Spanish Tragedy – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Commentaries on Plays by Shakespeare’s Contemporaries

Kyd, Thomas. The Spanish Tragedy. (New Mermaids/Methuen Drama, 3rd ed. 2009.)

Of Interest: RSC Resources | ISE Resources | S-O Sources | 1623 Folio 619-48 (Folger) |

Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Preceded by an Introduction

KYD, MARLOWE, JONSON, WEBSTER, AND SHAKESPEARE AS COLLEAGUES

Since this course is about four of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, the obvious question is, did Shakespeare in fact know these men?

Well, except for Ben Jonson, we don’t have evidence that any of the other three met Shakespeare. Some scholars say that Kyd and Thomas Nashe wrote the play that Shakespeare later adapted to become Henry VI, Part 1. Others, such as Douglas Brewster, believe that Shakespeare contributed some 300 lines to The Spanish Tragedy, though this would have been done for the 1602 quarto, after Kyd died. Marlowe and Shakespeare may have worked together on parts of the Henry VI plays. Today’s methods of attribution are sophisticated, and they go far beyond the old-fashioned concordances so admirably compiled by earlier scholars, but they will probably never be able to provide the certainty we would like in such matters.

So on the specific issue of whether Shakespeare ever met Marlowe or Kyd, we just don’t know. There’s no evidence either way. There’s also no reason to insist that they didn’t get together at some point. They could have. The London playwriting scene was fast-moving, competitive, even intimate, so it’s hardly implausible to suppose that Shakespeare met a good number of his fellow playwrights. Still, we’ll probably never know for certain.

In any case, the important thing is that Kyd and Marlowe surely influenced Shakespeare’s work because of their success. They blazed a trail for him, and he took advantage of their efforts. It is a pity that both Kyd and Marlowe died so young and on the cusp of brilliant careers in drama. Shakespeare enjoyed more time to perfect his art. Who knows what heights Marlowe, in particular, would have reached if he hadn’t been stabbed to death in May 1593, at he age of 29?

With regard to Ben Jonson, the record isn’t such a blank. Shakespeare did know the talented and imposing Jonson pretty well—they’re widely thought to have met at least occasionally at the local Mermaid Tavern in London. Shakespeare’s company produced a couple of Jonson’s plays, too–Every Man in His Humour and Sejanus: His Fall, and he seems to have had a role in at least the first-mentioned play.

In his critical study Timber, or Discoveries, written after Shakespeare’s passing, Jonson recalls suggesting that his friend could have done a better job of editing his own work, but he takes care to dampen the claim that he meant to diminish him thereby:

I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, ‘Would he had blotted a thousand,’ which they thought a malevolent speech…. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped…. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so, too. … But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned. (HathiTrust public domain text, pg. 23, Ginn & Company, edited by Felix E. Schelling, 1892. )

If the worst you can say of an artist is that his imagination sometimes ran away from him, that isn’t so bad, is it?

As for John Webster, we don’t know a lot about his life. He died sometime between 1626-1634. I don’t think it’s known whether he ever met Shakespeare, but Shakespeare in Love has an interesting fictional encounter between young master Webster and Shakespeare, in which the boy says boldly that blood-drenched plays like Titus Andronicus are right up his alley: “Plenty of blood—that’s the only writing.” Ralph Fiennes’s Will Shakespeare seems a bit taken aback by this meeting. In any case, Webster was an extraordinary artist, as anyone familiar with The Duchess of Malfi can attest.

THOMAS KYD

And so, on to a little more biographical information about Thomas Kyd. He was born in early November, 1558, and died by December, 1594. He was just short of 36 when he died, probably from injuries inflicted by state torture. But more on that in a moment.

Thomas was the son of a scrivener and attended the Merchant Taylors’ School in London, which must have been an excellent experience since some of its pupils went on to become important figures in the ranks of English society. When Thomas Kyd was in attendance, the headmaster was the well-regarded Richard Mulcaster.

Kyd may have had as his patron Lord Ferdinando Strange (1559-1594), whose acting company was respected in Elizabethan London. In any case, Kyd was on the way up with his hit play The Spanish Tragedy, which got the Senecan-revenge-tragedy genre going strong on London stages. The play was apparently written sometime during the mid-1580s, though it wasn’t entered into the official Stationer’s Register until 1592. It was performed many times by several acting companies.

Kyd probably also wrote the so-called “ur-Hamlet” that Shakespeare seems to have used as a basis for his own Hamlet in 1601. He also wrote Cornelia (1594), a translation of a French play, and Soliman and Perseda, a romantic tragedy. Brian Vickers also attributes to Kyd the domestic tragedy Arden of Faversham, the Shakespeare source-text King Leir (spelled L-e-i-r), and the love-triangle-based comedy Fair Em.

As for the sad ending of Kyd’s life, the playwright roomed with Christopher Marlowe in the early 1590s, and in May of 1593 he was taken into custody and subjected to torture because the authorities thought he was involved in treason. In his lodgings were found Marlowe’s copy of a treatise by an earlier author denying Christ’s divinity. Kyd later denounced Marlowe’s blasphemous expressions in a letter to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir John Puckering, and seems never to have fully recovered from the torture inflicted on him. He died by the end of 1594, thus cutting short what was already beginning to be a brilliant career. Marlowe himself died at the end of May, 1593—another great career ended prematurely.

THE REVENGE GENRE AND THEME

By way of preparing to study Kyd’s masterpiece, The Spanish Tragedy, we should reflect on the theme of revenge. It’s appropriate to begin with comments about the classical underpinnings of the Elizabethan and Jacobean penchant for revenge tragedies.

Homer and Aeschylus will serve us well in this regard. First, Homer. In The Odyssey, you’d think that once Odysseus makes it back home to his beloved island kingdom of Ithaca and slaughters all those arrogant and disrespectful suitors to his wife Penelope, that would be the end of the story. But it isn’t: in the twenty-fourth and final book, the relatives of these well-to-do suitors band together and come at Odysseus seeking revenge, which is their right as family members. Things get so far out of hand that Athena has to step in and put an end to the fighting, which she does. Only then do we get the happy outcome we have come to expect from an epic that is, after all, essentially comic in spirit.

