The Spanish Tragedy

The Spanish Tragedy

by

Thomas Kyd

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Spanish Tragedy makes teaching easy.
Themes and Colors
Revenge and Justice  Theme Icon
Class, Gender, and Society Theme Icon
Love and Madness Theme Icon
Betrayal Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Spanish Tragedy, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Madness Theme Icon

While The Spanish Tragedy is first and foremost focused on revenge, the play also examines love—love in a romantic sense and love between family members and friends. As the play opens, Don Andrea, a Spanish soldier, has just been murdered in battle by Balthazar, the son of the Viceroy of Portugal. When Andrea passes before Minos, Aeacus, and Rhadamanth—the judges of the underworld—Minos claims that Andrea “both lived and died in love.” In life, Andrea was in love with Bel-Imperia, the daughter of the Duke of Castile, and Andrea’s ghost loves her still in death. Love is one of the most motivating factors for many of the characters in The Spanish Tragedy. For instance, after Andrea is slain in battle, his dear friend and fellow soldier, Horatio, makes sure Andrea has proper funeral rites and mourns his loss, all out of love for his dear friend. But while love is often presented as beautiful and honorable, it also causes untold torment and pain for the characters and leads them to dire extremes, such as murder and suicide. Through The Spanish Tragedy, Kyd highlights the beauty of love and its ability to enrich one’s life and relationships, but he also argues that love can be a maddening force.        

In addition to Andrea and Bel-Imperia’s love and the brotherly love between Horatio and Andrea, there are several other examples of deep love in The Spanish Tragedy. This wide variety of examples suggests that all kinds of love can be equally strong and motivating. After the death of Andrea, Bel-Imperia is comforted by Horatio, and she soon falls in love with him, too. Horatio is Bel-Imperia’s “second love,” and she loves him just as fiercely as she does Andrea. Even though it is not reciprocated, Balthazar—who killed Andrea in battle and later helps Bel-Imperia’s brother, Lorenzo, kill Horatio—is also in love with Bel-Imperia, and he plans to marry her (with the blessing of her father and the King of Spain) to join the main royal houses of Spain and Portugal together in a single power. Horatio is also deeply loved by his parents, Hieronimo and Isabella, who greatly mourn the loss of their “sweet boy.” The love that Hieronimo especially has for his son drives most of the plot of play, leading to the revenge play-within-a-play that ends in tragedy. Alongside revenge, love is the largest motivating factor within Kyd’s play, and many of the characters are driven by it in one way or another.

Many of Kyd’s characters, however, are also driven insane by love, which suggests that while love can be comforting and motivating, it can also be maddening and destructive. After the murder of her son, Isabella spirals into madness over the loss of her beloved Horatio. Before Isabella stabs herself to death at the very spot where Horatio was hanged, she “runs lunatic” alone in her room. While Bel-Imperia doesn’t go insane in quite the same way as Isabella, she commits suicide at the end of the play all the same. Bel-Imperia stabs herself to death while acting in Hieronimo’s play-within-a-play, even though her suicide was not part of the script. “But love of him whom they did hate too much,” Hieronimo says, “Did urge her resolution to be such.” In other words, Bel-Imperia loves Horatio so much, she is driven to suicide by his death. Hieronimo, too, seems to be unraveling mentally when two strangers inquire about Lorenzo—he launches into a nonsensical speech about “guilt,” “murderers,” and the “blood of innocents.” When Hieronimo bursts into inappropriate laughter, the men are taken aback. “Doubtless this man is passing lunatic,” they say before moving on. Even to complete strangers, it is clear that Hieronimo isn’t well.

Despite the convincing nature of Hieronimo’s madness, he also implies that his “brainsick lunacy” is only a ruse to ease his ultimate revenge on Lorenzo and Balthazar, which he achieves during the play-within-a-play. As entertainment for the King of Spain and the Viceroy of Portugal, Hieronimo stages his original play, and casts in it both Lorenzo and Balthazar. After Bel-Imperia, who also acts in the play, stabs Balthazar to death, Hieronimo kills Lorezno, and his revenge is ostensibly complete. Yet afterward, when Hieronimo’s attempt to hang himself fails, he bites out his own tongue to avoid talking and murders Lorenzo’s father with a pen before finally committing suicide. Even after his revenge, Hieronimo still behaves in a way that suggests he has been driven mad by losing Horatio. Kyd thus implies that despite the genuine beauty of love, it nonetheless has the power to cause tragic outcomes like madness and death.    

