The Spanish Tragedy

by Thomas Kyd, Clara Calvo (Editor), Suzanne Gossett (Editor), Jesus Tronch (Editor), Gordon McMullan (Editor)

Overview

A major new edition of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy,an outstanding landmark of Elizabethan drama. In its time, it quickly became a box office success and probably inspired Shakespeare to write Hamlet, as it contains a ghost, murders that demand revenge and a hero that hesitates and contemplates suicide. As a revenge tragedy, it set up the salient features of a dramatic genre that would last decades. Its hero, the aged Marshall of Spain Hieronimo, whose son is murdered at night, soon transcended the play and became the standard stage representation of grief, rhetorical passion and madness. Hieronimo's main antagonist is one of the first Machiavellian characters of English drama.

This edition explores the play in relation to its historical context and contemporary Iberian dynastic policy. It also relates the play, as a literary artefact, to other artistic manifestations of the European Renaissance and offers a fresh assessment of the play's stage history. For the first time in the play's textual history, this edition presents an integrated text inviting a reading of the play as it was published both in 1592 and in 1602.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408129982
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/14/2013
Series:	Arden Early Modern Drama Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Thomas Kyd (1558-94) was an English playwright, about whose life and works little is now known. Kyd was a contemporary of Spenser and a friend of Marlowe. He was criticized by the court poets for his lack of formal education but enjoyed great popularity as a dramatist. None of his early work having survived, he is chiefly remembered for The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1589), the first English revenge tragedy. This violent and bloody play proved extremely popular and was revived after the Restoration in a production remarked upon by Samuel Pepys. Its influence can be seen in English tragedy throughout the 17th century, most notably in Shakespeare's Hamlet, which employs not only the revenge theme but also the use of a play-within-a-play to reveal the identity of the murderer. Largely because of this, Kyd has often been suggested as the most likely author of the so-called 'ur-Hamlet' (c. 1594), a lost play that is known to have supplied many of the basic plot elements of Shakespeare's masterpiece. In recent years much attention has been paid to Kyd's possible role in the events leading to the death of his friend Christopher Marlowe. In May 1593 Kyd was arrested for possession of a 'heretical' treatise denying the divinity of Christ. Under severe torture he stated that the document had been given him by Marlowe, a noted freethinker who seems to have been the authorities' real target. Kyd's evidence led to an arrest warrant being issued against Marlowe, who was killed in murky circumstances a few weeks later. Kyd himself never recovered from his treatment in prison and died the following year.

Suzanne Gossett (Ph.D. Princeton) is Professor Emerita of English at Loyola University Chicago. She is a General Editor of Arden Early Modern Drama and has recently served as president of the Shakespeare Association of America.

Gordon McMullan is a professor of English at King's College London, UK.

John Jowett is Emeritus Professor at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Thomas Kyd: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

The Spanish Tragedy

Appendix A: Additional Passages of 1602

Appendix B: Documents in the Life of Thomas Kyd

1. From Richard Mulcaster, Positions (1581)
2. Letter from Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council (11 May 1593)
3. Thomas Kyd, Two Letters to Sir John Puckering (1593)
4. Thomas Kyd, Dedication to Robert Garnier’s Cornelia (1594)

Appendix C: The Question of Revenge

1. From the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans
2. From Seneca, Thyestes (first century CE)
3. From “A Sermon against Contention and Brawling” (1547)
4. From Richard Jones, The Book of Honor and Arms (1590)
5. From William Westerman, Two Sermons of Assize (1600)
6. From Ben Jonson, Introduction to Bartholomew Fair (1614)
7. Sir Francis Bacon, “Of Revenge” (1625)

Appendix D: Violence and Entertainment in Elizabethan England

1. From Robert Langham, A Letter (1575)
2. From William Harrison, Description of England (1586)
3. From Philip Stubbes, The Anatomy of Abuses (1595)
4. John Norden, Map of London (1593)
5. The Triple Tree at Tyburn

Appendix E: The Social Construction of Women at Court

1. From Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1528)
2. From Juan Luis Vives, Instruction of Christian Women (1529)
3. Queen Elizabeth’s Armada Speech to the Troops at Tilbury (9 August 1588)
4. Lady Arbella Stuart, Letter to King James (c. December 1610)
5. From Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam (1613)

Appendix F: Spain in Elizabethan Culture

1. From Richard Hakluyt, A Discourse on Western Planting (1584)
2. From A Fig for the Spaniard (1591)
3. From Sir Walter Raleigh, A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Iles of Azores (1591)

Works Cited and Further Reading

Editorial Reviews

The Spanish Tragedy has a long stage history which Calvo and Tronch summarize concisely [in this book]. Professional performances up to 2010 are documented, but amateur performances, often ignored by critics, are also shown to yield interesting insights.” —The Year's Work in English Studies

“A well-thought-out contribution to the study of Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, and its underlying themes of cultural representation, power relations, afterlife studies, early modern international relations, and historical context analysis.” —H-Nationalism

From the Publisher