In Aeschylus’s tragic trilogy The Oresteia, the terrifying Furies who pursue Orestes for taking revenge against his mother, Clytemnaestra, for the treacherous murder of his father King Agamemnon, are renamed the Eumenides (the Well-Abiding), and then given a place of honor under the city of Athens. The point is that these creatures who personify revenge don’t really go away. There they are, guaranteeing, one might even say underwriting in the contractual sense, the glorious civic and legal order that has been newly founded in Athens. The God Apollo is instrumental in the achievement celebrated by the play, just as Athena helps Odysseus out of his predicament near the end of The Odyssey.

We could mention many more instances in which revenge figures prominently in Greek and Roman plays and literary works. Just to name one, we have Ovid’s stories taken from the Greeks and transformed into matter for The Metamorphoses. “Procne and Philomel” is a blood-curdling tale of revenge that Shakespeare adapts in his popular, over-the-top revenge play Titus Andronicus.

There’s also the Roman Stoic philosopher and tragedian Lucius Annaeus Seneca, who wrote gory plays like Thyestes, wherein murder and cannibalism are both on the menu. King Atreus of Argos is enraged at his brother Thyestes, who stole his wife and throne. When Atreus is restored to the throne, he pretends to invite Thyestes back to share power, but outside the palace he kills Thyestes’s three sons and serves them to him at a sumptuous dinner, thus inflicting the worst of all insults on anyone with dynastic interests: forcing him to “swallow his own increase.”

Seneca is especially useful to us because his status as a philosopher reminds us that although revenge tragedies are often gory and outrageous, as much as any tragedy they have serious philosophical underpinnings. Revenge plays reinforce the sense of life’s sometimes fiendish complexities and confoundings. They deal with the great question of justice in human relations; with the frailties of human nature; and with the infuriating tendency of civilization to set itself up as our protector and then to end up being an engine of dishonesty and oppression.

In the case of Seneca’s Atreus and Thyestes in his revenge masterpiece, Thyestes, the two royal brothers really are driven by a kind of blind, stupid rage. In Homer, this blind, stupid rage is called atasthalíe—as Homer says at the outset of The Odyssey, it’s just the thing that causes Odysseus’s crew to kill and eat Hyperion’s sacred cattle, thus delaying the trip home to Ithaca. It seems as if a person is always thrown into an always already terrible situation, and driven to do dreadful things or take on shattering responsibilities. Remember the Doors song, “Riders on the Storm”? There’s a pair of lines in it that run, “Into this world, we’re thrown / Like a dog without a bone.” Yes—that, that feeling seems integral to the protagonists in revenge tragedies. Then too, very often the characters in the ancient revenge tales are generationally accursed. They’re not really even acting from their own agency, and if that’s so, perhaps their tragedy is to be born into an accursed house.

Closer to our own time comes Sir Francis Bacon’s canny description of revenge as “but a kind of wild justice” that, if society indulges it, “putteth the law out of office.” Here’s a longer version of the quote from the relevant essay, “Of Justice” in his Essays Civil and Moral: “Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out; for as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law, but the revenge of that wrong, putteth the law out of office.”

“A KIND OF WILD JUSTICE”: REVENGE IN SHAKESPEARE’S AGE

Sir Francis Bacon is right to identify how dangerous, even explosive, revenge is to the civic order. That’s the essential point Aeschylus and Homer were making in the ancient texts we have already considered. Bacon is implying that a long revenge-based cycle would soon generate a great deal of death and destruction. How could anything be built up in such circumstances, and not be torn down again almost immediately? However does one promote a civilization while that is happening?

Still, revenge is interesting to most people because it’s something that everybody understands. Thus the ubiquitousness of it as a plot line in plays and narratives, or a sub-plot in films. At the personal level, the intense desire for revenge isolates people in their own individual hell. But at the same time, it calls forth whatever they have within themselves so it can be marshalled against a clever, ruthless, or powerful enemy. Revenge may begin as a private affair, but it tends to spill out into the public realm, with very public and political consequences. So in a sense, revenge tragedy delves into the consequences of a profound misdirection of intense, irrepressible human energies.

What can we say, in general, about Elizabethan revenge plays? The engine of these plays is basically the same as for the ancients: outrage at a murder that’s been committed, or some great wrong or insult given, which then proves difficult to repay thanks to the revenger’s need to work within an intricate, corrupt, courtly society—a veritable maze comprised of human fears, delusions, pretensions, Machiavellian scheming, and unhealthy desires. One can’t just do something like take revenge and be done with it. Serious obstacles invariably present themselves, and the consequences of taking revenge are sure to be lethal for the revenge-taker as well as for the person suffering the revenge.

Modern Christian revenge, we should also note, is against Judeo-Christian doctrine, which posits that vengeance belongs to God, not mortals. (See Deuteronomy 32:35 and Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 12:19 and elsewhere in that text.) But frankly—and with only a partial exception for Hamlet—not too much need be made of that fact since in the end, revengers will have their revenge, and audiences must have their bloody scenes to enjoy. It has even been argued that Christianity makes the whole concept of “tragedy” moot, but that is another matter.

Some critics have suggested—plausibly enough—that in revenge tragedies, an anxious and frustrated public could more or less safely indulge their fantasies of freeing themselves from the clutches of an entrenched authoritarian political regime, which would be an accurate description of the courts of the absolute monarchs who ruled during Shakespeare’s lifetime: Elizabeth I and James I. Though beloved by many of their subjects, both of these sovereigns exercised enormous and—for some—terrifying power over the citizenry of early modern England. Revenge plays offered an aesthetic means of coping with tensions concerning religion, state power, and other serious matters.

ACT 1

“Here sit we down to see the mystery”: Don Andrea’s ghost tells the story of his death at the hand of the Portuguese Prince Don Balthazar, and Revenge promises him satisfaction

In Act 1, Scene 1, Don Andrea tells his story. What interests me is that Andrea died in a confused, compromised way, in the midst of a secret affair with the daughter of Castile. And he must have felt that the way Balthazar killed him was not soldierly—we wasn’t really granted a “good death” on the battlefield. This is the Ghost of the treacherously killed Don Andrea we’re dealing with, who was slain in cowardly fashion by Balthazar, the son of the Portuguese Viceroy. Let’s look at what Don Andrea seems to be expecting by way of the spectacle that Revenge has apparently promised him. What’s his attitude? And what about Revenge, the character? What’s in it for Revenge?

