The Spanish Tragedy

The Spanish Tragedy was the first great classic from the Elizabethan period of playwriting, along with Marlowe's Tamburlaine. Set during the 1580s in Spain, England's greatest enemy, for seventy years the play was the most quoted play in English, providing the model for all its successors, even Hamlet. As the greatest of Elizabethan revenge tragedies it first marks out in challenging form the morality of revenge, and then uses a play within the play to kill off all the victims and one of the two revengers. The chief revenger is left to bite out his own tongue on stage before he kills himself.This student edition contains a lengthy introduction and background on the author, date and sources, themes, critical interpretation and stage history, as well as a fully annotated version of the playtext in modern spelling.
The first fully-fledged example of a revenge tragedy, the genre that became so influential in later Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, The Spanish Tragedy (1589) occupies a very special place in the history of English Renaissance drama. Hieronimo, Knight-Marshal of Spain during its war with Portugal, fails to obtain justice when his son is murdered for courting Bel-Imperia, the Duke of Castile's daughter, and decides to take justice into his own hands This new student edition has been freshly revised by Professor Andrew Gurr to incorporate the latest stage history and critical interpretations of the play. It also appends the scenes that were added in 1602, discusses Elizabethan attitudes to revenge, the Senecan features of the play and the significance of the Anglo-Spanish conflict in the 1580s.
The first full-fledged example of a revenge tragedy, the genre that became so influential in later Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, The Spanish Tragedy (1589) occupies a very special place in the history of English Renaissance drama. This new edition has been freshly revised by Professor Andrew Gurr to incorporate the latest stage history and critical interpretations of the play.
Brings to life the intrigues of the Spanish court, contrasting romantic passion with violent deaths. Revised edition.