelier pairing identities of the people to suit his taste requests.  His requests rhyme with the 
flavor she has previously offered: 
  Mrs. Lovet: We?ve got tinker? 
  Todd: Something pinker. 
  Mrs. Lovet: Tailor? 
  Todd: Paler. (108) 
Once Mrs. Lovet defeats him with ?Locksmith,? the game then shifts to word games with the 
employment of the person in the pie (108).  This portion of the song takes up the rhyming 
couplets used by Vindice and Titus: ?Try the financier. / Peak of his career? (109).  The quick 
rhymes make the song easy to remeber, and easy to get stuck in the head of the spectator.  This 
29 
toe-tapping song ends the first act, giving the audience the entire intermision to recognize that 
the happy tune they are left huming centers around eating human flesh in pie form. Sondheim 
has made a game out of cannibalism and the disonance forces them to question their reaction to 
the play as it goes forward.  In this song as with other points in the play, the music and characters 
draw the audience in and repel them at once (Schlesinger 140). 
 The disonant use of humor heightens the alienation effect of the plays.  Brecht?s epic 
spectator reacts to plays in the opposite manner from the characters in them.  If a play truly fits 
this model, the audience then should se ?nothing obvious in it? (71). Creating disonance 
through the use of humor in these highly dramatic circumstances, the playwrights keep the 
audience off balance and prohibit the easy asimilation of protagonist and spectator.  Maus notes 
that Vindice?s succes as a revenger ?depends upon a talent for improvisation?; the same may be 
said for Sweney Todd (xxi).  Sweney suceds in his quest to avenge Lucy mostly because he 
remains adaptable.  When opportunity presents itself, Sweney acts quickly managing to kil the 
Beadle only moments before the judge arrives to have his own throat slit.  Nicholas Brooke 
points out that the English tradition of tragedy ?springs from violent farce? (8).  The 
protagonists? twisted sense of humor draws on this tradition, and by taking a sick pleasure in the 
acts they perpetrate, the revengers ensure that the audience wil be unable to empathize with their 
plight. 
What then would be the purpose of creating this separation betwen spectator and 
character?  Alienation effects serve to separate the audience from the characters so that the 
revenge acts may be carefully considered and evaluated objectively.   As pointed to by the 
alienation effects employed, revenge tragedy functions, not to move the audience through 
experiencing the events along with the revenger, but by witnesing the events as an outsider.  
30 
The impulse should be to question the situation that necesitates the revenge.  By preventing the 
audience from becoming one with the protagonist, the playwrights position them to have a 
clinical objectivity, becoming the scientists that Brecht believes an audience should be.  Armed 
with this scientific stance, the observer of vengeful action must question the shades of gray 
created by a situation that forces a private citizen to enact justice that should be handled through 
civic hannels.  Through the use of alienation effects, the playwrights position the spectator to 
question these actions. 
Class Conscious Cannibalism 
Societies that necesitate revenge are those ruled by corrupt power structures where 
justice cannot be atained through acepted civil channels. As the revenger begins to understand 
the reality of his situation, his reasoning becomes corrupt. The Halets emphasize the 
importance of madnes in the early modern revenge tragedy, stating ?the whole structure of the 
revenge tragedy can be understood in terms of the revenger?s efforts to free himself from the 
restraints that forbid the act of vengeance, as a proces that involves moving from sanity to 
madnes? (9).  As Maus notes, ?a revenge that begins as a carefully regulated exaction of eye for 
eye often vers into uncontroled exces? (xi). The exces results from the revenger?s obsesive 
focus on the revenge act. His focus on how to achieve his ends eventualy drives the revenger to 
a state of madnes.  The revenge becomes more than a personal vendeta; the wrongs affecting 
the avenger are connected to a growing number of people and he takes ?purgative action ? to 
cleanse his world of a terrible wrong? (Maus xi).  This expansive way of thinking leads to the 
view that ?more is at stake than simply the revenger?s personal grievance? society as a whole 
was felt to be contaminated? (Neil 330). By examining this madnes as a result of the revenger?s 
31 
feelings of impotence in society, the derangement becomes a clearer social commentary and the 
resulting actions become revolt.  
After the revenger has shed ?the restraints that forbid the act of vengeance,? very litle 
sems unreasonable in his mind. The truth of the world he has trusted reveals itself as ilusion; he 
becomes mad through the knowledge of how the world actualy works. The knowledge facing 
the protagonists of revenge tragedies rocks their long held view of civilized behavior. The 
madnes alters the revenger?s reason, making those acts he may previously have found barbarous 
sem aceptable solutions to the problems facing this new world.  Abuse of power and unjust 
behavior monopolize the revenger?s new worldview.  Those who previously appeared rational 
and civilized now sem savage and opportunistic.  Armed with this new perception of those at 
the top of the social ladder, the revenger seks a means to bring this corrupt power down.  In 
each case the audience witneses an avenger suddenly confronted with his lack of social and civil 
power.  The law that maintains civility is corrupt and leading to a view of society as fully 
contaminated by its civil leadership.  When those trusted to enforce the laws of civilization are 
the very people flaunting those laws, what recourse does one have?  The revenger ses no legal 
means to addres the crumbling of social norms and must turn to extra-legal means of 
punishment to reasert his power in a corrupt world.   