Don Andrea’s need for revenge most likely flows from his complex situation, then. He died, as Dante would say, “Nel mezzo del cammin’ di nostra vita,” and not in a way that promoted tranquility of spirit. Remember how Hamlet’s father the king harps on that—being sent to his account with all his imperfections on his head?

Revenge’s narrow promise will broaden and become much broader, and I suggest that this over-the-top quality largely frustrates the idea that revenge tragedy is mainly about righting wrongs, reasserting a moral scheme, and so forth. Is Revenge going to serve Don Andrea, or itself? Or both? As the clever folks said who made up a slogan for the side panels of a city bus, “Help us help you help us help you.” Whoever said revenge is supposed to be clean, or fair, or noble?

“In our hearing thy deserts were great”: the King of Spain praises Don Balthazar at a state banquet, and airs his hopes for unity between Spain and Portugal

In Act 1, Scene 2, the General unfolds the basic story of Andrea’s death at Balthazar’s hands, and Horatio’s heroism in capturing Balthazar after he kills Andrea. Hieronimo, Horatio’s father, emerges as a paragon of loyalty to the King of Spain. This is the setting-up of characters who are soon to be knocked down. Part of the setup is the King’s distribution of the spoils of Balthazar’s capture—the monetary reward and armour go to Horatio, while the man himself is to be guarded by Lorenzo, son of the Duke of Castile, who also gets his weapons. This may sound fair, but it sparks a grudge.

“Thus have I with an envious, forged tale deceiv’d the king”: Viluppo takes advantage of the Portuguese Viceroy’s conviction that his son Balthazar is dead, and falsely accuses Alexandro of murdering the prince

In Act 1, Scene 3, the Viceroy of Portugal is sure that his son Balthazar must have been slain. He doesn’t know that the young man has been captured and made subject to ransom. So Viluppo steps forth as a stage villain and says falsely that the nobleman Alexandro killed Balthazar by shooting him in the back. Why? The stage villain admits that basically, he did it for gain or some other reward, perhaps for advancement in the Portuguese hierarchy. Viluppo is something of a lesser Machiavel character, a foil to the real Machiavel, Lorenzo.

“Second love shall further my revenge!” Bel-Imperia, hearing how Balthazar killed Don Andrea, decides to take Horatio as her lover; meanwhile, Hieronimo stages a courtly masque for the King of Spain

In Act 1, Scene 4, Horatio tells Bel-Imperia exactly how Balthasar finished off Andrea. Much later, in Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare will describe Achilles’s slaughter of Hector the Trojan hero in much the same way. Taking advantage of a man when he’s down isn’t noble, it’s just wretched.

This recounting prompts Bel-Imperia to tell us in soliloquy what her plan for taking revenge will be: she will allow herself to fall in love with Horatio, which will add spite, as she calls it, to her eventual and more material revenge against Balthasar. Bel-Imperia is someone we don’t want to mess with—that much is apparent already. Clytemnaestra of Aeschylan fame, make room for a kindred spirit!

A banquet is set up, and the king of Spain wants to host his VIP prisoner, Balthazar. Hieronimo has been asked to offer a courtly masque, and he chooses for his theme the fact that Portugal, Spain, and Castile have all at one time or another been conquered by the English, so it is no great shame for Portugal to have been conquered by the Spaniards. Thomas Kyd wrote The Spanish Tragedy not many years after the Portuguese succession crisis of 1580, as a result of which King Philip II of Spain ended up ruling Portugal in what was called the Iberian Union. Spain was of course a great rival of the English, and probably not long after this play was written, there occurred the attack by the Spanish Armada, which failed but indicated serious contention between England and Spain over religion and colonization.

“Nothing but league, and love, and banqueting!” Don Andrea’s ghost complains—not for the last time—about the quality and pace of the revenge that “Revenge” is delivering

In Act 1, Scene 5, Don Andrea again complains bitterly to Revenge, which seems like a dangerous thing to do, though he keeps right on doing it anyway. He sees in the events thus far shown him “Nothing but league, and love, and banqueting!” He sounds ready to – what is it the young’uns do nowadays – “swipe left” and move on. But Revenge, for one thing, is a supernatural force, so … and for another, it obligingly promises to turn all this good cheer and happy experience to its utter opposite. So Don Andrea will just have to be patient and stop being hungrier for Revenge than Revenge itself. We know the score: “revenge is a dish best served cold.” Or maybe not exactly cold, but at least a good long while in preparation.

ACT 2

“Be watchful when, and where, these lovers meet”: Lorenzo demands that Pedringano help him spy on Bel-Imperia and Horatio, whom he plans to ambush

In Act 2, Scene 1, Balthazar harps upon his love for Bel-Imperia, and laments that she pays him no mind. Lorenzo, son of the Duke of Castile, calls in a favor from Bel-Imperia’s servant Pedringano. It seems that Lorenzo saved this man from being found out as the go-between for Bel-Imperia and her beloved Don Andrea, so Pedringano owes him. His task will be to cough up the name of the man whom Bel-Imperia currently loves. And he already knows: it’s Horatio.

Pedringano must, then, inform Lorenzo where and when the two lovers next get together; he is told that he must “Be watchful when, and where, these lovers meet” (99). Revenge tends to be a matter of the nobility—they seem to be calling the shots here. The servants get caught up in the nobility’s struggles; they don’t have the luxury of remaining neutral.

