Literary Devices in The Spanish Tragedy
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
The Underworld and the Royal courts of Spain and Portugal Our tragedy bounces back-and-forth between Spain and Portugal, but the most far-flung region explored is the pagan underworld. Despite the...
Genre
The Spanish Tragedy is a drama. You know, a story composed for theatrical performance. We good with that? Awesome. TragedyBut it's also a tragedy. A tragedy is a dead serious work that follows the...
Tone
If you like big talk, you'll love The Spanish Tragedy. When characters speak, they don't mess around. For example, check out the first line of the play: "When this eternal substance of my soul/ Did...
Writing Style
The Spanish Tragedy is a blank verse tragedy, with rhymed verse and prose thrown into the mix. Kyd also uses conventions borrowed from classical drama to move his plot ahead and tie his original wo...
What's Up With the Title?
The smart alecky response to this question is: The Spanish Tragedy is a tragedy largely set in Spain. But, we'd be remiss not to mention that the play originally had a longer title, which is The Sp...
What's Up With the Ending?
First things first. It's a tragedy, meaning that there pretty much had to be mass death at the end of the play. So from the beginning, Kyd's original audience would've known that Hieronimo had to d...
Tough-o-Meter
The hardest part of this play is that it's written in Renaissance English—you know, "thou art a villain!" and "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" kinda stuff. But, with a dictionary in han...
Plot Analysis
Let the Killing Begin Don Andrea, a heroic young Spaniard, is killed in a battle against Portuguese forces. Had he been killed fairly in battle, he would have not passed go on his way to peaceful r...
Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis
The Spanish Tragedy is like a total rebel, dude. It's like, "I don't know who this Booker guy is, but he's not the boss of me." Which is to say, the play does not neatly conform to any of Booker's...
Three-Act Plot Analysis
Don Andrea is unjustly murdered by Prince Balthazar, after which Balthazar finds an ally in Lorenzo as he romantically pursues Andrea's former lover, Bel-Imperia. Horatio becomes Bel-Imperia's love...
Trivia
Kyd had his run-ins with the law. And he might've even been a dirty rat (you know, a snitch). After government authorities found some heretical books (works that denied God) in his apartment, Kyd w...
Steaminess Rating
In terms of steamy romance, we don't get much. There's a bit of smooching in a private garden, but that love scene is more poetic than physical. There are some naughty puns in the text, but you'd h...
Allusions
Virgil, Book 6 of the Aeneid (1.1.82-83) and Book 4 (4.5.10) Seneca, Agamemnon (3.1.1-11, 3.13.6)Seneca, Troades (3.13.12-13)Lucan, Pharsalia (3.13.19) Seneca, Oedipus (3.13.35)Commedia Dell'arte (...