Once the revenger understands that he has no recourse to justice through civil channels, 
he must come to grips with his powerles position in the world.  This sense leads him to be 
overcome by the ned to exact justice.  The grief over the wrongs done to him overwhelms his 
sense of reason and becomes a pasion.  As Thomas Hobbes observes, ?to have stronger and 
more vehement pasions for any thing, than is ordinarily sen in others, is that which men cal 
madnes? (qtd. in Halet, Halet 44).  This pasion would not grow to the heights that require 
32 
private justice if the revenger felt a sense of empowerment through the political structure.  In 
taking action to exact justice, the revenger takes the power restricted to the regent, and places 
himself in the role as minister of divine justice.  Through the possesion of the madnes, the 
revenger comes to view himself ?not as a man commiting murder but as a minister of God? 
(Halet, Halet 29).  Kyd makes this most apparent through Hieronimo?s declaration ?Vindicta 
mihi!/ Ay heaven wil be revenged of every il,/ Nor wil they suffer murder unrepaid;? 
Hieronimo justifies his activities by connecting them with scripture (III.xii.1).  What man has 
failed to do through civil channels Hieronimo wil do through private action, and, by doing so, 
satisfy what he views as Heaven?s thirst for vengeance.  When earthly power is denied the 
revenger, he turns to heavenly power to lend credence to his actions, trumping the authority of 
secular law.  The playwrights present a character possesed by a sense of injustice, and through 
this possesion he seks a means to support his reasonable desire for the situation to be rectified.  
The characters may sem at once ?as having a claim on the reasonable as wel as the irrational? 
(Halet, Halet 7). It is reasonable that Hieronimo, Titus, Vindice, and Sweney should sek 
justice for the wrongs done to them and those close to them, but the irrational elment emerges 
from the intense desire for vengeance.  This desire must escalte to the point of obsesion so that 
reason, constructed by the avenger, comes from a questionable place. Once this obsesion takes 
control of the revenger?s mind, he feels that he may exact revenge by whatever means necesary.  
Acts that exced the bounds of acepted civilized behavior become reasonable means to 
compensate for his lack of power.  The need for power presents itself most plainly in the 
revenger?s use of cannibalistic acts to carry out his revenge and take the power he lacks. 
33 
As a trope, cannibalism may take on a variety of meanings, which may shift based on 
details like who is eaten.
21
  In Totem and Taboo, Freud observes the belief of some cannibalistic 
tribes that eating the flesh of another helps the feeder to absorb powers held by the one being 
eaten (136).  The act may also be sen as a way to delineate social boundaries creating one group 
as moraly superior to another through the acusation of cannibalism (Macbeth, Schiefenh?vel 
Collinson 190).  Most often, literary representation of cannibalism correlates to conquest, 
colonization, and alienation of the ?other.?
22
  Louise Noble views the act as a tool ?to demarcate 
cultural boundaries and sharply discriminate betwen ?civilized? and ?barbaric? modes of 
behavior? (678).  Raymond J. Rice views ?the consumption of human flesh?[as]? the 
symbolic order?s limit point, a threshold that must not be crossed? (298).  In ?Of Cannibals,? 
Michel Montaigne states, ?there is nothing barbarous and savage ? except that each man cals 
barbarism whatever is not his own practice? (152).  Cannibalism ay also represent a breakdown 
of social contract or covenant. Biblical uses of cannibalism demonstrate acts of vengeance on 
groups that have turned their back on God.
 23
  Revenge plays demonstrate, through the use of 
cannibalism, the literal expresion of power relations in their respective social structures.  The 
feeding off of one group by those above it is turned back on the oppresor.  Karl Marx and 
Friedrich Engles convey the same expresion of the parasitic nature of man?s relations to one 
another in the Manifesto of the Communist Party. Terms of oppresion come to expres a food 
chain enacted through capitalist practices.  Once driven mad by his lack of power, the revenger 
then utilizes cannibalism as a means to subvert the existing social structure that has failed to 
deliver justice for his wrongs.  Utilization of cannibalism to achieve his ends demonstrates the 
                                                 
21
 Macbeth, Schiefenh?vel, and Collinson note the diferences betwen endocannibalism (ingestion of people from 
one?s own group) and exocannibalism (ingestion of people from ?other? groups). 
