Thomas Kyd's THE SPANISH TRAGEDY

focus of this set was on languages

The Spanish Tragedy dating and performance/publication details

Written between 1582 and 1592

Lord Strange’s Men staged a play which records call Jeronimo 23 Feb 1592 at The Rose fo Philip Henslowe - unclear if this was The Spanish Tragedy or The First Part of Hieronimo printed in 1604, anonymous prequel to Kyd’s play. The two plays staged as pairs in March and May 1597.
Performed on tour by english actors in germany in 1592.

WHat does The Spanish Tragedy chart in terms of the english vernacular

its affective power against extracts of latin, italian, spanish, and possibly Greek.

WHat are some key elements that indicate the importance of language in terms of identity making

its integral role in contemp projects of nation- and class-making through demarkating tangible differences between the english self watching and the spanish or portuguese other on whom the tragedy is enacted.

As TST establishes the fragility of social order and obliterates reciprocal understanding, what does it show national identity to be - Mazzio

“at once constituted and threatened by difference” 1998

Why is language so important to tragic affective power - Bevington et al

because 16th C stages lacked movable sets or sophisticated lighting - 2002.

How does Kyd mark Hieronimo’s descent into madness

anaphora - in his language!! Illogical pattern of negation = disengaging from institutions which structure his society.

A3S2 - ‘O eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears;/ O life, no life, but lively form of death;/ O world, no world, but mass of public wrongs … O sacred heavens’

Where else does Hieronimo use anaphora and what does this suggest it marks for him

idiosyncratic of strong emotional responses

recurs 3.7 as he curses Balthazar but here it is doubled, as each line starts with ‘Woe’ but also a fivefold ‘thy’ declaring the direction of his revenge.

Final speech also anaphoric - ‘Here’ 8x in 4.4. - emphasises extent to which grief has obliterated worldview.

WHat does Kyd’s use of anaphora reflect in terms of his sources - Bevington et al

the power in vernacular english to contrast the ‘pyrotechnic’ Senecan style. the verbal medium as the most economical mode to emphasise a moral or emotive shift in the theatre.

WHat else is language a clear indicator of and why is this significant for Hieronimo

Status

HIeronimo as a knight marshal - the king addresses him thus in 1.2 - but this position made meaningless as the King doesnt recognise Hieronimo when he entreats him for an audience - ‘who is he that interrupt our business?’ 3.12

Where does Hieronimo direct his judgement when he realises he cannot do so verbally or institutionally

“blood with blood” 3.6.35

How do Balthazar and Lorenzo demosntrate the undermining of language as a socially stratifying force - but then how is this reestablished

murdering Horatio in an arbor which desecrates a setting “made for pleasure” 2.5 into a parody of the gallows over which Hieronimo should preside.

But Heronimo reasserts his authority through violence - replacing realm of language with action.

if langauge asserts status, how does TST use language to demonstrate elite status

the use of a polyglossia - extracts of elite humanistic languages, italian, latin, spanish - commonplaces demonstrate elite learnedness for characters and for Kyd.

Latin = timelessness of sentiments and experiences of characters - emotion push these characters from the vernacular into a higher register. also notes of learned culture of commonplacing.

spanish and italian interrupting english = status and distance from england.

What does Castile quote when he affirms King’s victory?

Claudian - 1.2 = shows latin as a vehicle of authority

What is the General’s poetic polyptoton and what text does this suggest

pede pes et cuspide cuspis 1.2 - suggests resonance of virgilian epic

When and in what does Hieronimo speak in an extended latin digression and what does it recall

14-line latin digression on discovering Horatio - suggests lamenting pleas of grief from across classical lit incl Cat 101 and V describing Euryalus, Nisus, Lausus

Who else can speak in latin, signifying what

Bel-Imperia at 3.10 - elite status

How does Emanuel Stelzer analyse the Viceroy’s latin quasi-sepulchral epigram 1.3.15-17

(2024) emphasises double duty of these quotations as intra and extra diegetic signifiers.

First line aphorism of Alain de Lille, second adapts Sen Agamemnon 697-8, recalls Cassandra’s speech ‘nec si velint saevire, quo noceant habent/ Fortuna vires ipsa consumpsit suas, 3^rd read as original construction.

BUT Stelzer conjectures second and third line from neoLatin poem Ab Angelum Poetam by 15^th C humanist Tito Vespasiano Strozzi ‘In te consumpsit vireis fortuna nocendo/ Nil superset, ut iam possit obesse tibi’.

