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The Spanish Tragedy

Thomas Kyd author Clara Calvo editor Jesus Tronch editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:17th Jan '13

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Spanish Tragedy cover

A major new edition of this classic tragedy with full annotation and a lengthy introduction examining the play in its historical, theatrical and literary contexts.

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.

The Spanish Tragedy has a long stage history which Calvo and Tronch summarize concisely [in this book]. Professional performances up to 2010 are documented, but amateur performances, often ignored by critics, are also shown to yield interesting insights. * The Year's Work in English Studies *
A well-thought-out contribution to the study of Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, and its underlying themes of cultural representation, power relations, afterlife studies, early modern international relations, and historical context analysis. * H-Nationalism *

ISBN: 9781408129982

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 517g

392 pages