22
 Some xamples include: Megan A. Norcia?s ?The Imperial Food Chain: Eating as an Interface of Power in 
Women Writers? Geography Primers? and Jay Rubenstein?s ?Cannibals and Crusaders.?  
23
 Se Zechariah 11:9, Leviticus 26:29, Deuteronomy 28:53-57. 
34 
heights of madnes to which the revenger is driven by his feelings of powerlesnes.  When 
viewed through Marx and Engels? social criticism, Sondheim?s combination of cannibalism with 
social comentary in Sweney Todd takes this trope to another level, making the act of revenge 
an act of revolt against the people and conditions that necesitate the act. 
With these observations of oppresive history in mind, the question becomes whether 
these ?mad? avengers, having been carried away by their pasion, are in actuality in possesion 
of new knowledge denied the general population. By turning the focus in this direction, the role 
of clas status becomes integral to revenge plots. When Hieronimo atempts to confront the King 
about Horatio?s death, Lorenzo blocks his aces and tels the King that Hieronimo is ?Distract 
and in a manner lunatic? (III.xi.89).  Hieronimo?s capacity to present his case rationaly has 
been eliminated by his grief, and those around him se him as incapable of reason.  However, he, 
unlike other Spanish subjects, knows what corruption lies within the ruling family.  Like 
Hieronimo, Sweney recognizes the unethical uses of power.  The clarity of his position and 
powerles within this corrupt structure drives him toward a condition that sems like madnes to 
outsiders.  The revenger, faced with the truth of his situation, is driven mad by his inability to 
atain satisfactory redres for the wrongs acted upon him.  His own truth must be faced before he 
can present anyone else with this clarity of vision.  The pasion of the revenger develops as a 
direct result of the real circumstances he is suddenly forced to face.   
In Sweeney Todd, the connection betwen madnes and clearer perception of the social 
situation is emphasized by the Beggar Woman?s presence in the opening of the second act. She 
and the other Bedlamites present characterizations of madnes acompanied by truth. The 
madnes becomes further emphasized when Bedlam?s inhabitants break free and march through 
the final scenes.  Although Sweney, as the revenger, gains a clear view of his social situation 
35 
that expands to the greater population, the inhabitants of Fogg?s Asylum proclaim the truth of 
Sweney?s revolution through the final scenes of the play.  They bring with them a proclamation 
of apocalypse.  Their declaration that ?it?s the end of the world? is repeatedly folowed by the 
chant ?City on fire! /City on fire! /City on fire!? (186).  This chant recals the beggar woman?s 
earlier song, ?Smoke! Smoke!/ Sign of the devil! Sign of the devil!/ City on fire!? (156).  Her 
repetition of this song atempts to warn the customers of Mrs. Lovet?s cannibalistic enterprise.  
Before anyone else can se what ?mischief? Sweney and Mrs. Lovet have been doing, the 
Beggar Woman, like a contemporary Casandra, cals out her warning ? and like Casandra her 
truth remains unheeded.  Although she ses the truth of the situation, no one listens to her mad 
ravings.  The chorus of Bedlamites marching over the stage at the play?s conclusion is harder to 
ignore. Schlesinger notes that Lucy (the Beggar Woman), the character least likely to understand 
the true situation, is the only one who does. The connection reiterates the fact that ?madnes 
becomes the carrier of truth, a truth that neds to come out, a true apocalypse? (Menton 73).  The 
revenger, like Titus, Hieronimo, Vindice, and Sweney, armed with the truth of his ituation, 
decides to act rather than cal the truth out in the streets, but his ?madnes? offers the vision upon 
which he acts. 
The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus begin with the hero believing that order wil 
win out and make things right. Both Hieronimo and Titus belong to the power structure of their 
respective societies.  Titus and Hieronimo defend the status quo, supplying service that maintains 
the current order.  Only when they discover, at various stages within the plays, that those who are 
trusted to maintain order are the same individuals or groups who have commited the injustice, 
do they lose faith in the current ruler.  This loss of faith is directly connected to the specific 
individuals in power ruling as a tyrant, not a lack of faith in the social order.  Unlike Hieronimo 
36 
and Titus, Sweney and Vindice begin with the knowledge that those trusted with authority and 
power have corrupted their positions to atain their own ends. Sondheim shows this strikingly 
through Sweney?s contradiction of Anthony?s positive view of London noting that the ?cruelty 
of men is as wondrous as Peru? (32).  Once he hears of Lucy and Johanna?s fates from Mrs. 
Lovet, Sweney?s worldview wil be further confirmed.  Sweney has held on to the image of 
his preserved family throughout his incarceration; Mrs. Lovet?s revelation of the truth forces 
him to recognize that his past has been destroyed.  The harsh reality of his lack of power leads 
him to the extremes typical of the revenge tragedy.  The madnes that develops from this 
powerles feeling intensifies during the delay experienced by the revenger, and drives the 
revenger to the exces that wil define his acts. 
