The Spanish Tragedy

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Title page of the Quarto edition (1615)

The Spanish Tragedie: or, Hieronimo is Mad Againe is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1587-1590 and first performed in London around 1590.

Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy.Its plot contains several violent murders and includes as one of its characters a personification of Revenge. The Spanish Tragedy was often referenced (or parodied) in works written by other Elizabethan playwrights, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe. 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 lost Ur-Hamlet play that was one of Shakespeare's primary sources for Hamlet).

[edit] Plot (spoilers)

Before the play begins, the Viceroy of Portugal has rebelled against Spanish rule. A battle has taken place in which the Portuguese were defeated and their leader, the Viceroy's son Balthazar, captured; but the Spanish officer Andrea has been killed. His ghost and the spirit of Revenge serve as choruses to the play: at the beginning of each act they appear and Andrea bemoans his and his friends' wrongs, before being reassured by Revenge that their enemies will get their comeuppance. There is a subplot concerning the enmity of two Portuguese noblemen, one of whom attempts to convince the Viceroy that his rival has murdered the missing Balthazar.

The King's nephew Lorenzo and Andrea's best friend Horatio dispute over who captured Balthazar; the King gives him into Lorenzo's charge. Horatio comforts Lorenzo's sister, Bel-Imperia, who was in love with Andrea against her family's wishes; despite her former feelings for Andrea, Bel-Imperia soon falls for Horatio.

Balthazar, however, has meanwhile fallen for Bel-Imperia. The royal family concludes that their marriage would be an excellent way to repair the peace with Portugal. Horatio's father, the Marshall Hieronimo, stages an entertainment for the Portuguese ambassador; Lorenzo, suspecting that Bel-Imperia has found a new lover, bribes her servant Pedringano and discovers that Horatio is the man. He persuades Balthazar to help him murder Horatio during an assignation with Bel-Imperia; Hieronimo and his wife Isabella find the body and Isabella is driven mad.

Lorenzo locks Bel-Imperia away, but she succeeds in sending Hieronimo a letter written in her blood, informing him that Lorenzo and Balthazar were Horatio's murderers. His questions and attempts to see Bel-Imperia convince Lorenzo that he knows something; afraid that Balthazar's servant Serberine has betrayed the plot, Lorenzo convinces Pedringano to murder him, then arranges for Pedringano's arrest in the hope of silencing him too. Hieronimo, appointed judge, sentences Pedringano to death; Pedringano expects Lorenzo to procure his pardon, but when none comes he writes a letter which the hangman delivers to Hieronimo after the execution, confirming Bel-Imperia's story.

Isabella kills herself and Hieronimo appears mad or very nearly so, but eventually he and Bel-Imperia feign reconciliation with the murderers and plan to put on a play together, Soliman and Perseda. Under cover of the play they stab Lorenzo and Balthazar to death in front of the King, Viceroy, and Duke of Castile (Lorenzo and Bel-Imperia's father); Bel-Imperia kills herself, and Hieronimo tells the whole story before stabbing the Duke. He then bites out his own tongue to prevent himself from talking under torture, although what more he has to reveal is not explained. Andrea and Revenge are satisfied.