The Spanish Tragedy (Historical Context)

Historical Context

The Revenge Play

After Kyd had shown the way with The Spanish Tragedy, the revenge play became extremely popular on the Elizabethan stage. John Marston's Antonio's Revenge, Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, and Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Hamlet are some of the most outstanding plays of this type.

The revenge play was adapted from the work of the Roman playwright Seneca (4 B.C. to A.D. 65). Seneca wrote nine tragedies, based on Greek models, but his plays were meant to be recited rather than performed on a stage. They consisted mainly of long speeches, and action was described rather than presented directly. Seneca's theme was revenge and retribution, and his subject matter was lurid; his plays feature crimes such as murder, incest, and adultery, and there is much blood, mutilation, and carnage. Ghosts appear frequently, and the plays end in a horrible catastrophe. Seneca emphasized that man was helpless to avert his tragic fate, but if he could meet it with stoic resolve he would in a sense remain undefeated.

Seneca's plays held great appeal all across Renaissance Europe. In England, the first original English tragedy based on Seneca's model was Gorboduc, by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, which was first performed in 1562. During the 1560s, many translations of Seneca's plays, and original plays based on Seneca, were written by university playwrights. Another Senecan revival occurred during the 1580s, in the work not only of Kyd but also of George Peele.

The Senecan basis of The Spanish Tragedy can be seen in Kyd's theme of murder and revenge, the presence of a ghost, and a bloody trail of events. At one point, Hieronimo even carries a copy of Seneca's play Agamemnon in his hand and quotes from it. But Kyd and his contemporaries made one important change to the Senecan tradition. In The Spanish Tragedy, typical Senecan horrors (the hanging and stabbing of Horatio, and Hieronimo's self-mutilation, for example) are shown directly on stage rather than being merely reported by a messenger. This appeared to satisfy the more crude instincts of an Elizabethan audience that regularly enjoyed such violent spectacles as public hangings and whippings, bear-baiting and the like. It also made for an exciting, action-packed spectacle.

The Elizabethan enthusiasm for revenge plays was for the most part a dramatic interest only. Although in these types of plays, revenge is presented as an honorable, even sacred duty (Hamlet, for example, never doubts his duty to avenge his murdered father), Elizabethan society did not sanction acts of private revenge. A murder committed to avenge the murder of a close relative was treated no differently in Elizabethan law than any other murder. The punishment for an avenger was the same as for the original murderer.

However, despite the insistence by the authorities, secular as well as religious, on the rule of law, family feuds did take place in Elizabethan England, and almost always took the form of the duel. There were other instances as well in which revenge, although officially condemned, might be countenanced. If a known murderer could not be brought to justice because of lack of evidence that could be presented in court, or if a man's high position in society enabled him to put himself above the law, the average Elizabethan might have had some sympathy and tolerance for an act of private revenge.