The Spanish Tragedy Madness Quotes

This may sound more like depression than madness, but the ruler of a nation throwing himself on the ground in despair would register as mental instability to Elizabethans. Try to picture our President crying on the floor. You'd probably conclude that he was having issues, right?

And we know these issues are all in the Viceroy's head. He's freaking out because he thinks his son is dead. But there is zero evidence that his son is even hurt. One of his most trusted advisors even said there's more reasons to think his son is alive rather than dead. Of course the advisor's audacious positivity almost gets him killed, which is our first hint that the play takes place in a mad, mad world where being crazy is the safest bet.

It's like Alice in Wonderland, where the one sane person among a bunch of crazies begins to think she's the one losing her mind. The point of the video is to show that a crazy queen (or king) means a crazy system for everyone else. And the above quote lets us know that we've gone through the looking glass.

So the first part of this passage says something like, "the cloudy day looks like how I feel inside." And, "my dreams drive me to look for the murderer." But try and figure out what the rest is saying. Not gonna happen, right? It's more a disjointed list than rational thought. Perhaps this is the language of emerging insanity?

Michel Foucault (major philosopher dude) thought and wrote a lot about crazy talk in the late 60s. He even made an attempt to write about madness by using the language of the insane. But he soon realized he couldn't rely on "those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was originally made." That's philosophy talk for, "If I write in crazy talk nobody will know what I'm saying." Well, maybe Kyd's trying the same thing here. If you need to make someone sound crazy, you have to use stammered, imperfect words. We're trying to say that Hieronimo might be losing his grip here. Interested in the philosophy of crazy? Read Foucault's Madness and Civilization.

The 16th century happened long before the invention of modern psychology. But here we get Isabella straining for a cure for her mental unease. She's talking to her nurse about how there's medicine to cure eye infections and even headaches, but none to cure a broken heart. Of course we now know that mental instability doesn't happen in the heart, but Renaissance medicine had yet to locate mental disease.

In fact, it's even remarkable that Isabella expresses her mental unraveling as a disease that needs a cure. She thinks of her madness as a kind of death that needs a cure, but alas, she's the first to realize that there is no cure for the tragic loss of a son. The play charts Isabella's and Hieronimo's mental instability in a way that allows us to ponder the differences and similarities in their respective nervous breakdowns. Isabella tends to act out inwardly while Hieronimo vents outwardly. What does this say about femininity and masculinity in the period?

Isabella is clearly freaking out her maid with her lunatic behavior. But Isabella responds that her insanity gives her a kind of special vision that allows her to see all the way to Heaven. Some might call this hallucination. But others might say insanity grants privileged vision—or at least that's what Isabella is trying to say. She insists that she can see her son sitting among angels who dance around his newly healed wounds.

Is insanity a means to cushion humans from overwhelming trauma? Does insanity provide a higher perspective from which to view an unjust world? Kyd leaves these questions up to you. But to be sure, Isabella's movements are limited in the play as a woman. Nevertheless she has found access to other places, even if that access is a product of insanity. When Shakespeare writes Hamlet, he uses Ophelia to portray feminine insanity in much the same way: she's also wisely disjointed. In fact, there seem to be a lot of connections between Isabella and Ophelia—dig deeper into this and your teachers will think you have special insight.

Wow. What's so funny? Why all the laughing? Well, First Portuguese (great name) is laughing because he simply asked Hieronimo where he could find Lorenzo. And let's just say that Hieronimo's answer came off a bit extreme. Hieronimo took the long road to essentially say, "You'll find him in Hell!" And not understanding the context of Hieronimo's rage leads the Portuguese pals to conclude that Hieronimo is mad.

But is he? We're never quite sure. And maybe that's the point. Maybe madness is sometimes just a matter of speaking out of context. Or, at least that's what this passage might suggest. As the audience, we know exactly what Hieronimo is talking about, so he really doesn't come off that crazy. But to the rest of the world, he's off his rocker. We know that Isabella believes her nervous breakdown grants her special wisdom. Could Kyd be exploring how what sounds crazy is often just outlaw speech? Is Hieronimo's madness a necessary part of rebelling against the corrupt powers that be? We smell some ideas for a good paper.

Hieronimo finally gets his chance to tell the King that Lorenzo killed Horatio, and instead of getting his attention with reason, he rants and raves and tries to dig a hole to Hell with his dagger. This of course plays right into the hands of Lorenzo, who physically blocks Hieronimo's path to the King while also misleading his uncle to believe that Hieronimo is merely complaining about not getting paid.

It's a blown moment for justice-seeking Hieronimo, but one that brings back the question of how someone sounding crazy can just be a product of another person listening out of context. Which is to say, if the king thinks Hieronimo is digging manically in the ground because of a late paycheck, there's a whole lot of crazy going on. But if you know (like we and Lorenzo do) that Hieronimo is complaining about his murdered son, the grieving father's actions become more justifiable. What do you do with all this? Well, that's up to you. But think about this: if everybody acts crazy (or corrupt) then the only sane (or just) person is going to look nuts.

Hieronimo says he's not going to just up and start slaughtering his enemies—that would be crude. Instead, "wise men" act in cautious secrecy. So how will he act in secrecy? By acting crazy, that's how. That's what he means when he says he will "rest […] in unrest" and dissemble "quiet in unquietness." To dissemble is to lie, so he will conceal his secretly deliberate plans by acting all kinds of manic.

You're right. It is a strange strategy to act loopy so nobody will suspect you're up to something. But Hieronimo figures that people won't expect an elaborate plan from someone who comes off as mentally incapacitated.

But wait. This is the first time Hieronimo tells the audience that he's going to act crazy on purpose. Hasn't he already been acting crazy? This begs the question: which came first, his mental unraveling or his plan to look unraveled? It's a chicken and the egg kind of conundrum. And since The Spanish Tragedy is a veritable omelet of crazy, it's a tough question to unscramble. Shmoop has provided his craziness (or supposed craziness) quote by quote, so we'll let you play the armchair psychoanalyst.

Maybe this is more curious than crazy, but, we can probably agree that you have to be at least disturbed to bite off your own tongue. The curious part? Well, Hieronimo has already told everything he had to say. In fact, he gives a long and detailed speech (79 lines, to be precise) that retells his entire story. So what's the one thing he "vowed inviolate?" Which is to say, the one thing he would never speak. We never find out. Is there a secret? Is this a heroic gesture of defiance? Or is he just plain crazy at this point? It's hard to say there's a secret without any textual evidence. But the other options are up for debate. So, go to it. Just keep in mind that getting justice in a corrupt realm is maddening. Whether maddening turns to crazy or he bites off his own tongue to spite his enemies, there's definitely a blurry line between insanity and revenge in The Spanish Tragedy.