The delay, a motif critical to the mental instability of the revenger, feeds the development 
of the obsesive focus on justice into madnes. Although Halet and Halet argue that the 
?revenger welcomes the delay, because he realy does not want to act,? Sweney has already 
experienced a long enough delay; further denial of aces to his victim tortures him to the point 
of madnes (89).  Sweney takes his cue from Vindice, reveling in the activity that ocupies the 
delay and eagerly anticipating the final act.  Sweney appears as a man possesed from the very 
beginning of the play; he apologizes to Anthony with the excuse, ?my mind is far from easy? 
(31).  Sweney?s false conviction and imprisonment have already stripped him of the naivet? he 
recognizes in Anthony, but he has not quite reached the point of madnes.  His troubled mind 
may indicate an individual on the verge of madnes, but does not indicate anything more insane 
than ?exaggerations of normal emotions? (Macdonald 120).  His pasions grow stronger when he 
arrives at Mrs. Lovet?s only to find that his wife has poisoned herself and his daughter has been 
taken in as Judge Turpin?s ward; he moves away from reason at this news: ?Let them quake in 
37 
their boots ? Judge Turpin and the Beadle ? for their hour has come? (40).  At this point he stil 
maintains some rational thought; he has not yet gone far enough to the extreme to label him as 
mad.  Sweney directs his anger specificaly at those he views as responsible for his misery and 
suffering. While he does view revenge as a viable solution, he has not been carried away by his 
pasions; he stil specifies the persons at which he directs this vengeful urge.  
The epiphany that brings Sweney to the conclusion ?They all deserve to die,? results 
directly from Anthony?s interruption (emphasis mine 101).  Sweney has already waited to 
discover the fate of his wife and daughter while he served fiften years at Botany Bay; he has 
waited until Judge Turpin walked into the tonsorial parlor, and, at the very moment when 
revenge sems iminent, the satisfaction of vengeance is once again delayed (40).  This moment 
drives Sweney further toward the conclusion that violence wil solve his problem, but it is no 
longer isolated violence directed at specific individuals.  He sings once again of the ?hole in the 
world,? but rather than concluding his thought, he breaks off as he finds a solution to rid that 
world of the vermin that ?inhabit it - / But not for long? (101).  The shift in thinking shows 
through the familiar line repeated, halted, and given a new conclusion.  Sondheim?s music drives 
home the mental break occurring in this moment. Prior to Anthony?s entrance, Sweney and 
Turpin sing together hypnoticaly. In the moment after the judge leaves, the ?music begins under, 
very agitated? while Sweney ?stands motionles, in shock? (100).  The harmony present in 
?Prety Women? disipates as Sweney?s agitation counters Mrs. Lovet?s atempts to sooth him 
with her reprise of  ?Wait.?  That Sweney uses the word ?deserve? draws atention to the 
change in role he has undertaken as a revenger; no longer an individual seking personal 
vengeance, Sweney has taken on the role of God?s minister.  He seks to deliver vengeance he 
ses as earned by the entire population; the death that he brings is only what the people have 
38 
asked for through their own unjust behavior.  He no longer focuses on those who have directly 
offended him, but extends his vengeance to a society that has lost al sense of meaning. 
When confronted with his powerlesnes directly, Sweney loses what litle connection 
with rationality he retained. Following Pireli?s murder, Mrs. Lovet questions his sanity, but 
determines he was reasonable in taking action against Pireli.  Pireli holds information fatal to 
Sweney?s existence and uses that information as power over Sweney for his own financial 
gain.   While Sweney may not be completly insane, the imediate instinct to kil shows his 
regresion toward animal instincts.  Violence becomes his first reaction when threatened. He ses 
his own situation expanded to the general population and extends his means of redres to the 
wider populace in the moment he finaly plunges toward insanity. Sweney acts without 
prejudice, viewing everyone as equaly corrupt and responsible for the proliferation of decay in 
London.  Halet and Halet view the delay as a motif necesary to cultivate the revenger?s 
madnes because of his reluctance to act, but Sweney?s madnes develops, not from an 
unwilingnes or inability to act, but from his lack of power.  His social station, a prisoner in 
hiding, forbids his approach to legal justice, as does his experience of legal corruption in 
London.  Even if he could approach the law, he has learned from direct experience that the 
incarnation of law currently ruling London serves only its own ends.  
To atain satisfaction, Sweney must get the law to come to him. As Mrs. Lovet tels 
him, ?Everybody shaves,? so Sweney obtains aces to the judge through his work (108).  
Because Sweney works in a service industry he must wait until Turpin comes to him. Through 
his arrangement with Mrs. Lovet, Sweney?s work as a barber and his work as an avenger 
become conflated.  These two functions become united by the fact that they define Sweney.  
