Some of the types of character represented also appear again and again in
later plays. Lorenzo is the villain par excellence; his accomplice is
grotesque as well as evil; and Bel Imperia, both prettily sentimental and
desperately revengeful, is of a type not uncommon in later tragedy. The
character of Hieronimo, rudely as it is drawn, is not without subtlety of
conception. This type of tragic hero, very different from Marlowe's,
naturally good and noble, meditative by temperament, driven to melancholy
and madness by the responsibility forced on him by crime, and at length
accomplishing direful revenge through trickery and irony, is manifestly a
precursor of Hamlet. Kyd's style justifies Nash's description, "whole
handfulls of tragical speeches" and "a blank verse bodged up with ifs and
ands." It displays the rhetorician rather than the poet and, like his
conception and structure, gives evidence of an ingenious innovator adapting
Seneca. It abounds in artificial balance, parallelism, antitheses,
word-play, strained figures, and it harrows hell for its tragic vocabulary;
but its love scenes have a verbal prettiness and its tirades and
soliloquies helped to confer on subsequent tragic style sententiousness and
elevation as well as rant. Far inferior to "Tamburlaine" as an artistic
achievement, "The Spanish Tragedy" can no more than that play be pushed
aside as a mere blood and thunder tirade. Beneath its absurdities there
lies the conception of an inner struggle against overwhelming
responsibility, and of the conflict of the individual against evil and
fate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account