Syntactical simms make this attractive – plausible Kyd might have accessed Strozzi’s work reprinted and anthologised across Europe in 16^th C and mentioned in Geoffrey Whitney’s Choice of EMblemes 1586 and Francis Mere’s ‘Palladis Tamia’ 1598 – signal elite learnedness and identify engagement in classical and contemp intertextual worlds.

where does most of HIeronimo’s italian and latin occur and what is signif of this

excluding lament for horatio, majority in scenes leading up to dumbshow - foregrounds linguistic profusion of Solimon and Perseda - authoritative tongues of humanist education not just for highest echelons of soc.

who only speaks in english

lowest status characters Pedringano and Serberine - even in that they can’t unnderstand subtleties w which social superiors manipulate and betray them,

WHat is the main emotion HIeronimo expresses with his latin

vengeance - Vindicta mihi! 3.13 - infuses rage w spirit that underpins the violence of Clytemnestra (cf. Sen AGamemnon) and the devestation of Andromache (cf. Sen Troades) - ideas around role playing etc? sense of bloodiness w which Kyd might end trag. linguistic variation speak to audience status as well as character status.

Feretti - significance of Solimon and Perseda episode

2013 - ‘signif[ies] the final, broken meaning of language and action’ - feigned corpses actual murdered victims

What language does Hieronimo use to justify the linguistic profusion of the Solimon and Perseda epsiode, aligning it with ‘the fall of Babylon’ 4.1

same langauge Kyd’s contemporaries using as they debated the status of the vernacular = reproductive lexis - “that it may breed the more variety” 4.3

(Mazzio 1998)

What does this variety and confusion shadow and portray - West

the “incomprehensibility” of child loss (2009) - Hieronimo will influct on Castile and the Viceroy, and will culminate w onstage appearance of Horatio’s corpse.

what are the core debates around the Solimon and Perseda dumbshow

if it was performed in multiple languages or instead ventriloquises the book where the play is ‘set down in English more largely for the easier undertsanding to every public reader’ 4.4

What languages are spoken after the dumbshow

just english - it has suceeded in obliterating the linguistic authority from which characters indulged in latin and italian previously

What does the dumbshow cause in terms of character-audience relations

player-characters and audience-characters ironically ignorant to the intrusion of reality into the theatrical space - questions the meaning of acton and the constraints which contain the horrors of tragedy onstage

How does JR Mulryne read the biblical allusions made during the Solimon and Perseda episode?

1996 - suggests the confusing and chaotic butchery and the delayed realisation is contained for the english audience bc of the distance of the spanish and portuguese courts

Suggests the babylonic chaos suggests the antitype in the pentecostal clarification of language through the apostolic tongues of fire, ‘the fitting english comedy to complement implicitly the conclusion of the spanish tragedy’

resonance of the threat of dynastic marriage to the reality of 16th C political policy of spain and her occupation of Portugal

What do I think about Mulryne’s observation

relies on the fantastical presence of english comedy completely absent in such a lamentable close - esp considering Hieronimo’s autoamputation, the alliance between Spain and Portugal celebrated from earlier in the text is empty given the murder of each country’s successors - characters who all demonstrated multilingual abilities now only speak vernacular.

What does the fact the characters only speak english after the murders suggest about this ending

Not an assertion of englihs seperation and isolation from such horrors but a presentation of english as a survivor of a conglomeration fo european languages, a final witness to this ‘endless tragedy’

Mazzio - what does the english language emerge as and what does this say about england as a nation

1998 - ‘A grotesque conglomeration of alien elements’

As the language is vulnerable to foreign influences so too is the nation.

WHat does the closure of the play in a bitten out tongue and a writing knife made murder weapon suggest

tools of langauge meaningless against the potencyy of rage, acts as passive winesses to the ease w which nations can be decimated, much like audience themselves.

WHich characters in the play are the audience’s sympathies drawn towards

Andrea and Revenge - neither english nor alive.

What does enacting revenge through a dumbshow suggest about communication

if not in english, it would work literally like a dumbshow as it has no language - dumbshows are a compressed form of action, mirroring the eloquence of previous violence

Hieornimo as a playwright figure.

Enacting revenge through dumbshow is a deliberate act of non communication - and any eloquence after the death of sons is a pointless eloquence

what does hearing latin remind the audience of, besides status

the church and a pagan context.

obfuscation of catholics v plain speaking protestants and scripture in english.