Little is known about the life of Cyril Tourneur. In 1600 he published a verse satire, The Transformed Metamorphosis, and the two plays associated with his name---The Revenger's Tragedy (1607) and The Atheist's Tragedy (1611)---are both strongly satirical. The Revenger's Tragedy is a masterpiece of tragic farce and black comedy, with an impassioned contempt-of-the-world rhetoric. Its authorship has been questioned, with Thomas Middleton the leading candidate. The Atheist's Tragedy directly engages the theological theme of atheism; it is both grotesque and homiletic in its proof of the existence of God.
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