Then be thy father’s pleasant bower the field: Bel-Imperia and Horatio decide to meet in Horatio’s father’s garden; Balthazar and Lorenzo are eavesdropping, so they hear the plan

In Act 2, Scene 2, Lorenzo and Balthazar spy on Horatio and Bel-Imperia in the garden of Horatio’s father, Hieronimo. This is a good time to ask, what’s in it for Lorenzo, who appears to be our resident amoral Machiavel in this play? Well, it probably comes down to his wanting to have control over personages and events. In a sense, and unbeknownst to the king of Spain, he is working to effect a union between Balthasar and Bel-Imperia. That is what the king of Spain wants, but the methods between the two men couldn’t be more different. In any case, Lorenzo and Balthazar now know as much about Horatio and Bel-Imperia’s plans as they need to: Bel-Imperia says to her new lover, “Then be thy father’s pleasant bower the field, / Where first we vowed a mutual amity …” (42-43).

“I KNOW NO BETTER MEANS TO MAKE US FRIENDS”: THE KING OF SPAIN ENCOURAGES THE PORTUGUESE AMBASSADOR TO HASTEN THE PROPOSED MATCH BETWEEN BALTHAZAR AND BEL-IMPERIA

In Act 2, Scene 3, the King of Spain asks the Duke of Castile whether his daughter, Bel-Imperia, is warming up to a union with Balthazar, the Portuguese Viceroy’s son. As we know, she isn’t. That does not please the king, though he trusts that matters will improve without delay. Much good is riding on this match: the king promises that he will abolish Portugal’s tribute if the marriage goes forward. Not only that, but if Bel-Imperia and Balthazar should have a son, the boy will one day rule not only Portugal but Spain.

The Spanish King says to the Portuguese Ambassador, “Advise thy king to make this marriage up, / For strengthening of our late-confirmed league; I know no better means to make us friends” (10-12).

“These are the fruits of love”: Lorenzo, Balthazar, Serberine, and Pedringano stab and hang Don Horatio in his father’s garden, while Bel-Imperia is whisked aside

In Act 2, Scene 4, Horatio and Bel-Imperia transpose martial language into another key, using the word “die” in an erotic sense, not a literal one. But they are soon betrayed by Lorenzo, Balthazar and their assistants. Lorenzo has a way of waxing ugly-poetical (the poetical equivalent of the French term jolie-laide) as when he says in answer to Horatio’s question “What, will you murder me?” with “Ay, thus, and thus; these are the fruits of love” (55). The scene, we should remember, is a garden. As in Shakespeare later on, when the villain isn’t being stupidly literal, his or her cleverness often takes an unpleasant, even macabre, turn.

“This place was made for pleasure not for death”: Hieronimo is devastated to find his dear son Horatio’s body hanging in the garden

In Act 2, Scene 5, Hieronimo is stricken to find the body of his son in his own garden. He says, “This place was made for pleasure not for death” (12).

Isabella, Hieronimo’s wife and the mother of Horatio, soon enters the garden, and the couple take their own approach to what has just happened: Hieronimo vows revenge, taking up a bloody handkerchief as his symbol, while Isabella declares her faith in traditional Christian piety: “The heavens are just, murder cannot be hid…” (57).

This scene ends with what the Mermaid editors call a pastiche of Latin from various authors. Maybe Thomas Kyd thought this was an appropriate way to achieve tragic dignity, but in any case, in the combined passage Hieronimo swears off suicide since that would prevent him from accomplishing his revenge.

Now Hieronimo, initially stunned, has his casus belli, his purpose going forward. But this isn’t going to be a straightforward “good kill.” It never is. For one thing, there would be no need for the play if that happened. No, there must be obstacles, and Hieronimo, though he doesn’t have the depth of a Hamlet or a Macbeth, will need to work his way through to the other side if he means to accomplish his revenge. He will have the highly placed and thoroughly vicious Lorenzo working against him, too.

While Hieronimo talks up revenge as strongly as Isabella appeals for justice from the heavens, he also cares about true justice, and he plainly isn’t going to get that here. Not in this cauldron of politics and corruption that is Renaissance Spain, at least as Thomas Kyd depicts it. This is the stark dilemma that usually confronts a revenger: it’s an act that threatens to change who you are. Shakespeare’s Hamlet would certainly later find it so, as would Macbeth.

ACT 3

“My guilty soul submits me to thy doom”: a messenger arrives at the Portuguese court and exposes Viluppo’s sordid lie about Alexandro

In Act 3, Scene 1, Viluppo’s attempt to cast blame on Alexandro for allegedly killing Balthazar comes to naught when a messenger shows up at court informing everyone that the young prince is alive. As in, not dead. Well, who could have predicted that? Viluppo now appears like just the stupid fellow he really is. His scheme depended on nobody finding out that a prominent man whom he claims was killed, wasn’t in fact killed. So what is the point of this sub-plot? Viluppo identifies his motive as, “reward and hope to be preferred” (95). All he can say when caught is, “My guilty soul submits me to thy doom” (93).

The whole affair reflects poorly on the King of Spain, too, since he accepted Viluppo’s accusation without the slightest hesitation. And yet these are people who have no problem torturing others because, well … getting to the truth is just that important. One last function for this ridiculous sub-plot is to drag down the conspiratorial actions of Lorenzo and Balthazar. In Kyd’s work, we witness alternating scenes from serious to comic and back serving to take down the high-status agents: something Shakespeare may have picked up from Thomas Kyd.

“Hieronimo, beware, thou art betrayed”: Bel-Imperia sends Hieronimo a letter identifying his son’s killers, but he fears that he is being set up

In Act 3, Scene 2, Hieronimo complains in Petrarchan lines about his terrible dreams, which he renders for us with Dantean precision. He seems halfway to madness by this point, even though he’s perfectly lucid about what’s happening to him. Then comes Bel-Imperia’s letter, which apparently drops down from where she is being held captive and practically falls into his hands.

Bel-Imperia’s letter explains in no uncertain terms who killed his dear son Horatio, but at present, Hieronimo fears that the powerful nobles are colluding with one another to entrap him in some treasonous plot. For that reason, he refuses to believe the claims that Bel-Imperia has made, saying to himself, “Hieronimo, beware, thou art betrayed, / And to entrap thy life this train is laid” (37-38). If Bel-Imperia knew, she would no doubt feel like Cassandra, doomed to know what’s what and never to be believed. But in truth, Hieronimo, lawman that he is, means to treat her claims like any accusation: as matter to be investigated and either confirmed or disproved.

