Theater of the Grotesque: The Spanish Tragedy and Foucault Riley Stephen Meachem College

It is easy to look at Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, widely considered the first revenge tragedy play, as having a completely nonsensical ending. While the proceeding three acts are fairly typical for a revenge narrative, with machinations deceptions stabbings and heartfelt vows for murder, the penultimate scene defies logic to the point of nearly being comical. However, despite the surreal and uncanny feeling of what occurs therein, much of which initially appears to defy our notions of causality, there is, to quote another revenge play, “a method to this madness.” Through his grim and performative finale, Kyd is depicting the strength of a proto-Foucaultian state which has the power to control the secular bodies of all who reside beneath them.

We should preface this examination by addressing several formal and narrative aspects of the first three acts of A Spanish tragedy before analyzing the ways in which its fourth espouses the absolute authority and power of the state. Firstly, readers recognize that this is, despite the appearance of Andrea the ghost, a largely secular play. Though the dead can speak, they can not affect change in the world of the living, as demonstrated by Andrea’s outrage at being made to watch his...