The Spanish Tragedy Literary Elements

drama; tragedy

English

1580s Spain and Portugal

The Chorus, made up of the ghost of Don Andrea and the personified figure of Revenge, serve as narrators and commentators for the events of the play.

bleak, despairing, vengeful, destructive

Hieronimo is the central protagonist of the play. Lorenzo is the central antagonist.

The major conflict in The Spanish Tragedy occurs when Lorenzo, Bel-Imperia's brother, discovers her new relationship with Horatio and arranges to have Horatio murdered.

The climax of the play occurs when Hieronimo stages a performance for the king, casting his enemies in roles in which they will eventually be murdered in reality.

The play makes frequent use of stichomythia, a dramatic device in which characters exchange heated one-liners between one another. This device was also employed by the ancient Roman playwright Seneca, whose work influenced The Spanish Tragedy (also known as a Senecan Tragedy). The fast-pace nature of stichomythic exchanges helps foreshadow the play's escalating tensions between characters that eventually leads to betrayals, misunderstandings, and deaths.

There is a notable lack of understatement throughout the play, as characters frequently bewail their griefs and woes with heightened emotion and high-falutin language. One example of a character embodying understatement, however, could be Bel-Imperia, who as a woman must remain relatively quiet about her own desire for revenge. She, like Isabella, tends to turn inward for revenge rather than seeking external justice like Hieronimo.

Because of its Senecan influence, The Spanish Tragedy features a number of allusions to ancient Greek and Roman literature, culture, and mythology. The play also operates as a historical allusion to the war between Spain and England that would (almost) occur in 1588.

Important imagery in the play includes violence, blood, and the afterlife.

The central paradox of the play is the intense desire for revenge that Hieronimo expresses alongside the slow serving of justice that the character of Revenge promises.

Many consider The Spanish Tragedy to be a precursor for William Shakespeare's Hamlet, with Hieronimo and Hamlet serving parallel roles as revengers.

The most explicit example of personification is the presence of Revenge – an abstract concept personified into a speaking role on stage – serving as as narrator alongside Don Andrea.

The presence of Revenge on stage alongside Don Andrea serves as a means of orienting audiences to the revenge tragedy genre, which was still unexplored on the Elizabethan stage. By the time audiences saw another revenge play like Hamlet nearly two decades later, this type of choric or narratorial structure had all but disappeared.