A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Tourneur, or Turner, Cyril

by John William Cousin

Tourneur, or Turner, Cyril (1575?-1626).—Dramatist, perhaps s. of Richard T., Lieutenant of the Brill, served in the Low Countries, and was sec. to Sir Edward Cecil in his unsuccessful exedition to Cadiz, returning from which he was disembarked with the sick at Kinsale, where he d. He wrote two dramas, The Revenger's Tragedy (pr. 1607), and The Atheist's Tragedy (pr. 1611), in both of which, especially the former, every kind of guilt and horror is piled up, the author displaying, however, great intensity of tragic power. Of The Revenger Lamb said that it made his ears tingle. Another play of his, Transformed Metamorphosis, was discovered in 1872.