Like another two hundred or so English first-years, I’m just emerging from the Renaissance paper. Along with knowledge of some very weird devotional poetry, more sonnets than I ever want to see again, and a new collection of rhetorical figures, this paper introduced me to one of my newest and very deepest obsessions: the Renaissance revenge tragedy.

Revenge tragedies are amazing.

They could compete with some of the grossest torture-porn-horror of today, but are acceptable to read on the train.

They make you look sophisticated and erudite, while really behind their socially acceptable, Oxford World Classics covers, they’re chock full of sex and violence and violent sex and weird crazy people of all kinds. They also make perfect exam-term reading: you can get through them in about three hours tops, they’ll definitely provide an excellent break from whatever it is you’re revising, and they’re a safe outlet for the surges of uncontrollable violence which exams tend to arouse. Here are four of my very favourites to get you started. Spoilers, mind.

1. First of all, there’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford. Cracking title, and a familiar enough plot to make it a great one to begin with. This play is essentially Romeo and Juliet, except instead of feuding families keeping the young lovers apart, it’s just one family. Giovanni and Arabella, the couple at the centre of the play are brother and sister. On top of the incest, this play is happy to bring the violence. Following a disagreement, Giovanni stabs Arabella, cuts out her heart, and then prances around the stage with it skewered on the point of his dagger, waving it at the other characters. Nasty.

2. Pick number two is the best choice if you’re looking for maximum respectability in your twisted revenge horror. William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus was his take on the genre, and it can provide you with a reputable name without the need to compromise on gore. Titus features an odd extended meditation on the body of a woman who has had both hands and tongue removed to stop her telling or writing the names of her attackers.

This scene is monumentally nasty, but for me the worst is saved til last. It aint over til the baddies have been tricked into eating their minced sons baked into juicy pies. Don’t feel like reading? The 1999 film Titus is brilliant, and doesn’t scrimp on the gore.

3. If you’d like your revenge tragedy to be tinged with just the tiniest hint of cute romance, then I highly recommend The Duchess of Malfi. The Duchess is a strong independent widow who falls in love with her butler and secretly marries him. They’re completely adorable, but unfortunately her two creepy brothers didn’t especially want her to take a second husband, so they set about torturing her to death and essentially killing anyone she’s ever spoken to for good measure. Highlights include the Duchess being tricked into kissing a severed dead man’s hand, wax models of her murdered family being wheeled onstage and a joke about apricots and horse manure. But in my opinion, the best bit is a little two-minute snippet featuring the creepiest of the brothers, Ferdinand.

He’s a bit stressed out from all the murder, and the other characters find him lurking out the back of the Milan cathedral with a corpse slung over his shoulders. They ask him what the hell’s going on, and he sort of cackles, and shouts “I’m a wolf! My fur point inwards!” before running off into the night.

4 If after all that you find yourself becoming desensitised to the revenge tragedy, and are looking for something a little more extreme, I recommend moving on to The Revenger’s Tragedy by Thomas Middleton , a play that does what it says on the tin. The action follows Vindice, a man on a mission to get revenge on a randy duke who sexually harassed Vindice’s girlfriend into suicide. Peak gross comes when Vindice, who has disguised himself in order to work for the duke, is asked by the big man to sort out a new girl for him.

Vindice sees his opportunity and makes a kind of necrophile’s sex doll for the duke, using the skull of the dead girlfriend, which he covers in poison. The doll is presented to the duke in a dark room so that he doesn’t notice how icky it is, and he kisses it, is poisoned, and dies.

With the (hopefully metaphorical) carnage of exam term fast impending, I can’t recommend strongly enough that you pick up a Renaissance revenge tragedy. Just remember to wait for an hour after eating, and not to leave them lying around where the squeamish could find them. Happy revenging!