Related Themes from Other Texts
Compare and contrast themes from other texts to this theme…
Get the entire The Spanish Tragedy LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Spanish Tragedy PDF

Love and Madness Quotes in The Spanish Tragedy

Below you will find the important quotes in The Spanish Tragedy related to the theme of Love and Madness.
Act 1, Scene 1 Quotes

Not far from hence, amidst ten thousand souls,
Sat Minos, Aeacus, and Rhadamanth,
To whom no sooner ’gan I make approach,
To crave a passport for my wandering ghost,
But Minos, in graven leaves of lottery,
Drew forth the manner of my life and death.
“This knight,” quoth he, “both lived and died in love.
And for his love tried fortune of the wars.
And by war’s fortune lost both love and life.”

Related Characters: The Ghost of Andrea (speaker), Bel-Imperia, Balthazar
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 1, Scene 4 Quotes

I took him up, and wound him in mine arms,
And welding him unto my private tent,
There laid him down, and dewed him with my tears,
And sighed and sorrowed as became a friend.
But neither friendly sorrow, sighs nor tears
Could win pale Death from his usurped right.
Yet this I did, and less I could not do:
I saw him honoured with due funeral.
This scarf I plucked from off his lifeless arm,
And wear it in remembrance of my friend.

Related Characters: Horatio (speaker), Bel-Imperia, The Ghost of Andrea, Balthazar
Related Symbols: Bel-Imperia’s Scarf
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

Ay, go Horatio, leave me here alone,
For solitude best fits my cheerless mood.
Yet what avails to wail Andrea’s death,
From whence Horatio proves my second love?
Had he not loved Andrea as he did,
He could not sit in Bel-Imperia’s thoughts.
But how can love find harbour in my breast,
Till I revenge the death of my beloved?
Yes, second love shall further my revenge.

Related Characters: Bel-Imperia (speaker), Horatio, The Ghost of Andrea, Balthazar
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 1 Quotes

I have already found a stratagem,
To sound the bottom of this doubtful theme.
My lord, for once you shall be ruled by me:
Hinder me not whate’er you hear or see.
By force or fair means will I cast about
To find the truth of all this question out.
Ho, Pedringano!

Related Characters: Lorenzo (speaker), Bel-Imperia, Balthazar, Pedringano
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:

Both well, and ill: it makes me glad and sad:
Glad, that I know the hinderer of my love,
Sad, that I fear she hates me whom I love,
Glad, that I know on whom to be revenged,
Sad, that she’ll fly me if I take revenge.
Yet must I take revenge or die myself,
For love resisted grows impatient.
I think Horatio be my destined plague:
First, in his hand he brandished a sword,
And with that sword he fiercely waged war,
And in that war he gave me dangerous wounds,
And by those wounds he forced me to yield,
And by my yielding I became his slave.

Related Characters: Balthazar (speaker), Lorenzo, Bel-Imperia, Horatio
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 3 Quotes

Brother of Castile, to the prince’s love
What says your daughter Bel-Imperia?

Although she coy it as becomes her kind,
And yet dissemble that she loves the prince,
I doubt not, I, but she will stoop in time.
And were she froward, which she will not be,
Yet herein shall she follow my advice,
Which is to love him or forgo my love.

Related Characters: Cyprian, Duke of Castile (speaker), King of Spain (speaker), Bel-Imperia, Balthazar
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 4 Quotes

What, will you murder me?

Ay, thus, and thus; these are the fruits of love.

Related Characters: Lorenzo (speaker), Horatio (speaker), Bel-Imperia, Balthazar, Pedringano, Serberine
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2, Scene 5 Quotes

See’st thou this handkercher besmeared with blood?
It shall not from me till I take revenge.
See’st thou those wounds that yet are bleeding fresh?
I’ll not entomb them till I have revenged.
Then will I joy amidst my discontent,
Till then my sorrow never shall be spent.

Related Characters: Hieronimo (speaker), Horatio, Isabella
Related Symbols: Bel-Imperia’s Scarf
Page Number: 44-5
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3, Scene 13 Quotes

And art thou come, Horatio, from the depth,
To ask for justice in this upper earth?
To tell thy father thou art unrevenged,
To wring more tears from Isabella’s eyes,
Whose lights are dimmed with over-long laments?
Go back my son, complain to Aeacus,
For here’s no justice; gentle boy be gone,
For justice is exiled from the earth;
Hieronimo will bear thee company.
Thy mother cries on righteous Rhadamanth
For just revenge against the murderers.

Related Characters: Hieronimo (speaker), Horatio, The Ghost of Andrea, Isabella, Bazulto
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3, Scene 14 Quotes

Welcome, Balthazar,
Welcome brave prince, the pledge of Castile’s peace;
And welcome Bel-lmperia. How now, girl?
Why com’st thou sadly to salute us thus?
Content thyself, for I am satisfied;
It is not now as when Andrea lived.
We have forgotten and forgiven that,
And thou art graced with a happier love.

Related Characters: Cyprian, Duke of Castile (speaker), Hieronimo, Bel-Imperia, Horatio, The Ghost of Andrea, Balthazar
Page Number: 99
Explanation and Analysis: