Melissa Smith argues that in early-modern English revenge tragedies the playhouse functions metaphorically and socially as a “plague-house”, a site of contamination, disease and moral corruption. She shows how such dramas draw on the anxieties of epidemic disease, crowds, contagion and moral decay to stage revenge plots that mirror a society infected by violence, betrayal and vengeance. The theatre itself becomes a space where disorder, infection, both literal and moral and the breakdown of social norms are enacted and explored.