The link between the two scenes lies in Lorenzo’s evident need to maintain secrecy and safety. In this, he’s like just Shakespeare’s Richard III and Macbeth. “To be thus is nothing,” the latter tells Lady Macbeth, “but to be safely thus.” Richard puts the question as well as anyone ever has when he asks Buckingham, “But shall we wear these glories for a day, / Or shall they last and we rejoice in them?” (4.2) Lorenzo reflects, “I’ll trust myself, myself shall be my friend, / For die they shall, slaves are ordained to no other end” (118-119).

Lorenzo is trying to play the puppetmaster in the Spanish court, and no doubt hopes to secure his own position by strategically favoring and disfavoring others. In the end, though, we know that Lorenzo’s efforts will be no more successful than those of Viluppo. In Christian tragedy, we are always going to find at least some hint of Providence lurking among the play’s assumptions. The Spanish Tragedy, the playthat started the Elizabethan revenge-craze is no exception. Lorenzo is doomed, just as Viluppo is.

The notion that underwrites the connection between these two men and their vain, prideful hopes for security is something like, “the wisdom of men is foolishness to God,” which idea is found in 1 Corinthians 1:20-31. See in particular verse 20: “hath not God made the wisdom of this world foolishness?” (Geneva Bible)

Lorenzo’s words merit close attention because they show him to be a thorough rascal. He’s willing to sacrifice his lower-level accomplices without conscience or remorse. He says as much. At base, Lorenzo is doing the King’s bidding in paving the way for Balthazar to marry Bel-Imperia, but this Machiavel prefers to keep his scheming a secret, at least for now.

“Now, Pedringano, or never, play the man!” Bel-Imperia’s treacherous servant lies in wait to kill Serberine at Lorenzo’s bidding, but when he does the deed, watchmen arrest him

In Act 3, Scene 3, it’s Pedringano’s turn in the barrel. He shows up at the appointed time and place, ready to shoot Serberine with a pistol he’s brought for that purpose, and thus eliminate one of the most expendable conspirators. “Now, Pedgringano, or never, play the man!” Thus he bucks himself up to play the role assigned to him.

No sooner does Pedringano finish off Serberine than a couple of watchmen “just happen” to arrive at the scene to arrest him and haul him off to be arraigned by Hieronimo, who is, after all, Spain’s chief lawman. How naïve of him not to realize that there’s no honor among murderers! Some critics have noted that “Pedringano” resembles the place name, “Pedrignano,” in Italy, which would make the man quite an outsider, and so not very hip to the ways of the Spanish court. That’s plausible, given the bad moves Pedringano keeps making and will make right up to the moment of his death. He believes Lorenzo will protect him.

“I set the trap, he breaks the worthless twigs”: Lorenzo delights in using the dupe Balthazar to hasten the condemnation of Pedringano

In Act 3, Scene 4, Lorenzo sends Balthazar off to Hieronimo as a proxy demanding the death of Pedringano. Lorenzo’s aim to be a puppetmaster and supreme Machiavel is evident in this scene: he’s very pleased with the way he’s able to wind others up and set them going to accomplish his objectives without his having to be connected to the necessary deeds.

There’s also a kind of cruel excess about Lorenzo’s words and actions. It isn’t enough just to have Pedringano eliminated. No, he has to go to the scaffold in the flush of his arrogance, thinking himself invulnerable. After all, the boy that Lorenzo sends to court has a little box with Pedringano’s pardon supposedly ensconced within it. What could possibly go wrong?

“Mock on, here’s thy warrant”: the boy whom Lorenzo sends to Hieronimo’s court session for Pedringano muses about the role he has been chosen to play in ensuring his fellow servant’s death

In Act 3, Scene 5, the boy whom Lorenzo has sent to court with the empty box that will be Pedringano’s death reflects on his own part in this spectacle. He intuits what a corrupt society he’s living in, and calls what he’s been told to carry out “an odd jest.” That’s an odd way of putting it, but here in the Spanish court, it seems appropriate. The upshot of the boy’s reflections is that the jig is up for Pedringano, and while he finds the man’s fate sad, there’s no point getting himself hanged for his part in it. The whole affair is characteristic of Lorenzo’s gruesome sense of humor. The boy will stand at the side and point meaningfully at the box, as if to say, “Mock on, here’s thy warrant” while himself bearing the complicit certainty that there’s nothing inside the box (14).

“Only I to all men just must be”: with Hieronimo presiding, Pedringano goes to his execution, flush with a false sense of invulnerability

In Act 3, Scene 6, Hieronimo unwittingly presides over Lorenzo’s macabre little piece of theater, lamenting to himself the larger cause of his own grief and psychological strain: “I to all men just must be, / And neither gods nor men be just to me” (9-10). The execution plays out, tidied up by legal proceduralism and ceremony but just as ugly for that. Pedringano goes to his death, his sins upon his hubristic pate. Where’s Saul Goodman when you need him?

“Where shall I run to breathe abroad my woes?” An increasingly distressed Hieronimo laments his inability to get justice for Horatio, but says he’ll go to the King’s court and demand it

In Act 3, Scene 7, Hieronimo in soliloquy again alerts us to his constantly intensifying spiritual and mental distress. “Where shall I run to breathe abroad my woes?” he asks in anguish (1). He pictures his unrest pervading the very elements around him, and sees “justice and revenge” co-existing in the stellar regions where no mortal can go: they are “counter-mured with walls of diamond” (16), and remain unavailable to him. It’s interesting that he places Justice right alongside “revenge,” but he probably means by this what we mean when we refer to “retributive justice”: strict punishment of offenders.

Pedringano’s letter to Lorenzo did him no good since he was hanged before he thought it necessary to make it known to the court—thanks to that non-existent pardon, of course. But it’s actually this letter that finally convinces Hieronimo of the truth of Bel-Imperia’s earlier letter accusing Lorenzo and Balthazar of murdering Horatio. He has the certainty he sought, and now will go to the King, he says, and plead for justice. He will “cry aloud for justice through the court” (70). If they won’t listen, he’ll wear them out with ceaseless threats.

“THERE’S NO MEDICINE LEFT FOR MY DISEASE”: ISABELLA IS RAPIDLY LOSING HER MIND OVER HORATIO’S UNAVENGED MURDER

In Act 3, Scene 8, Hieronimo’s wife Isabella is by now on the cusp of madness, or perhaps she is already in that state. She had called upon the heavens again and again for justice for their son, to no avail. Now she has reached the end of her wits, and finds further life untenable. Isabella says, “No, there’s no medicine left for my disease” – nothing, she means, can cure her shattered heart (4) or bring Horatio back to life. She dashes off with a vision of Horatio backed up by “fiery cherubins” in the heavens (18).

“FORCE PERFORCE, I MUST CONSTRAIN MYSELF TO PATIENCE”: BEL-IMPERIA RECOGNIZES THAT FOR NOW, AT LEAST, SHE IS TRAPPED BY LORENZO

In Act 3, Scene 9, Bel-Imperia, still kept in hiding by Lorenzo, has given up on her call to Hieronimo to provide justice. She is baffled. Now her last resort, or so she thinks, is that Christian virtue “patience.” But soon, very soon, opportunity will come her way.

“MY GENTLE SISTER WILL I NOW ENLARGE”: LORENZO SETS BEL-IMPERIA FREE

In Act 3, Scene 10, Lorenzo tries to spin a yarn to justify what happened in the garden on the fateful night when Horatio was killed. He claims that he acted to protect Bel-Imperia’s gender-based and class-based honor, but she doesn’t buy that story for a minute. She was there, after all. But the main thing is that Lorenzo now sets Bel-Imperia free because their father the Duke of Castile has been asking where she is.

“A DARKSOME PLACE, AND DANGEROUS TO PASS”: HIERONIMO STRANGELY ADVISES TWO PORTUGUESE GENTLEMEN WHO COME TO FIND LORENZO

In Act 3, Scene 11, two Portuguese gentlemen come in search of Lorenzo, whom they say they hope to find in his father the Duke of Castile’s house, but Hieronimo offers them an allegorical vision of the young man worthy of Dante or Hieronymus Bosch. He sends them on a trip through “A darksome place, and dangerous to pass” until finally they will come, he says, to ”Lorenzo, bathing him / In boiling lead and blood of innocents (28-29). Both gentlement think Hieronimo must be mad, but that’s arguable just as it is later on in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where the Prince maintains an eerily calculated “antic disposition” through much of the play.

Earlier, Hieronimo had showed the strain of being checked in the expression of his deep desire for justice and retribution against his son’s killers. Now, it seems that he has discovered a kind of expressive vehicle that we can identify as “visionary justice,” or perhaps even “poetic justice.” In keeping with the philosophical bent of Elizabethan revenge tragedy, it makes sense that this kind of literary, allegorical representation should prove valuable to Hieronimo as he tries to hold himself together and do justice to his son.

“THIS IS THE LOVE THAT FATHERS BEAR THEIR SONS”: HIERONIMO GOES TO THE SPANISH COURT TO DEMAND JUSTICE, BUT HIS ECCENTRIC CONDUCT ONLY LEADS THE KING TO BELIEVE, AT LORENZO’S URGING, THAT THE MAN IS MAD

In Act 3, Scene 12, Hieronimo, again expressing himself in a poetical, allegorical mode, meditates on the relative merits of suicide or violence directed at others, but decides rationally that if he should make away with himself, his revenge-quest for Horatio would remain uncompleted. When he greets the King, Hieronimo takes to calling for justice in a way that implies he believes they all know what happened to Horatio. At one point, he blurts out, “Needs must he go that the devils drive” (82).

However, the King and the Duke of Castile seem sincerely ignorant of Horatio’s death. The King thinks his good officer Hieronimo is out of his mind, and resolves to give him some time off to mend. Extrapolating from Lorenzo’s advice, the King says, “This is the love that fathers bear their sons,” and arranges to give Hieronimo the ransom money that is coming to Horatio (91). Meanwhile, the Portuguese Ambassador brings news that the Viceroy will gladly accept a marriage between Bel-Imperia and his son Balthazar.

“NOR AUGHT AVAILS IT ME TO MENACE THEM”: HIERONIMO REALIZES THAT IF HE MEANS TO GET REVENGE FOR HORATIO, HE MUST LIE LOW AND PLAY THE SIMPLETON, BIDING HIS TIME UNTIL IT’S OPPORTUNE TO STRIKE

In Act 3, Scene 13, Hieronimo lays out his rationale for the strategy he will employ against Lorenzo and Balthazar. He clearly is not “mad again.” But he will play ignorant so as to keep them thinking they’re safe when most they are in peril. The term “ignorance” here means something like “simple-mindedness” (34).

Moreover, Hieronimo’s phrase from Seneca lays bare the point made earlier about the bad characters’ obsession with security: “Per scelus semper tutum est sceleribus iter.” Translated, that’s “The safe way for crimes is through more crimes.” The nobility enjoy superior force, so it would make no sense to assault them frontally. Hieronimo is learning to think like a man stalking high-status human quarry. “Nor aught avails it me,” he says, “to menace them …” (36).

Hieronimo puts this strategy into action when some citizens come to ask for his help in a professional capacity. He lets them down with his “antic disposition,” but the case of the old man, the senex, seems to push him over the edge for a time. The old man seeks redress for his own murdered son. At first, Hieronimo confuses him with constant, possibly deranged references to Horatio. But then it sinks in that the man is a kindred spirit, and together they go inside to seek out Isabella. Before doing so, Hieronimo, like Hamlet upon viewing Fortinbras’s men going to fight “for an eggshell” in Poland, takes the senex as a spur to his revenge.

“THE WORLD IS SUSPICIOUS, AND MEN MAY THINK WHAT WE IMAGINE NOT”: HIERONIMO EAGERLY ENGAGES IN A FALSE RECONCILIATION SCENE WITH LORENZO

In Act 3, Scene 14, Hieronimo keeps calm when the Duke of Castile airs the rumors that his son Lorenzo has been dishonestly preventing Hieronimo from advancing his suit for justice to the King of Spain. What follows is a scene of false reconciliation, and it must happen if Hieronimo is to prepare the way to his revenge. “Men may think what we imagine not,” he says to the Duke of Castile (161-162). The marriage between Bel-Imperia and Balthazar is set to go forward. The New Mermaids editors point out that at the scene’s end, Hieronimo speaks Italian, signaling that he inhabits Lorenzo’s cherished “Machiavel” mode or status. Two can play that game, as the saying goes—or in Italian, “anch’io so giocare allo stesso gioco.”

“Nor dies revenge although he sleep awhile”: Revenge again temporizes with Don Andrea’s ghost, explaining to him a macabre vision of the upcoming marriage between Balthazar and Bel-Imperia

In Act 3, Scene 15, Revenge, following upon Hieronimo’s wise strategy of feigning madness and simplicity, is catching up on his sleep, but that sleep is interrupted by Don Andrea’s ghost. As usual, Andrea doesn’t fully understand the action that is unfolding before his eyes—he thinks Hieronimo really has reconciled with Lorenzo. But as Revenge explains, that isn’t what’s happening. A masque is performed, apparently on order of Revenge, and the explanation he offers of the masque’s action proves satisfactory to Don Andrea: this marriage will result in the death and destruction he pines to see.

As Revenge explains, “Nor dies Revenge although he sleep awhile” (23). Sometimes, a good revenge-action needs to cure a bit before it’s ready.

ACT 4

“WHY THEN I’LL FIT YOU; SAY NO MORE”: HIERONIMO INTRODUCES TO LORENZO AND BALTHAZAR HIS CLEVER IDEA OF STAGING A PLAY WITH THEM AS TWO OF THE ACTORS, AND BEL-IMPERIA AS ANOTHER

In Act 4, Scene 1, Bel-Imperia at first reproaches Hieronimo for not trusting in her accusatory letter, but the two characters bond over the idea of revenge for Horatio’s murder. Now they are working together. Hieronimo goes into action with his brilliant device, which is to stage a play—for us, that would be a “play within the play,” of course—in which the revenge he and Bel-Imperia seek will be carried out “IRL” (in real life). What’s more, it will happen right in front of the horrified audience of nobles who have denied Hieronimo his revenge for Horatio’s murder. The play is called Soliman and Perseda, which play actually exists (though with somewhat different particulars) and is often plausibly attributed to Thomas Kyd himself.

The play within the play is supposed to be acted in four languages: Latin, Greek, French, and Italian. The would-be characters complain that this sounds incoherent, but Hieronimo says he’ll be waiting in the wings and will eventually come out and explain it all. For the audience, the New Mermaids notes conjecture, there may have been a connection to the famous story about the Tower of Babel in Genesis, where God confounds the speech of the prideful and arrogant men who would rival him by building a tower to the heavens. In any case, it isn’t entirely clear how this notion was supposed to be carried out in the play.

“I WILL REVENGE MYSELF UPON THIS PLACE”: ISABELLA FINALLY GOES MAD AND KILLS HERSELF AFTER CHOPPING DOWN THE TREES IN THE FAMILY ARBOR

In Act 4, Scene 2, Isabella finally does away with herself, but not before cutting down the trees in the arbor where Horatio was murdered. Her pleas for justice from the heavens have gone unanswered, and worst of all, Hieronimo, she thinks, has himself abandoned the cause. She dies believing that her husband has fallen into a state of inaction, that he delays to no purpose. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but it’s too late to explain that to her now. “I will revenge myself upon this place,” she laments, “Where thus they murdered my beloved son” (4-5).

“ON THEN, HIERONIMO, PURSUE REVENGE”: HIERONIMO GIVES HIMSELF A PEP TALK ON THE CUSP OF ENACTING HIS FINAL REVENGE

In Act 4, Scene 3, Hieronimo fusses over the details of the play. This is his moment, and he won’t stint on the preparations, even prodding Balthazar to get his act together since show-time is so near. To end the scene, Hieronimo plucks up his courage yet again: now Isabella’s death can be added to the reasons why revenge is so necessary. It may seem proleiptically Hamlet-like in Hieronimo to prod himself this way, but when the time comes for action, he won’t shrink from the necessary violence: “On then, Hieronimo, pursue revenge, / For nothing wants but acting of revenge” (30-31).

“BUT WERE SHE ABLE, THUS WOULD SHE REVENGE THY TREACHERIES ON THEE”: THE HORRID PLAY-WITHIN-THE-PLAY UNFOLDS, AND HIERONIMO’S REVENGE IS SOON COMPLETED, THOUGH HE AND BEL-IMPERIA DIE IN ITS PERFORMANCE

In Act 4, Scene 4, the play within the play is staged: Hieronimo, as the Bashaw, stabs Lorenzo as Erasto. Bel-Imperia, as Perseda, stabs Balthazar as Soliman, and then stabs herself. The words she frames her deed with are brilliantly ironic: she says to Balthazar, “to thy power Perseda doth obey: / But were she able, thus would she revenge / Thy treacheries on thee …” (64-66). But of course this “contrary to fact” quality is erased by the brute fact that Bel-Imperia actually stabs Balthazar to death as she says these words.

A key difference, by the way, between the play-within-the-play and the actual play Soliman and Perseda lies in the way Perseda kills the man responsible for the death of her beloved knight Erasto (played by Lorenzo): in the actual play, Perseda/Bel-Imperia, disguised and fighting with Soliman, poisons his lips when, having won the match, he kisses her by force. Here in The Spanish Tragedy’s version, she will stab him to death—a more direct and “male” coded way to accomplish the deed.

So far, no one in the audience is catching on—they’re praising the skillfully executed “fiction” unfolding before them. But then Hieronimo drags out onto the stage his dead son Horatio, and laments over the gruesome “prop” as the King, Castile, and the Viceroy look on in horror. Hieronimo explains that it was Lorenzo and Balthazar who were responsible for the death of his son, Horatio, because he dared to love Bel-Imperia.