Sweney?s story is explained in terms of his labor; four of the five variations from melodrama to 
39 
musical identify Sweney Todd as the ?barber.?
24
  The focus on Sweney?s labor turns atention 
to the social function of Sweney?s action as more than a personal vendeta.  In his madnes, 
Sweney, as both the barber and avenger, partialy fulfils the function of Marx and Engels? 
proletariat. Sondheim?s play enacts the kind of social upheaval that Marx and Engels view as 
necesary, but no alternate structure is offered to take the place of the current system.  The 
murder spree, on which Sweney embarks, aims to eliminate those who keep the proletariat in its 
place, and those of the proletariat who acept their place as wel.  By taking aim at the social 
structure, Sweney?s vengeance becomes an eruption of anarchic rage; unlike Marx and Engels? 
proletariat, he leaves the world in chaos.   
The importance of the social strata in Sweney Todd?s story gains emphasis through the 
direction that the play open with a ?drop depicting in a honeycombed beehive the clas system of 
mid-19
th
 century England? (23).  Sweney?s moment of ?Epiphany? recals his earlier view of 
London as ?a hole in the world like a great black pit? where the ?privileged few? sit on top 
?Making mock of the vermin/ in the lower zoo? (32). When Judge Turpin evades Sweney?s 
vengeance, Sweney experiences a moment of clarity explaining his revelation that the world is 
filed with ?two kinds of men?the one staying put in his proper place/ and the one with his foot 
in the other one?s face? (101).  By focusing Sweney?s rage on this particular aspect of his 
situation, Sondheim draws atention directly to the clas structure present in al revenge plays. 
Sondheim focuses his inquiry on a man whose only strength comes from his labor as a barber 
with no ilusion of lasting power within society.  Sweney?s occupation as a barber underscores 
the connection of labor with power. The only time that Sweney may hold power over those in 
the upper clases connects directly to his use of the razor.  When the men of London step into 
                                                 
24
 This includes the Bond, Sondheim, Hazelton, and Burton adaptations of the story. Dibden Pit does not include 
reference to Sweney?s profesion in his title and The String of Pearls is not included in this reference as it was not 
entirely focused on Sweney as a subject. 
40 
Sweney?s tonsorial parlor, they make themselves vulnerable to him by siting in his chair and 
baring their throats to his razor.  
The modern revenger, as viewed in Sweeney Todd, must be a common man defined by 
the work that he contributes and which offers his livelihood.  Because Sweney?s employment 
defines him, the mesage of the function of the revenge tragedy shifts. Rather than remain a story 
about a solitary avenger whose personal vendeta maddens him to the point of excesive 
violence, Sweney directs his anger at the social concerns that have created his situation.  
Sweney?s action espouses no alternate agenda meant to correct this situation; he simply seks to 
end it by ending the lives of those who enable the injustice. Al revenge tragedies utilize 
excesive violence to make their point.  Although early modern versions incorporate a certain 
amount of colateral damage as the revenger?s madnes increases, Sweney?s fixation on revenge 
brings him clarity of vision that his situation extends to the entire population.  By focusing on his 
individual experience, Sweney becomes enlightened to a universal problem.  Sweney sings, 
?We al deserve to die,? including himself in the larger group of those to whom ?death/ Wil be a 
relief? (emphasis mine 101).  As Benjamin Barker, ?he was ? Naive? regarding the extent of 
man?s cruelty; as Sweney Todd, he has gained knowledge and no longer maintains the foolish 
notions like those Anthony holds (32).  Sweney holds a darker view of the world, having been 
educated by his experience with Judge Turpin.  He speaks of beauty only in the past tense: 
  There was a barber and his wife, 
  And she was beautiful. 
  A foolish barber and his wife. 
  She was his reason and his life, 
  And she was beautiful. 
41 
  And she was virtuous. (emphasis mine 32) 
 Just as Benjamin Barker exists only in the past tense, the beauty in the world - personified by 
Lucy - exists in the past.  Sweney Todd ses no beauty and maintains no foolish notions about 
the workings of mankind.  So Sweney?s personal vengeance becomes an act of rebelion 
because he experiences ilumination that demystifies man?s relation to man.  But this 
ilumination does not bring hope of a preferred world order, only an end to human existence.  
When thwarted in his initial atempt at revenge, his solution takes on the universal problem by 
eliminating those he ses as the cause, as wel as the ?les honorable throats? of the wider 
population (102). 
