Atrocity and Early Modern Drama

Extreme violence scarred the early modern period. Contemporary commentators grappled to find language to categorize the massacres, genocides, assassinations, enslavements, sacks, rapes, riots and regicides that characterized the period. Some used 'outrages', others 'cruelties', but, significantly, the term 'atrocity' that we use today gained the most currency.

Atrocity and Early Modern Drama intervenes in the broad field of violence and early modern drama by placing acts of atrocity at its c...