The Spanish Tragedy—Thomas Kyd
Some fine Spanish port
I know hardly anything about Elizabethan drama at this point, so these reflections come from a place of profound ignorance. In a year or so, I hope to look back with great embarrassment on them. I’ll start by mentioning the uncertainty about the play’s date of composition. Guesses range from 1588 to 1592, although I think the earlier date more likely, as the British defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, yet the brief recitation in Act 1 of English victories over Spain and Portugal never mentions this battle.
I could easily fill up this entire reflection merely summarizing the plot. So, rather than do that, I’ll sacrifice a lot of the juicy details. As we learn in the first act, Spain has just bested Portugal in battle. The terms of truce include a tribute the latter must pay to the former. The king of Spain, however, would rather swallow Portugal than destroy it, so he plans to unite the countries through a royal marriage. Thus, at this high diplomatic level, revenge plays no role and the path of justice leads to amity.
Things look very different at the personal level. Don Andrea of Spain had led his men in a foray against the Portuguese. Just when the Spanish routed the Portuguese, Balthazar rallied the fleeing troops and they rejoined the battle. In personal combat, Balthazar killed Andrea, but that did not prove decisive, for the Spanish eventually prevailed and took Balthazar prisoner. These events preceded the beginning of the play, which starts off with the ghost of Andrea trying to get himself correctly placed in the afterlife. This drama, though set in Catholic Spain and written for a Protestant English audience, assumes a pagan Greco-Roman hereafter. Should Andrea, both a lover and a warrior, spend eternity among dead lovers or among dead warriors? The infernal judges can’t decide, so they kick the question to the next level and appeal to Pluto. Proserpine intervenes and asks to make the decision herself. Her verdict: Go back, Andrea, as a ghost, with Revenge as your companion, and discover who actually killed you.
This they do, but neither Andrea nor Revenge have any influence on the events. They remain onstage throughout the play and discuss, as a chorus, the unfolding plots, but they do not interact with any of the living.
Having taken Balthazar prisoner, the Spanish king treats him more as an honored guest than as a prisoner and decides that a marriage between Balthazar and the king’s own daughter, Bel-Imperia, would conveniently unite the two kingdoms. Unfortunately, Bel-Imperia has other ideas. She had once loved Andrea, but now has shifted her affection to Andrea’s faithful friend Horatio. So, because Horatio stands in the way of progress, Balthazar and Bel-Imperia’s brother gang up on him, murder him, and hang his body in a tree. When Hieronimo, Horatio’s father, discovers the body, the main revenge plot commences. Oddly, the revenge of Andrea’s murder never gets off the ground and we might altogether forget Andrea, did he and Revenge not remain on stage.
All sorts of complexities now ensue, involving lies, treacheries, discoveries, letters written in blood, a play within a play, murders, and suicides. I got lost several times, trying to follow the plots and counterplots. Ultimately, though, I think the justice takes place on two planes. Andrea, being dead, has no power over the living, so Balthazar seems to avoid paying for Andrea’s death as long as he lives. But Balthazar’s evil character leads him to bring more trouble upon himself, resulting in an earthly retaliation by Hieronimo before going on to his eternal torment designed by Andrea. In the final scene, friends of Andrea as well as enemies have died, but Andrea confers with Revenge and they agree to send each one to their proper eternal reward.
REVENGE
Then haste we down to meet thy friends and foes,
To place thy friends in ease, the rest in woes.
For here, though death hath end their misery,
I’ll there begin their endless tragedy.
The edition I used included some material added in 1602. In one of the additions, Hieronimo, while wailing about Horatio’s death, meets a painter who also grieves for the murder of his own son. Hieronimo asks the painter to paint a picture of Horatio, strung up on the tree where Hieronimo had found the body. The request itself seems odd to me, as though Hieronimo wished to wallow in his misery. But Hieronimo’s elaborate description of what the painting should depict seems even more bizarre.
HIERONIMO …. Then sir, some violent noise, bring me forth in my shirt, and my gown under mine arm, with my torch in my hand, and my sword reared up thus, and with these words: “What noise is this? Who calls Hieronimo?” May it be done?
PAINTER Yea, sir.
[HIERONIMO] Well sir, then bring me forth, bring me through alley and alley, still with a distracted countenance going along, and let my hair heave up my night-cap. Let the clouds scowl, make the moon dark, the stars extinct, the winds blowing, the bells tolling, the owl shrieking, the toads croaking, the minutes jarring, and the clock striking twelve. And then at last, sir, starting, behold a man hanging, and tottering, and tottering—as you know the wind will wave a man—and I with a trice to cut him down; and looking upon him by the advantage of my torch, find it to be my son Horatio. There you may [paint] a passion, there you may show a passion. [...]
Hieronimo’s request sounds more like a movie script than a request for a painting. It also seems to me that Hieronimo neither wants to commemorate Horatio’s life nor publicize his murder, but rather share with the world Hieronimo’s own experience of horror.
Given that the play appeared sometime during the middle of the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604), anything that demonized the Spanish would probably meet with a chorus of amens from its English audience. Accordingly, by the end of the play, we do not admire any figure in it; instead, Kyd seems to assure us that this sort of scheming and treachery typifies the Spanish court.
Even though Harold Bloom places this play within the Western Canon, he has a pretty low opinion of its literary merits.
I have never understood why and how Shakespeare scholars could consider that The Spanish Tragedy was a serious influence upon Hamlet. Popular as it was, The Spanish Tragedy is a dreadful play, hideously written and silly; common readers will determine this for themselves by starting to read it. They will not get much past the opening... (from Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, by Harold Bloom)
While critics often cite this play as the first Elizabethan revenge play, it struck me more as a complex work of propaganda that contained revenge as one of several elements. By setting the story in the enemy’s country, Kyd stoked his audience’s hatred of the Spanish and Portuguese. He flattered his audience by implying that such a tale of horror and blood could only happen in the land of their craven enemy. The audience could feel morally superior to those vicious monsters across the channel, and then smirk at beholding the satisfying consequences of Iberian vice: eternal torment on top of earthly bloodshed.
Next up, another play: R.U.R. [Rossum’s Universal Robots], by Karel Čapek.
Amazon links to works mentioned in this post.
The Spanish Tragedy, by Thomas Kyd (Norton Critical Editions)
Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, by Harold Bloom
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, by Harold Bloom
R.U.R. & War with the Newts, by Karel Čapek
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