The play begins with righteous depictions of Spanish officers plotting and city authorities fruitlessly debating peace or war, but quickly dissolves into a hodge-podge of unconnected rapes, murders and extortions.
Most of the lines in the piece are assigned to its large assortment of villains, including the Spanish commander "Sancto Danila", the treacherous Van End, colonel of the turncoat German mercenary garrison, and, inexplicably, the Duke of Alva, who in fact was far away in Spain during the massacre.
Just as the city is described by the Spaniards as a woman to be won – "She must be courted... her self invites, / And beckons us unto her sportfull bed" – so are the burghers themselves characterized in feminine terms: they have bodies "us’d to soft effeminate silkes" and minds "set all on dalliance", while "Cankering rust devours [their] emptie Cannons", the only symbols of masculine power associated with them.
In any case, the result is to portray the Spanish Fury not as the savage initiative of mutinous soldiers, the image presented by most 20th-century histories, but rather as a carefully planned military operation set out by masterminding officers and obedient subordinates.
When Stump is finally killed at the end of the play, the fantastically evil Sancto Danila goes so far as to praise his heroism and secure him an honourable burial, in direct contrast to the cruelty previously shown to the crippled soldier by his own people.