Sweney?s explanation that the ?crunching noises pervading the air? are the sounds of 
?man devouring man? emphasizes Marx and Engels? claim that societies are historicaly based 
on the antagonism betwen oppresor and oppresed (Sondheim 105, Marx, Engels 483).  The 
dysfunctional social structure that results from this parasitic relationship must be righted through 
revolution that upturns the social structure in favor of a new way.  By focusing on the social 
leveling that results from Sweney?s slaughter, one may view the act as ?the revolt of modern 
productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are 
the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule? (Marx, Engels 478).  Maus 
notes that the conditions of the early modern period are those of a society in transition.  She 
focuses on the economic hanges explaining that the powerful clases adapted to new 
circumstances based on their interpretation of ?where their self-interests lay, and how those 
interests might conflict with their role as it had traditionaly been defined? leading to potential 
dislocation of those beneath them (xii).  The tale of Sweney Todd develops during the 
Victorian era, and the updated versions by Bond and Sondheim transfer the tale, originaly set in 
42 
the eightenth century, to the Victorian era from which it originated.  The mid-Victorian period, 
in which Sweeney Todd is set, witneses much economic hange including the rise of the middle 
clases who ?were the chief agents and beneficiaries of these unprecedented developments, the 
parvenus who transformed a ?feudal? society into a ?modern? state? (Gilmour 3).  Although 
Sondheim does not clasify himself as a political playwright, his musical adaptation was also 
developed during a period of social change in the United States.  The development of these plays 
in times of change and turmoil links them directly to the idea of revolution, that these changes 
were largely linked to economics, and the changing ways that people made their living make the 
connection to Marx and Engels? ideas on social developments through revolution. 
Just as Gilmour recognizes the importance of the middle clas in the transitions occurring 
in ninetenth century England, Marx and Engels recognize that ?the bourgeoisie, wherever it has 
got the upper hand, has put an end to al feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilesly torn 
asunder the motley feudal tie that bound man to his  ?natural superiors,? and has left remaining 
no other nexus betwen man and man than naked self-interest? (475).  Thus, the identification of 
Sweney as ?barber? indicates Sweney?s asociation with the economic market and his function 
within the capitalist system.  Like Sweney, the people that he and Mrs. Lovet wil use for pie 
filing are reduced to their profesions. The reputation of the occupation determines the quality 
of the meat.  The extensive word play in ?A Litle Priest,? provides a biting commentary on the 
various strata of society and how they might affect the taste of the pie.  A swep comes ?cheap,? 
while the Beadle ?isn?t bad til you smel it/ And notice how wel it?s / Been greased,? and the 
priest has an ?awful lot of fat? (109, 106).  The poorer profesion comes cheap, while those in 
power are noted for their corruption.  The fat priest cals atention to the wealth of churches, 
meant to avoid exces, and the Beadle?s wilingnes to acept bribes demonstrates that law 
43 
enforcement comes with a price.  The song brings forward the way that ?the bourgeoisie has 
stripped of its halo every ocupation?[and] has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, 
the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers? (Marx, Engels 476).  So the quality of 
the meat directly relates to the value of the occupation. Even those previously revered have lost 
their value as they have sold the ocupation out to the bourgeoisie. By exploiting these 
occupations as products, the bourgeoisie has enforced a system of oppresion.  The profesions 
that have served the bourgeoisie wil now be slaughtered for their value as a literal product.   
Feding one group to another points out Marx and Engels? belief that the bourgeoisie has 
outlived its usefulnes as a ruling body when the leadership fails to feed those it oppreses.  
Individuals are no longer people, but meat to fil pies that serve the mases.  Mrs. Lovet and her 
competitor, Mrs. Mooney, are driven to use alternative sources of meat in their pies because 
capitalism has made socialy aceptable sources of meat unatainable. As the bourgeoisie 
controls the market, it fails to fed the lower clases that support its existence.  The necesity of 
turning the upper echelon of the social structure into meat for pies that feed the general populace 
reiterates Marx and Engels? point that the ruling clas demonstrates its inability to rule when ?it 
has to feed him [the slave], instead of being fed by him? (483).  Sondheim makes the metaphor 
of the social crisis literal by putting the sale of human flesh on stage for audience consumption.  
As Sweney and Mrs. Lovet observe, if the historical precedent is ?those below serving those up 
above,? the social turn of ?those above serving those down below? becomes gratifying (108).  
The oppresed finaly have a means to exert power over their oppresors by feeding them to 
?anyone at al,? thereby overturning the existing social order (112).  The popularity of the pies 
served at Mrs. Lovet?s pie shop demonstrates that man does not only feed upon man, but he also 
enjoys it.  
44 
Maus points out that the revengers in early modern tragedies are conservative rather than 
revolutionary figures because the aim of the revenger is not to ?overturn the social hierarchy but 
to restore its proper function? (xii).  This certainly holds true for Titus and Hieronimo, even for 
Vindice, who is happy to se Antonio in power after the death of the lecherous Duke and his 
heirs.  Sweney, however, ses no redeeming qualities in society and seks to destroy the social 
structure that has alowed Turpin to exercise power.  Thomas McAlindon points out that 
revengers are ?pited against tyrants or other ?great men? who use rank to frustrate justice? (29). 
