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.
Themes
The Complexities of Justice and Revenge
Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the source text’s depiction of violence, murder, self-harm, and death by suicide.
As the Knight Marshal, Hieronimo begins the play as a figure of traditional, state-sanctioned justice. He presides over Pedringano’s execution and receives petitions from subjects hoping he will intercede on their behalf with the king. Once Horatio is murdered, however, Hieronimo becomes increasingly disillusioned with the law, feeling compelled to take vengeance into his own hands. Through his dilemma, The Spanish Tragedy explores the complexities of justice and revenge.
Initially, after Horatio’s murder, Hieronimo decides to turn to the king for justice. Hieronimo believes in the justice system of the court; indeed, as Knight Marshal, he is an important part of it. Throughout the play, characters come to him with grievances because, as one petitioner puts it, “There is not any Advocate in Spain / That can prevail or will take half the pain / That he will, in pursuit of equity” (3.13.53-55). Hieronimo has a reputation for fairness and justice, making him well-liked by courtiers and commoners alike. However, his own faith in justice is shattered when he is repeatedly denied justice for Horatio’s death. At first, it is ambiguous whether or not the court even knows of the murder, as Hieronimo has concealed Horatio’s body and does not openly discuss his death. However, Balthazar and Cyprian’s exchange in Act III, Scene 14, shows that Horatio’s death is common knowledge and that the king is nevertheless slow to act.
His faith in the justice system shaken, Hieronimo describes the world as “no world, but mass of public wrongs / Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds” (3.2.3-4). He eventually decides that the only form of justice available to him is to take vengeance himself:
I’ll make a pickaxe of my poniard
And here surrender up my marshalship
For I’ll go marshal up the fiends in hell
To be avenged on you all for this (3.12.75-78).
Hieronimo’s revenge plot signals his shift from a Knight Marshal who upholds the traditional system of royal justice to a vigilante who will punish the wrongdoers directly himself. In staging a play that enables him to get his revenge in open sight of the court, Hieronimo asserts his right to vengeance even before the king, usurping the authority the king traditionally represents.
While the play presents Hieronimo’s mission as fueled by a genuine sense of righteousness, it is left ambiguous as to whether or not a personal vendetta can ever be true justice: Hieronimo’s bloodbath leaves many characters dead and the future of the kingdom in jeopardy. The ending thus suggests that a world without justice is one doomed to chaos and endless cycles of violence and retribution.
The Dangers of Deception
Dissimulation—the concealment of one’s true thoughts, feelings, or character—is integral to the plot of The Spanish Tragedy, as it shapes the characters’ schemes and drives the action forward. The Spanish court is a place filled with intrigue, and both the play’s antagonists and protagonists must embrace the dangers of deception to advance their aims.
The theme emerges early in the play with the deceitful behavior of Lorenzo, who manipulates events to his advantage. When Horatio is murdered, Lorenzo orchestrates a cover-up by silencing those who could expose the truth, such as Serberine, whom Lorenzo quickly has killed, and Pedringano, whom he misleads with false promises of a pardon before allowing his execution. This layering of deceit not only demonstrates Lorenzo’s skill in manipulating others but also highlights the pervasiveness of dissimulation in the court, where deception is used as a weapon to protect power and conceal guilt.
Deception is also integral to the subplot in the Portuguese court when Villuppo attempts to convince the viceroy that Balthazar is dead and that Alexandro killed him. When his dissimulation is exposed, Villuppo admits it was “not for Alexandro’s injuries, / But for reward and hope to be preferred, / Thus have I shamelessly hazarded his life” (3.1.94-96). Villuppo’s deceit reveals the dangerous consequences of using lies for personal gain, as he manipulates the viceroy’s grief to accuse an innocent man. Moreover, Villuppo’s dissimulation mirrors Lorenzo’s use of deceit to maintain power and eliminate threats: Villuppo falsely accuses Alexandro to gain favor, just as Lorenzo conspires to cover up Horatio’s murder and silence those who might expose the truth. In both cases, the characters’ lies and manipulation reflect a courtly world that has become deeply corrupt.
Hieronimo is initially a victim of this courtly culture of deception, as Lorenzo skillfully blocks his appeals for justice. However, he eventually embraces and weaponizes dissimulation himself to achieve his revenge:
Dissembling quiet in unquietness, …
Not seeming that I know their villainies
That my simplicity may make them think
That ignorantly I will let all slip (3.13.30-33).
He feigns friendship with Lorenzo and Balthazar to lure them into a false sense of security, all while plotting their downfall with Bel-Imperia’s help.
The play ends with an ultimate act of deception: Hieronimo’s production of his play, The Tragedy of Soliman and Perseda. Under the guise of a theatrical performance, he kills Lorenzo and Bel-Imperia kills Balthazar, turning the staged deaths into real ones. This moment blurs the boundaries between reality and illusion, showing how deeply deception has infiltrated not only the characters’ personal actions but also the very structure of the play itself.
The Effects of Grief and Loss
While The Spanish Tragedy is centered upon the nature of revenge, it also explores the effects of grief and loss upon the human psyche. Hieronimo and Bel-Imperia are driven to hatch their revenge plots not just out of a sense of justice, but out of a deep sense of loss, while Isabella finds herself unable to face a future without her son.
Hieronimo spends much of the play trying to cope with Horatio’s untimely death. He experiences grief as a type of “madness,” a state of overwhelming, erratic emotion that makes it difficult for him to function. While the play sometimes implies that Hieronimo uses his erratic behavior as a cover for his true intentions, other scenes explore the genuine nature of his private grief. When he meets the painter Bazardo in Act III and learns that Bazardo is also a bereaved father, he asks Bazardo whether grief ever makes him feel “mad”—an experience Bazardo confirms. Hieronimo then asks Bazardo to produce a series of paintings for him, one of which would feature Hieronimo as Priam of Troy:
Draw me like old Priam of Troy,
………………………………………
[…] Make me curse, make me rave, make me cry, make
me mad, make me well again, […]
[…] leave me in a trance (3.12A.146-150).
This moment of fellowship and connection between Hieronimo and Bazardo forms an important contrast to the relentless violence and dissimulation in the world of the play, drawing together the two characters through the shared experience of grief.
The two main female characters in the play, Bel-Imperia and Isabella, are also deeply marked by grief and loss. At the beginning of the play Bel-Imperia mourns the loss of Don Andrea, her beloved, and soon finds herself bereaved again after Lorenzo murders Horatio. Bel-Imperia’s grief tends to manifest more as anger and determination than emotional fragility: She helps drive the revenge plot by revealing Horatio’s murderers in a letter written in her own blood, and at the play’s end chooses to die by suicide after murdering Andrea’s killer. While Bel-Imperia is a young woman whose youth and royal status still offer her many opportunities, she regards her worldly fortune as immaterial in comparison to her loss. Similarly, Isabella can find no hope or purpose in life once Horatio has died. Haunted by the idea that justice may never be served, she attacks the bower where he died and dies by suicide.
The Spanish Tragedy thus juxtaposes a world of easy violence—filled with war and murder—with the consequences of that violence, emphasizing the profound effects of grief and loss that result. For Hieronimo, Bel-Imperia, and Isabella, grief and loss permanently alter their lives.
