author
Cyril Tourneur
d. 1626
A shadowy Jacobean playwright remembered for dark revenge drama, he is best known today for The Atheist's Tragedy and for the long debate over whether he also wrote The Revenger's Tragedy. Little is known for certain about his life, which only adds to his eerie literary reputation.
1 Audiobook
Webster & Tourneur
by John Webster, Cyril Tourneur
About the author
Cyril Tourneur was an English dramatist, and sources also describe him as a soldier and diplomat. He died on February 28, 1626, at Kinsale in Ireland, and much about his early life remains uncertain, including his birth year, which is usually given around 1575.
His reputation rests mainly on The Atheist's Tragedy, published in 1611, a grim and powerful revenge play filled with the macabre atmosphere that readers often associate with Jacobean drama. For many years The Revenger's Tragedy was also credited to him, though modern scholarship more often attributes that play to Thomas Middleton.
That uncertainty has become part of Tourneur's story. Even with only a small body of firmly connected work, he remains a memorable figure from the English Renaissance stage, known for intensity, violence, and a bleak moral vision that still stands out centuries later.