Sweney does not sek legal justice; he does not sek to se Turpin serve time for his misuse of 
power.  Sweney seks social upheaval rather than legal justice.  The problem that Sweney 
seks to right extends beyond his own personal situation to the entire population, but it also 
extends beyond the inept rule of the powerful.  Sweney recognizes that the structure of the 
capitalist society in which he exists reduces the worth of human beings to ?exchange value? 
(Marx, Engels 475).  Sweney?s value directly correlates to his skil as a barber.  While the 
devaluation of human worth might be explored through Judge Turpin and Beadle Bamford?s 
corruption, the partnership betwen Sweney and Mrs. Lovet demonstrates the dehumanizing 
nature of capitalism that leads to the corruption of those in power and, in turn, results in the 
powerles feeling that leads to Sweney?s insane, vengeful enterprise. 
By asociating capitalism with cannibalism, Sweeney Todd continues the commentary 
Montaigne begins.  Montaigne points out the hypocrisy of civilized society by highlighting that 
those who view themselves as civilized rarely take note of their own barbarous acts:  ?I am not 
sorry that we notice the barbarous horror of such acts, but I am heartily sorry that, judging their 
faults rightly, we should be so blind to our own. I think there is more barbarity in eating a man 
alive than in eating him dead? (155).  By feding Tamora ?the flesh that she herself hath bred,? 
45 
Titus highlights her barbarous behavior (V.ii.61).  As Mrs. Lovet does with Sweney?s victims, 
Titus puts his victims into a pie and feeds them to their ?unhalowed dam? (V.ii.191).  Tamora 
seks to avenge her eldest son?s death and to obtain this sinks to secretive means atacking Titus? 
daughter.  Her behavior, despite her current position as Queen in Rome, reaffirms her place as a 
barbarian, or ?uncultured, uncivilized?not Roman? (OED).  Sweney achieves the same ends 
by feeding members of London?s population to one another.  He believes that ?many a Christian? 
would have left him to die on the seas, ?and not lost a wink?s slep for it,? so he views people as 
hypocrites (30). While the customers at Mrs. Lovet?s emporium might look on barbarous 
cannibals with disgust, they fail to se the barbarity in their own everyday activities.  Sweney 
achieves a coup by feding ?civilized? people to one another without distinguishing ?great from 
smal? (112).  The strike is more complet because the customers cannot get enough of the pies.  
Sondheim emphasizes the truth of Sweney?s view through ?God that?s Good,? sung by the 
chorus at the top of Act Two.  While some may look upon Titus or Sweney?s actions as 
barbarous, they must, as Montaigne points out, ensure that they do not ?surpas them [cannibals] 
in every kind of barbarity? (156).  The excesive violence used by revengers to atain justice both 
highlights the barbarity of the avenger and that of the society that makes revenge necesary.  
Through the mad pasion that eliminates restraint, the revenger becomes the barbarian that he 
seks to destroy. 
The exces of revenge tragedy develops from the corruption of reason related to the 
revenger?s madnes. Beyond reason, the revenger?s acts defy restraint.  The madnes sen in 
these plays results directly from the frustration of justice causing the revenger?s sense of 
powerlesnes.  Once madnes takes hold, the revenger?s acts take on a broader meaning. 
Although early modern revengers may be sen as restorers of order, including their active 
46 
participation in their own deaths, the modern revenger, as sen in Sweney Todd, takes a les 
orthodox view.  If ?society as a whole [is] felt to be contaminated,? then society as a whole must 
pay the price.  Sweney does his best to overturn the unjust structure of London society while 
taking his revenge out on those individuals responsible for his suffering. By combining the 
motifs of early modern revenge tragedy with modern social theory, Sondheim?s adaptation of 
Sweeney Todd becomes a revenge tragedy that enacts not only the change in power structure 
demanded by the revenger, but also a social destruction. Through close xamination of the 
revenger?s status, one may recognize the use of cannibalism as means by which Sweney 
atempts to level the power structure keping him from achieving his goal. The excesive 
violence typical of revenge tragedy expands to include the mas population permiting 
unchecked corruption.  Sondheim?s references to Marx and Engels? social theory tie the acts of 
cannibalism to insurgency aimed, not at restoring previous order, but creating chaos that destroys 
the social ladder which has kept men like Sweney down. Unlike Marx and Engels? ideal 
revolutionary, Sweney leaves no hope of order in his wake.  He, like al avengers, must die once 
his task has been completd; the world he creates does not lend itself to neat resolution, but to 
more questions and consideration of what might ?fix? the situation that made him and others a 
victim of unjust civil law. 
