The Spanish Tragedy (Arden Early Modern Drama) - Softcover

'Erne's chapter on The First Part of Hieronimo is undoubtedly the most original ... but throughout there are fresh insights, the product of close and intelligent reading of the texts, and the shrewd interpretation of evidence. Erne ... has made an excellent case for going, as his title proclaims 'Beyond the Spanish Tragedy,' to set Kyd's achievement in a wider context.' --David Gunby, Modern Language Review

'I hope this excellent monograph, full of fresh research and convincing new arguments, will prompt someone to invite Erne to edit Kyd in order to replace Boas's edition, still the standard in its centenary year.' -- Paul Dean, 'English Studies'

'[Erne's] picture of a playwright preoccupied with the themes of grief and loss radiating outwards from the dramatic epicentre of The Spanish Tragedy, is appealing.' --Emma Smith, The Times Literary Supplement

A major new edition of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, an outstanding landmark of Elizabethan drama. In its time, it quickly became a box office success and probably inspired Shakespeare to write Hamlet, as it contains a ghost, murders that demand revenge and a hero that hesitates and contemplates suicide. As a revenge tragedy, it set up the salient features of a dramatic genre that would last decades. Its hero, the aged Marshall of Spain Hieronimo, whose son is murdered at night, soon transcended the play and became the standard stage representation of grief, rhetorical passion and madness. Hieronimo's main antagonist is one of the first Machiavellian characters of English drama. This edition explores the play in relation to its historical context and contemporary Iberian dynastic policy. It also relates the play, as a literary artefact, to other artistic manifestations of the European Renaissance and offers a fresh assessment of the play's stage history. For the first time in the play's textual history, this edition presents an integrated text inviting a reading of the play as it was published both in 1592 and in 1602.