The Spanish Tragedy
[3] Many elements of The Spanish Tragedy, such as the play-within-a-play used to trap a murderer and a ghost intent on vengeance, appear in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
(Thomas Kyd is frequently proposed as the author of the hypothetical Ur-Hamlet that may have been one of Shakespeare's primary sources for Hamlet.)
Lord Strange's Men staged a play that the records call Jeronimo on 23 February 1592 at The Rose for Philip Henslowe,[4] and repeated it sixteen times to 22 January 1593.
[4] It is unclear whether Jeronimo was The Spanish Tragedy, or The First Part of Hieronimo (printed in 1604), the anonymous "prequel" to Kyd's play, or perhaps either on different days.
[7] The Royal Shakespeare Company performed The Spanish Tragedy in May 1997 at the Swan Theatre, directed by Michael Boyd.
[8][9] The cast included Siobhan Redmond as Bel-imperia, Robert Glenister as Lorenzo, Peter Wright as Hieronimo, Jeffry Wickham as the King of Spain.
[14] Other professional performances include a modern-dress production[15] staged at the Arcola Theatre in London in October–November 2009, directed by Mitchell Moreno,[16] with Dominic Rowan as Hieronimo, as well as a production in Belle Époque era costume, staged by Theatre Pro Rata[17] in Minneapolis in March 2010, directed by Carin Bratlie.
In an apparent compromise between the competing booksellers, the title page of Q2 credits the edition to "Abell Jeffes, to be sold by Edward White".
[27] In 2013, scholar Douglas Bruster theorised that some awkward wordings in the "Additional Passages" of the 1602 fourth edition resulted from printers' errors in setting type from the (now lost) original manuscript.
[29] Despite intense anti-Spain sentiment in England, Kyd's play does not portray Spain as a society particularly bereft of morals or laws.
This is exemplified by the Spanish King's treatment of Balthazar as his prisoner: "yet free from bearing any servile yoke, for in our hearing they deserts were great, and in our sight thyself art gracious" (I.ii.148-150).
She confesses that her love for Horatio is motivated partially by her desire for revenge: Bel-imperia intends to torment Balthazar, who killed her former lover Andrea.
Lorenzo goes on to tell his uncle, the King, that Hieronimo's odd behaviour is due to his inability to deal with his son Horatio's newfound wealth (Balthazar's ransom from the Portuguese Viceroy), and he has gone mad with jealousy.
Regaining his senses, Hieronimo, along with Bel-imperia, feigns reconciliation with the murderers, and asks them to join him in putting on a play, Soliman and Perseda, to entertain the court.
Hieronimo tells everyone of the motive behind the murders, bites out his own tongue to prevent himself from talking under torture, and kills the Duke of Castille and then himself.
The play is ostensibly Senecan with its bloody tragedy, rhetoric of the horrible, the character of the Ghost and typical revenge themes.
[30]: 27 The Ghost describes his journey into the underworld and calls for punishment at the end of the play that has influences from Thyestes, Agamemnon and Phaedra.
[30]: 33 The Ghost is similar to those in metrical medieval plays who return from the dead to talk about their downfall and offer commentary on the action.
Due to the author's anonymity, there is debate between scholars about whether this was a companion piece also written by Kyd or another writer's attempt to contribute to the story themselves.
Henslowe's diary records two payments to Ben Jonson, dated 25 September 1601 and 22 June 1602, for additions to The Spanish Tragedy.
Scholars have proposed various identities for the author of the revisions, including Dekker, John Webster, and Shakespeare—"Shakespeare has perhaps been the favorite in the continuing search..."[38] (It can seem surprising to find Shakespeare, house playwright for the Lord Chamberlain's Men, as a putative reviser of a play associated with their rival company the Admiral's Men.
Kyd consistently refers to mutilation, torture, and death, beginning early in the play when the ghost of Don Andrea describes his stay in the underworld: "And murderers groan with never killing wounds, / And perjured wights scalded in boiling lead, / And all foul sins with torments overwhelmed" (I.i.68–70).
His efforts to curry favor (and go beyond his 'place') with Lorenzo leads to his resulting downfall as he is barred from social mobility, a mere tool in the end.
Scholar Timothy Turner notes that this biting off of the tongue has been interpreted as "a rejection of the fatuities of language, a radical gesture demonstrating Hieronimo's sense of 'inwardness,' or an indictment of the Spanish Court.
The growing presence of Jesuit missionaries within England, as a result of the Regnans in Excelsis (which excommunicated Elizabeth I), inspired a belief that Spain and France were preparing an invasion.
[43] Within the context of The Spanish Tragedy, Hieronimo himself has the title of Knight Marshal, a position which contemporary viewers would have associated with torture and martial law.
[43] Similarly, within the Portuguese subplot of the play (with the Viceroy, Alexandro and Villuppo), martial law and summary justice appear.
Hieronimo continuously returns to it, not only as he attempts to gain his revenge, but to appease the voyeuristic needs of the audience as a result of Kyd's recognition of their enjoyment of mutilation and public violence.
[45] In Kyd's graphic descriptions, the notion of spectacle is present everywhere, as even in the plays themselves the characters note their enjoyment in watching this violence.
[48] Kyd does acknowledge his relations to Senecan Tragedies by using Latin directly in the play but also causes Christianity to conflict with pagan ideals.