Conclusion 
 Revenge tragedies may be sen as works highlighting the proliferation of injustice in a 
corrupt society, or comentaries on the madnes that emanates from obsesion. These plays 
?force the viewers to suffer through the same feelings of anguish and moral uncertainty? 
experienced by the protagonists ?in order to highlight the dehumanizing power of the revenge 
impulse? (Semanza 56).  The violence of revenge tragedies dehumanizes to the extent that it 
47 
leads not only to numerous deaths, but also to deaths that are increasingly brutal and shocking. 
Moving beyond the horror of mutilation, Sweney Todd feeds the flesh of his victims to others. 
?The consumption of human flesh represents the symbolic order?s limit point, a threshold that 
must not be crossed?; Sweney has crossed one boundary by commiting murder but goes further 
in feeding his victims to the populace (Rice 298). By crossing this point, the door of that 
threshold is closed to him forever once he and Mrs. Lovet begin to use the flesh of other humans 
as meals. The boom in busines resulting from the new recipe emphasizes Sweney?s belief that 
the ?vermin of the world? inhabit London (32).  In the early modern form, if society is to 
function, a norm must return after vengeance has been taken.  The absent law that necesitates 
revenge must re-form and return to maintain the norm, which wil not permit participation of the 
revenger.  The shock value of cannibalism emphasizes that justice cannot be taken into the hands 
of individuals.  In the final chorus of ?The Balad of Sweney Todd,? Sweney and Mrs. Lovet 
sing, ?To sek revenge may lead to hel,/ But everyone does it, and seldom as wel/ As Sweney? 
(204).  If everyone does sek revenge the results wil be some version of the carnage 
demonstrated by Sweeney Todd.  
Whether real or fictitious, Sweney Todd has integrated himself into British cultural 
heritage.  From Penny Dreadfuls to the stage melodramas of the 1800s, the Demon Barber of 
Flet Street has become a fascinating vilain.  When Bond adapted a version of the melodrama 
for contemporary audiences in the 1970s, the tale of Sweney Todd became a different dramatic 
form, which was further altered through Sondheim?s adaptation into a musical. Sondheim's 
musical adaptation of the tale of Sweney Todd utilizes the elements of revenge tragedy along 
with the source material's romance and melodramatic aspects to create a modern revenge 
tragedy.   Drawing on centuries of theatrical tradition, Sweney Todd: The Demon Barber of 
48 
Flet Stret (1979) has become a vehicle to examine the genre of revenge tragedy and its 
function within society. 
Through a combination of the motifs delineating the early modern tradition with theories 
of modern theatre, the play becomes even more socialy conscious than its early modern 
predecesors.  Sondheim?s incorporation of Brecht?s ideas on epic theatre creates a clas-
conscious drama that moves Sweney?s vengeance into the realm of social criticism.  His 
inclusion of comedy and other alienation devices works toward a les Aristotelian form of drama 
that prohibits uncritical audience response.  By using these tactics, Sondheim heightens the 
capitalist critique created in Bond?s adaptation.  When viewed in a Marxist context, cannibalism 
demonstrates that capitalists thrive by feeding off the miseries of others.  Where early modern 
dramatists would provide a sense of restored order following the revenger?s demise, Sondheim 
refuses to give this sense of closure.  Rather than restore order, Sweney creates chaos.  Sweeney 
Todd leaves audiences with the understanding that one corrupt individual has been eliminated, 
but Sondheim offers no clarity as to London?s future in the aftermath of Sweney?s revenge.  To 
complet the transition from melodrama to modern revenge tragedy, Sweeney Todd insists on the 
audience?s critical involvement without offering up answers to the questions raised within the 
text.  The play leaves one wondering what form of order might have prevented this tragedy, and 
how might society reform itself to eliminate the corruption that leads to the barbarism portrayed 
in these dramas. 
Aristotle views tragedy as an ?imitation of? human action and life and happines and 
misery? (63).  Revenge tragedies, including Sweeney Todd, present the audience with al of these 
elments, but by taking them in a direction that prevents uncritical, empathetic response, 
Sondheim recreates the revenge tragedy as a modern dramatic genre.  The audience may find 
49 
itself in sympathy with Sweney, but through approaches that atempt to separate the audience 
from the characters? plights a les cathartic experience is achieved.  Sweney?s pasions reach 
out to the broader injustices of the world requiring spectators to question the extent of their own 
involvement in metaphoric cannibalism that might lead to such extreme actions.  If the history of 
the world ?is the history of clas struggles,? then how long might that world continue without 
creating another Sweney (Marx, Engels 475)?  Sondhiem?s answer sems to be that Sweney 
exists in al of us.  The final input from the chorus tels the audience ?No one can help, nothing 
can hide you - / Isn?t that Sweney there beside you? (203).  If the social cannibalism presented 
in revenge plays continues unchecked, society may be ripe for another demon barber to rise in 
revolt and set the city on fire once again. 
 
 
 
 
50 
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