Thomas Kyd

The Spanish Tragedy became one of the most successful plays on the Elizabethan English stage and laid the foundation of the revenge tragedy, a genre that playwrights returned to throughout the early modern era and that endures even today. The story surrounds the civil servant Hieronimo who joins Bel-imperia of the royal family to take revenge on her own brother for murdering Hieronimo's son, the object of her affection. The work goes far beyond a story of intrigue and brings up questions about aristocratic privilege, the moral hazards of revenge, the spectacle of violence, and the agency of women at court. This Broadview Edition includes a freshly edited text based on the 1592 edition, notes designed to help first-time readers understand and enjoy the work, an extensive introduction that situates the play in its literary and historical context, and extensive historical documents. The documents open up avenues of inquiry for students interested in the life and work of Thomas Kyd, the construction of women at court, the question of revenge, violence and entertainment in Elizabethan England, and Spain in the Elizabethan imagination.

Francis Bacon described revenge as a ‘kind of wild justice’. Then as now, early modern playwrights and their theatre-going public were fascinated by the anarchic energies that a desire for retribution unleashes. Rather than rehearsing familiar conventions, each of these plays presents a unique social and cultural milieu where dark fantasies of revenge are variously played out. In Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy a grieving father seeks public justice for the murder of his son by envious princelings. When his attempts are thwarted he turns a court spectacle of murder into the ‘real’ thing. Blackly comic in its tone and style, The Revenger’s Tragedy (anon.) presents vengeance as mimetic art, witty and cruel. Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore represents an innovative re-working of the genre as a brother’s love for his sister leads to his spectacular revenge on his rival, her husband, in a society in which brutal retaliation for perceived wrong is the norm. In Webster’s The White Devil crimes of passion ignite revenge in the courts of the Italian city states. This student edition contains fully annotated, modernized texts of each play together with an introduction discussing the dramatic and poetic style of each play, focusing on its action and play of ideas.

The freshly edited and annotated text comes with a full introduction and illustrative materials intended for student readers. The Spanish Tragedy was well known to sixteenth-century audiences, and its central elements—a play-within-a-play and a ghost bent on revenge—are widely believed to have influenced Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This volume includes a generous selection of supporting materials, among them Kyd’s likely sources (Virgil, Jacques Yver, and the anonymous “The Earl of Leicester Betrays His Own Servant”), Thomas Nashe’s satiric criticism of Kyd, Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon on revenge, and “The Ballad of The Spanish Tragedy,” which suggests the play’s initial reception. “Criticism” is thematically organized to provide readers with a clear sense of the play’s major themes. Contributors include Michael Hattaway, Jonas A. Barish, Donna B. Hamilton, G. K. Hunter, Lorna Hutson, Molly Smith, J. R. Mulryne, T. McAlindon, and Andrew Sofer. A Selected Bibliography is also included.

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.

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.

Before Hamlet, there was The Spanish Tragedy-a dark and bloody tale of revenge that helped shape the entire genre of Elizabethan drama. Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy was a sensation in its time and inspired playwrights like William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe. With ghosts, madness, and murder, it laid the groundwork for some of the most iconic tragedies in English literature. But centuries of archaic language have made this once-popular play hard to follow for today's readers. That's where this edition comes in. The Spanish Tragedy In Plain and Simple English offers a modern retelling of the full play, so readers can experience all the intrigue, vengeance, and emotion-without struggling to understand the words. Whether you're a student, a theater lover, or just exploring the roots of English drama, this version makes Kyd's classic readable, engaging, and unforgettable.

The first fully-fledged example of a revenge tragedy, the genre that became so influential in later Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, The Spanish Tragedy (1589) occupies a very special place in the history of English Renaissance drama. Hieronimo, Knight-Marshal of Spain during its war with Portugal, fails to obtain justice when his son is murdered for courting Bel-Imperia, the Duke of Castile's daughter, and decides to take justice into his own hands... This new student edition has been freshly revised by Professor Andrew Gurr to incorporate the latest stage history and critical interpretations of the play. It also appends the scenes that were added in 1602, discusses Elizabethan attitudes to revenge, the Senecan features of the play and the significance of the Anglo-Spanish conflict in the 1580s.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price A ghoulish and bloody 16th-century tragedy. The ghost of a murdered courtier is promised by Revenge that he will see his murderer killed by his mistress. The two ghostly figures sit down to watch the violent proceedings. Thomas Kyd's play The Spanish Tragedy is credited with establishing a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. This edition of the play in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series includes an introduction by Simon Trussler.