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Beth Henley's tragicomedies study the effects of the feminist movement upon a few, mostly proletarian women in rural Mississippi, who are more likely to read Glamour than Cixous and Clement's The Newly Born Woman. We are invited to sympathize with isolated heroines whose fantasies demonstrate the difficulty of conceiving female subjectivity while entrenched in patriarchal epistemes, whose resilience is expressed in their canny, survivalist compromises with the codes of passive southern womanhood. Their compromises may be precisely located in the recurring imagery of homicide and suicide that pervades Henley's scripts.

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Christopher Marlowe's two-part Tamburlaine the Great (published 1590) captures all of the spirit and something of the scope of legendary violence the historical Tamerlane levied against his enemies. In the course of ten acts Tamburlaine's armies roll over several nations and cultures, leaving thousands of civilians enslaved or worse. Marlowe's graphic representation of the trail of blood and brutality is itself notorious.In the interest of founding his own legend as the hypermasculine “Generall of the world” (1:5.1.451), Tamburlaine practices virtual genocide against his enemies and ethnocide against their cities, religions, and ways of life. By no means does he work alone. The soldier-males who serve in his armies eagerly follow his lead.