The Spanish Tragedy Memory and the Past Quotes

Did you know that Moby Dick starts with the classically famous line, "Call me Ishmael."? But what if it started like this: "When I was alive, they called me Ishmael."? Yeah, we just mangled one of the most important lines in literature, but we do so to make a point.

Our first point is to get you thinking about why a dead guy speaks the first words of the drama. From the start, the play obviously wants to get you thinking about memory and the past. And in this play the past is a living and almost breathing force that leads characters to lose their minds, kill other characters, and commit suicide. So we might begin to ask ourselves if there's a better way for characters to process memories. As moderns we could always go to therapy. But what are the options for the characters in the play? Does everything go wrong because of a corrupt legal system? Or is human memory in its most raw form inherently dangerous?

This passage is a tough read, so allow us to Shmoop it up a bit. Here we get the ghost of Andrea describing a recalled conversation between the underworld dudes who try and decide where he should go in the afterlife. The first dude, Minos, makes the point that Andrea lived and died for love. And then the next dude, Aeacus, hears his point and says something like, "then let him eternally reside with lovers for his afterlife." But then the awesomely named Rhadamanth counters that Andrea died a warrior, making it unseemly for him to live forever with lovers.

Quite the quandary, right? And they never solve this problem. Which leaves us to consider how the memory of life should live in eternity. All of this informs us to take a closer look at revenge in a play where memories of crimes spur characters to pursue violently fitting punishments. If the dudes from the underworld can't figure all this out, how can we expect humans to rightly handle the task. If revenge is about satisfying bad memories, expect the outcome to be messy.

Here we get a Spanish general telling his king how Horatio beat the Portuguese prince off his horse. (Or does he? More on that in a second.) This memorial reconstruction is important because later in the scene we get an entirely different account from Lorenzo, who claims that he deserves final credit for downing Balthazar. Sure, Lorenzo is a liar, killer, and jerk. But memory can be a crazy thing, right?

For example, maybe the general has some memory issues. Ever heard of "the fog of war?" Conspiracy theorists and close readers will notice that the general uses passive voice while describing the final outcome (you know, that thing your teachers are always warning you about). Take a look: "But straight the Prince was beaten from his horse." Kyd's grammar teacher would suggest changing the line to read, "But straight Horatio beat the prince from his horse." But doing this would take the delicious ambiguity out of the sentence. All this leaves open the possibility that Lorenzo did intervene to take down Balthazar. And then a careful reader might start doubting all memorial accounts in the play. Or start doubting human memory altogether. But none of us read that suspiciously, do we?

There's a lot going on here. And it's all about memory. Here's the boiled down version of this exchange: Horatio gave Andrea a funeral from which he took one of his friend's scarves to remember him by. Bel-Imperia recognizes that she gave Andrea the same scarf for him to remember her by. Bel-Imperia changes the meaning of the scarf so that it now reminds Horatio of both her and Andrea.

See how memories can change given new circumstances? A love token is supposed to stand for one love for all time, but this love token quickly changes to serve a multiplicity of loves—and all this in the space of just a few lines. What does this say about how humans manipulate memory? And manipulate love? The ghost is meant to make memory present so that justice can be served. But does this fail? We'll leave that up to you, but keep in mind that Hieronimo will find this scarf, smear it with blood, and use it as motivation to kill a lot of characters. But let's talk more about this versatile hanky while looking over the next quote.

Yes, we've already talked about this quote in the "Revenge" theme section. But at the time we were only talking about revenge. And this is one of the most important quotes on memory, too. Speaking of memory, you already know that this hanky was formerly a love token. And a love token for three different loves, no less. So how does a love token turn into inspiration for a killing spree?

Well, maybe love has something to do with it (sorry, Tina Turner). It's Hieronimo's love for his son that motivates him to seek revenge. And Kyd brilliantly symbolizes love gone violent in the metamorphosis of the scarf. Maybe the play wants us to think about how violence self-perpetuates itself through two fundamental human capacities: love and memory. You know that old saying, "An eye for an eye will leave everyone blind?" Well, it's love and memory that keeps that cycle going in The Spanish Tragedy. But technically speaking, this cycle would inevitably leave one guy with one eye left—so not everyone would be blind. Go ahead, think it through.

