63 pages • 2 hours read
Thomas KydThe Spanish Tragedy
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1587A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Hieronimo’s Bower
Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the source text’s depiction of violence, murder, self-harm, and death by suicide.
In Hieronimo’s garden is a bower, a pleasant area enclosed by trees and vines. Typically, this would be a place for recreation—as Hieronimo says, upon finding Horatio’s corpse hanged in the tree, “This place was made for pleasure, not for death” (2.5.12). However, Lorenzo and Balthazar turn the bower into a crime scene, subverting its normal connotation and transforming it into a symbol of death, corruption, and lost innocence.
When Lorenzo and Balthazar kill Horatio, Lorenzo inverts the language of growth and reproduction usually associated with gardens, saying, “Aye, thus, and thus: these are the fruits of love” (2.4.56) as he stabs him. In addition to demonstrating Lorenzo’s cruelty, his line is a morbid joke: Horatio hangs from a tree like a fruit, and “Although his life were still ambitious-proud / Yet is he at the highest now he is dead” (2.4.60-61). While he eclipsed Lorenzo in honor and feats of arms while he lived, in death, he is physically higher up than he has ever been.
Horatio’s grotesque murder perverts the meaning of the garden for Hieronimo and Isabella. Hieronimo reflects on how he carefully raised the tree itself:
This was the tree; I set it of a kernel:
And when our hot Spain could not let it grow,
But that the infant and the human sap
Began to wither, duly twice a morning
Would I be sprinkling it with fountain-water.
At last it grew, and grew, and bore, and bore,
Til at length
It grew a gallows, and did bear our sonne,
It bore thy fruit and mine: oh wicked, wicked plant (3.12A.63-71).
The tree’s transformation from a nurtured plant to a tool for execution mirrors Hieronimo’s despair and sense of betrayal by the natural world itself. The care he devoted to raising the tree parallels the care he invested in raising his son, and now that tree has become a symbol of his son’s untimely death. The garden, which once embodied growth, hope, and life, is now a place where the family’s future has been violently cut down.
Hieronimo’s repeated returns to the bower reflect his struggle to come to terms with the enormity of his loss. Similarly, Isabella’s grief manifests in the destruction of the garden. Her actions underscore the emotional devastation brought on by the murder, as the natural beauty of the garden becomes a cruel reminder of her lost son. By physically dismantling the garden, she attempts to purge the place of its painful associations.
Silence
Silence is a motif in The Spanish Tragedy which underscores the broader themes of justice and deception. Whether it represents the silence of the law, the silence of the night appearing to sanction murder, or the silence of trauma inhibiting the expression of grief, silence often marks moments of unspoken grief or unresolved injustice, highlighting the limits of language in expressing or achieving justice.
For Hieronimo, silence becomes a means of both internal struggle and strategic manipulation. His initial inability to speak about Horatio’s murder and openly seek justice mirrors his emotional turmoil and the societal constraints that silence his calls for retribution. In this sense, silence symbolizes his powerless state within the corrupt legal system, as well as the broader injustices that permeate the play. However, at the climax of the play, Hieronimo weaponizes silence to torment his persecutors. When he refuses to explain his motives in killing Lorenzo and Balthazar, Hieronimo and the king have the following exchange:
KING. Why speakest thou not?
HIERONIMO. What lesser liberty can kings afford
Than harmless silence? then afford it me.
Sufficeth, I may not, nor I will not tell thee (4.4.178-181).
His refusal to answer for his crimes puts Hieronimo in control of the situation. This reflects the court’s silence on the death of Horatio—the silence of justice itself. Silence is Hieronimo’s final means of asserting his agency and willpower, literally biting out his own tongue and dying by suicide to maintain this silence.
Silence also plays a role in heightening dramatic tension and foreshadowing violence. Characters such as Bel-Imperia and Hieronimo experience enforced silence, either through external forces or by choice, which underscores the sense of oppression and secrecy surrounding Horatio’s murder. For example, Bel-Imperia is one of the only witnesses to Horatio’s murder. Lorenzo silences Pedringano and Serberine by orchestrating their deaths. He cannot kill Bel-Imperia because she is too important to Lorenzo’s plans. Additionally, moments of silence punctuate the play’s climactic scenes, such as during the staged play-within-the-play, where the true revenge is revealed not through dialogue, but through violent action. In this way, silence becomes a paradoxical force in The Spanish Tragedy—it represents both powerlessness and agency, despair and calculated vengeance, underscoring the play’s exploration of the complexities of justice, grief, and dissimulation.
Theatricality
Acting and theatricality form a prominent motif throughout The Spanish Tragedy. In addition to emphasizing the roles the characters play due to their occupations and stations in life, dumb shows (silent, dramatic pieces) and masques (a form of courtly entertainment) serve a didactic role, reinforcing key themes throughout the play.
One of Hieronimo’s chief duties as knight marshal is providing entertainment for the court. On the day of the Portuguese Ambassador’s arrival, he arranges a series of three short masques depicting times when England conquered Portugal and Spain. Hieronimo’s clever selection of plays is designed to both please the king and the ambassador, helping to smooth over relations between Spain and Portugal. His success will later clear the way for his revenge, when he is once again asked to stage a play to honor the upcoming wedding.
Hieronimo is not the only character who uses theatricality for didactic means. In Act III, Scene 15, Andrea, frustrated with Revenge’s apparent inaction, wakes the spirit, who has been slumbering. Andrea is then treated to a mysterious progression of spirits performing a masque. Revenge explains the scene to Andrea:
The two first [spirits], the nuptial torches bore
As brightly burning as the mid-day’s sun
But after them doth Hymen hie as fast
Clothed in Sable and a Saffron robe
And blows them out, and quencheth them with blood
As discontent that things continue so (III.15.28-33).
Hymen, a god usually associated with the happiness of marriage ceremonies, becomes a harbinger of death during a wedding ceremony, directly foreshadowing the bloodbath of Balthazar and Bel-Imperia’s wedding day.
In addition, the scene foreshadows the fact that Hieronimo will use a play-within-the-play as his vehicle for revenge. This plot proves to be the perfect cover for his true intentions. The plot of The Tragedy of Soliman and Perseda demands that each of the characters die a violent death, and the roles of Soliman and Perseda, the ones who actually do the killing, fall to Hieronimo and Bel-Imperia respectively. Thus, due to the plot of the play, Hieronimo (the bashaw) kills Lorenzo (Erastus), while Bel-Imperia (Perseda) kills Balthazar (Soliman). Hieronimo is finally able to dispense justice upon his son’s killer, while Bel-Imperia reclaims the agency she has been denied by killing the man responsible for Andrea’s death.
