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actions will
be a divine punishment than he refers specifically to the kind of
revenge which honour demanded. In bringing about the deaths of
Casandra and Federico in the way he does -- a truly cunning and
Machiavellian deception in both cases -- the Duke effectively prevents
their incestuous relationship and his own dishonour from becoming
public knowledge, avenges the offence against himself, and at the same
time leads the public at large to believe that the offence for which
Federico dies is purely his murder of an innocent Casandra. In short,
he is unable to separate punishment from revenge in spite of his
attempts to do so. The argument has therefore been put forward that
Lope's title was forced upon him by the contemporary Spanish concern
with honour. Attracted by the Bandello story, Lope could not present
the Duke's actions against the erring couple simply as a punishment --
which is the case in the original -for their behaviour offends not
merely against public morality but also against his personal honour.
On the other hand, Lope did not wish the Duke's actions to be seen
merely as a private revenge for lost honour when larger moral
questions were involved. The title points to his concern with both
issues. 25
    Another aspect of the play which requires comment is Lope's
designation of it as a tragedy on the first page of the autograph
manuscript. In the light of this, the question has often been asked:
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23
See E. M. Wilson "Cuando Lope quiere, quiere", in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos , 161-2 ( 1963), 265-98, repr. in Spanish and English Literature of the 16th and 17th Centuries ( Cambridge, 1980), 155-83.
24
Ibid. 180 .
25
See Jones, El castigo sin venganza , 12-13; T. E. May, "Lope de Vega's El castigo sin venganza: The Idolatory of the Duke of Ferrara", Bulletin of Hispanic Studies , 37: 3 ( 1960), 154-82.
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who is the tragic hero or heroine? One suggestion is that Casandra
deserves to be regarded as such, for it is she who, slighted by the
Duke, becomes entangled in a powerful but illicit relationship which
brings upon her the most terrible consequences. 26 A different view is that the Duke should be regarded as the tragic
protagonist, for all the events of the play stem from his actions and,
although he does not die, he is left at the end with his life in
ruins. 27 Against this, it can be
argued that Lope's conception of tragedy did not, perhaps, demand a
single tragic hero or heroine, and that the tragedy of the play
consists of the situation itself, 'in which all the main characters
are implicated, and in which all share in both guilt and loss, whether
the loss be of life or of what makes life worth while'. 28
    This view of the play, with its emphasis on guilt, suggests, of
course, that the play's tragic outcome stems purely from the moral
defects and wrongdoing of its principal characters. Thus, the Duke is a
libertine who, unwilling to put up with an arranged marriage to
Casandra, shamelessly neglects her and quickly returns to his former
way of life. She, upset by his callous treatment of her, seeks revenge
on him and compensation for herself in an affair with her stepson
Federico, while he, the illegitimate child of one of his father's
innumerable escapades, and cast into deep depression by the thought
that the marriage will deprive him of his inheritance, is not
sufficiently strong-willed to reject his stepmother's advances. When the
Duke learns of the incestuous affair he devises the cunning plan to
punish the guilty couple for their crime and simultaneously avenge
his honour, and in so doing is motivated in no small measure by an
awareness of his own contribution to all that has happened. Thus, all
the events of the play, each dependent on the other, are seen to
involve selfish and imprudent motives. This is not, though, the only
way of considering Lope's tragedy, for a closer examination will
reveal that various factors