Q: Detailed Explanation of Thomas Kyd’s play, “The Spanish Tragedy” On behalf of Don
Andrea and Revenge.
One of the most important Renaissance revenge tragedies, “The Spanish Tragedy,” or ”Hieronimo is Mad Again,” written by the English playwright, Thomas Kyd. It is first published in 1587. The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy: a theatrical genre, in which the principal theme is revenge and revenge’s fatal consequences. It begins with Don Andrea being murdered by his enemy Balthazar and follows his ghost’s journey with the personified Revenge. It was first performed at London’s National Theatre in 1982 at the Cottesloe Theatre.
In 1582, Spain experienced the death of King Philip II, marking a transition in leadership.
Meanwhile, Portugal, under Spanish rule since 1580, sought to maintain its distinct
identity. Since performances of “The
Spanish Tragedy”
continued into the mid-1600s, the play crosses from the Elizabethan into the Jacobean era. James I (1566–1625), who took the throne upon the
death of Elizabeth I, was not only paranoid but also highly superstitious. It is likely Elizabethan audiences easily connected it to events surrounding the “Iberian Union” of 1580 between the crowns of Portugal and Spain.
At the beginning of the play, the ghost of Don Andrea appears, a Spanish nobleman slain in battle with Portugal. Andrea demands that Revenge helps him secure vengeance against Balthazar, and Revenge expresses, “Andrea, that thou art arrived Where thou shalt see the author of
thy death, Don Balthazar, the Prince of Portingale.” In an other section, The King’s nephew Lorenzo and Andrea’s best friend Horatio
dispute over who captured Balthazar. Though it is made clear early on that Horatio defeated Balthazar and Lorenzo has essentially cheated his way into taking partial credit.
Horatio, Lorenzo’s friend, is also in love with Bel-Imperia and becomes intensely jealous. On the other side, Lorenzo and Balthazar decide to murder Horatio. In the
lamentable situation, Bel-imperia says, “Oh save his live, and let me die for him. Oh save him, brother;
save him, Balthazar: I loved Horatio, but he loved not me.” Lorenzo and Balthazar hang Horatio in the garden, and pen a letter in Portuguese to frame his death as a suicide. In
addition, Hieronimo, father of Horatio discovers his son’s body and vows to revenge
against the killers, but his petitions to the King yield no justice.
Hieronimo puts on a dramatization of Soliman and Perseda to entertain the court. As the play-within-a play reaches at its climax, Hieronimo instead reveals his true purpose is revenge. In the play, He stabs to Lorenzo and Balthazar. Hieronimo expresses, “Now do I applaud what I have acted. Now to express the rupture of my part, First take my tongue and afterwards my heart.” The King is left stranded onstage with his dying son while Hieronimo escapes justice by biting out his own tongue and stabbing himself.
In death, Hieronimo is reunited with Horatio standing alongside the ghost of Don Andrea. On the other hand, Andrea and Revenge are satisfied that Hieronimo has properly avenged them both through his
bloody revenge. Their bodies are discovered, and the Spanish King is left astonished by this violence while Bel-Imperia kills herself in grief. Revenge concludes by noting that she has claimed her
fill of lives and will now return to her place in hell.
According to William Empson, this is not made clear at the outset
because Proserpine has arranged that Andrea
discovers what happened to him without being told. As Eliot says, “The Spanish Tragedy, like the series of Hamlet plays, including
Shakespeare’s, has an affinity with our contemporary detective drama.” The ghost, then, is part of the drama, not merely a spectator of a Play; what happens within the frame is a play-within-a-play. Hieronimo also references the Senecan plays,
“Agamemnon and Troades’, in his
monologue in Act 3, scene 13.” The character of the Old Man, Senex, is seen as a direct reference to Seneca. Many writers influenced “The Spanish Tragedy”, notably Seneca and those from the Medieval tradition.
To conclude, Kyd’s play,
“The Spanish Tragedy” is often
regarded as perhaps the single most influential play from the golden age of English theatre. In doing so, it establishes a dramatic mode
consistent with the increasing epistemological
indeterminacy of post-Reformation European thought. The play recapitulates with a sense of catharsis, as justice is served but at the cost of
numerous lives. Only Harriet Hawkins, in a 1970 Shakespeare
Studies article, has come close to discussing such a legacy, though unfortunately she
reduces Kyd’s greatest achievement to a plot element
passed down to and then refined by Kyd’s greater contemporary.
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