Hieronimo is having bad dreams about his son's bleeding wounds. He did make an oath to never forget them, so here his very dreams are helping him to keep that oath. And to show that this memory goes beyond Hieronimo, we also get the image of the "cloudy day" recording the memory of Horatio's murder. It's as if the cosmos records memories that need to be sorted out on earth.

Sure, there's some truth to this cosmos theory, otherwise the underworld would not have sent Andrea back to the living to oversee the revenge process. But is a higher order really calling for violent revenge? Or does the play suggest that bad memories inspire the worst in us? This is the biggest question of the play. And you love tackling big questions, right?

Hieronimo is both Spain's highest judge and a murderous vigilante. How's that for conflict? In this moment, Hieronimo is reminded of his vigilantism while executing government-sanctioned justice. The real juicy part is that Hieronimo is unwittingly putting one of his son's murderers to death. So he doesn't even know that he just legally got justice for his son. It's heavily ironic that the memory of avenging Horatio's murder pops up while he unknowingly kills one of the murderers.

What does this irony say about the relationship between justice and revenge? Is it hauntingly arbitrary? Are we supposed to think of justice and revenge as one and the same? Or is the irony present to remind us that revenge is an unknowing, destructive force. Good luck with all that.

Memory is also about forgetting. And here Bel-Imperia questions how Hieronimo could have forgotten the letter she sent him. After all, the letter tells Hieronimo who's behind the murder (and it was written in blood). While Hieronimo hasn't exactly forgotten the letter, he doesn't put enough trust in it either.

Maybe this is all about the unreliability of the written word when it comes to recollection and motivation. Hieronimo is consistently motivated by his own memories, but Bel-Imperia's written recollection does little to move him. It's as if there's something visceral and even palpable about personal memory that cannot be translated to text. Bloody or not, the letter doesn't accomplish much. So, um, what does this say about the bloody play we're studying? Can a play really change us? Or is personal experience the only way to truly learn? Maybe you should play it safe by both reading and living as much as you can.

History is just another form of memory, right? And here Bel-Imperia warns Hieronimo about becoming a bad historical example for forgetting his duties as an avenger. She makes the point that she can't forget Horatio's death even though she's really a stranger to him in comparison with his father. This passage reminds us that there are multiple forms of memory competing in the play: the memory of a father's love for his son, the memory of a murdered lover, the memory of a lost friend, how memory lives on in the afterlife, and the way that recorded history will remember our actions. Revenge is complicated, and The Spanish Tragedy explores how all these memories are impossible to reconcile on the vexed path of revenge.

Consider this a memorial pep talk. Hieronimo is just about to kill his enemies, and he uses these bad memories as a rallying cry. It's worth noting that he speaks to himself in the third person. Does speaking to himself as if he's another person mean he's egotistical? Probably not. It's more likely the kind of third person speak we use when trying to pump ourselves up to achieve at something, like this: C'mon Shmoop, let's write the best study guide ever on The Spanish Tragedy.

But because so much of this is about memory, maybe he's talking about himself from outside himself because he knows he's about to die. Remember how the ghost talks about himself in the past tense? Maybe the same thing is going on here. That is, Hieronimo knows he's essentially already a memory and all that's left is his violent act and its subsequent history. After all, as readers we are the final judges of his acts. And given all the details of the play, it'll take both our acute memories and sensitive judgment to render just verdicts.

Like we discussed before, the afterlife is the final memory of life. And as the initial victim of the play, Andrea (himself a ghost and memory) gets to decide how his enemies' memories will live on in the afterlife. Interestingly, Andrea has his enemies take on the torturous duties of the most famous inhabitants of hell: Tityus, Ixion, Chimera, and Sisyphus. We don't have time to get into all these mythological villains, but let's just say they're all forced to do horrible tasks for eternity. Sisyphus's eternity looks like this.

So why does Andrea suggest that his enemies should take the place of these eternal damnables? Andrea is essentially forgiving these old school bad guys so that the new bad guys can take their place. Does this mean that the flipside of condemning is forgiving? Is there a secret message that suggests that forgiveness is the only way to purge bad memories? The play leaves all of this just hanging in the air. But hanging ideas are the perfect place to start papers. So, good for us.