Then Horatio runs away, thinking to hang himself, but he is caught and detained. Threatened with torture by the King, Horatio bites out his tongue, though it isn’t entirely clear what more he has to say since the main details are known by now. See the New Mermaids note to line 201 on pg. 123. Hieronimo’s attitude, the editors seem to suggest, may have to do with wanting to keep his own vengeance uppermost in the noble audience’s minds as he meets his fate.

Finally, Hieronimo, implausibly enough, manages to get hold of yet another deadly weapon—a knife to mend his pen—with which he stabs both Castile and himself. Why is Castile killed? As the New Mermaids note mentioned above explains (see pg. 123, note for line 201), he was the man who denied Bel-Imperia’s right to be with Don Andrea. Castile is not responsible for Lorenzo and Balthazar’s murder of Horatio, which is why Hieronimo sought the revenge he has already accomplished.

Bel-Imperia had her own reason for wanting Balthazar and Castile dead, but since she is now dead herself, perhaps Hieronimo carries out this final revenge to honor his noble accomplice, yet remains the last revenger on the stage. In any case, as the King of Spain points out, the upshot is that Spain’s dynasty is now ruined, which, to Kyd’s Elizabethan audience, would have been a pleasant consequence.

“THESE WERE SPECTACLES TO PLEASE MY SOUL”: DON ANDREA AT LAST ALLOWS HIMSELF TO ENJOY THE OUTCOME OF THE SPECTACLE HE HAS SEEN, AND REVELS IN ITS BLOODY PERPETUITY

In Act 4, Scene 5, Don Andrea is finally satisfied, which must be a relief to long-suffering Revenge. Some would say that Revenge has been trying to delay the whole affair to get Andrea to reconsider, but that doesn’t quite fit the scenario. This is a classical, somewhat droll version of Revenge. Not counting Don Andrea, nine characters have died in The Spanish Tragedy, and Andrea says ghoulishly, “these were spectacles to please my soul” (12). What’s more, when Andrea suggests that his revenge should continue down in Hell forever, Revenge is more than happy to oblige, saying, “though death hath end their misery, / I’ll there begin their endless tragedy” (47-48).

REFLECTIONS ON THE PLAY’S CONCLUSION

Well, Master Kyd’s play is a messy affair, isn’t it? We may be reminded of the scattershot “special providence” that Hamlet claims is watching over every sparrow in the skies, even as innocent and more or less innocent people end up dead along with those who really deserve their deaths. No doubt Hieronimo would insist that he has indeed “fit” his noble audience, just as he promised. That is, he has given them an entertainment that observes the gruesome decorum owed to justice, given what the murderers Lorenzo and Balthazar did to an innocent man.

It seems as if Don Andrea is going to take delight in creating his own order from the wreckage, punishing the guilty and rewarding his favorites. What does this settle, what does it put an end to? We’re just asking for a friend, of course, but Kyd seems oddly happy to stip the play’s conclusion of a true sense of finality.

In all justice, Don Andrea should have been satisfied simply by the death of Balthazar, who killed him deviously in battle. What does Isabella, or Hieronimo, or Horatio, or anyone but Balthazar, have to do with anything, at least where Don Andrea is concerned? But then, revenge—be it conceptualized in a Classical or Christian context—is in large measure about sangre por sangre: blood for blood.

The best case to make for this genre may be Seneca’s implied notion of revenge tragedy being something like a homeopathic remedy: watching a fictive representation of ultraviolence has a purgative or cathartic effect on the audience. That’s what Aristotle said about Greek tragedy of the non-revenge variety, too. It’s a plausible line to argue in defense of the integrity and utility of revenge drama.

But then, at least inside The Spanish Tragedy, Thomas Kyd allows his characters to kill in earnest. What would the inestimable Dr. Samuel Johnson say? Johnson, some readers may recall, is the neoclassical critic who wrote in his Preface to Shakespeare that “The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more.” Well, Kyd’s staging seems to run parallel with that observation: when the King of Spain, Castile (before he, too, is murdered), and the Portuguese Viceroy only enjoy Hieronimo’s play up until the point where they are informed that their own beloved relatives were actually killed in the course of the action.

There is a famous Noh play by Zeami Motokiyo called Atsumori in which a warrior named Atsumori obsessively pursues the soldier who killed him in battle. But this man—Kumagai no Jiro Naozane, now turned Buddhist priest and renamed Rensei (which can mean “transformation” in Japanese), refuses to reenact his role in killing Atsumori. The latter then declares that Rensei the monk “is not my enemy,” and prays for release so he can move on. Atsumori chooses to embrace change, therefore, instead of taking his long-sought vengeance. Even though forgiveness and “turning the other cheek” is certainly part of Christian doctrine, we would not expect an Atsumori-like embrace of transformation from Thomas Kyd’s protagonist Hieronimo. Not in this genre, anyway, with its dedication to curing what ails us by means of ultraviolent romps.

Finally, what proto-Shakespearean interests can we find in this play?

A willingness to use art to explore philosophical and moral “big questions.” To be or not to be, etc.

An interest in the relation between humanity and god or the gods.

The difficulty of revenge, whether for internal reasons or external ones. Frustration awaits the revenge hero thanks to the power and corruption of others in high places. This also means that revenge tragedies often give us a depiction of unhealthy societies. So an interest in statecraft enters the picture. The King of Spain isn’t so much evil as oblivious—but that’s dangerous, too.

The play within the play—as a device to reveal the truth. So this shows there’s an interest in the relationship between art and other areas of life.

Machiavellian characters who represent a certain kind of thinking, an effectual amorality. It usually turns out to be a trap in the end.

Delusional thinking, as Rhodri Lewis says of tragedy generally in Shakespearean Tragedy. People have ideas that don’t correspond to reality, and that causes them and others trouble. The expectation that dastardly crimes will make us safe? That’s delusional. Also somewhat delusional is the touching desire on Hieronimo’s part to continue thinking of JUSTICE when it’s clear that no such thing will ever be on tap. I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s ultra-Roman general Titus Andronicus, whom we might call the last Roman. He ends up out-barbarianing the barbarian Goths and Aaron the Moor.

Quotations from Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy are from the 2009 New Mermaids/Methuen Drama third edition. Ed. J. R. Mulryne.