1.
Spanish Tragedy as a Revenge Tragedy.
Answer:
The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again[1] is an Elizabethan tragedy
written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in
its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre, the
revenge play or revenge tragedy. Its plot contains several violent murders and
includes as one of its characters a personification of Revenge. The Spanish
Tragedy was often referred to (or parodied) in works by other Elizabethan
playwrights, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher
Marlowe.
Many elements of The Spanish Tragedy, such as the play-within-a-play used to trap a murderer and a ghost intent on vengeance, appear in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Many elements of The Spanish Tragedy, such as the play-within-a-play used to trap a murderer and a ghost intent on vengeance, appear in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
A
long time dispute among scholars has been the moral status of revenge. Because
revenge is the most obvious theme of the play, a lot of debate has been made
over it. One can make judgments on the morality of Hieronimo based on his revenge-focused
goals but the question many scholars face is whether the fault of his
intentions is truly his. Steven Justice theories that the judgment of the play
falls less on Hieronimo than on a society in which the tragedy results from a
way of life.[29] It is argued that Kyd used the revenge tragedy to give body to
popular images of Catholic Spain.[29] Kyd tries to make Spain the villain in
that he shows how the Spanish court gives Hieronimo no acceptable choice. The
court turns Hieronimo to revenge in pursuit of justice, when in reality it is
quite different.
5.
Role of Servant (Pedringano, The page, Ambasador.)
Answer:
Role of Servant:
Pedringano - Bel-Imperia's servant.
Pedringano is easily bribed, and he betrays Bel-Imperia and is one of the gang
of four murderers who kill Horatio. In fact, Pedringano seems to have no moral
considerations, only following the person whom he thinks can help him most.
Ironically, this leads him to trust Lorenzo, who ends up betraying him.
The Page - The page is a messenger
boy who brings Lorenzo's empty box to the execution, which is believed to hold
a pardon for Pedringano. After the page looks inside, he does not tell anyone
that it is empty, out of fear for his own life. This has a distinct impact on
the play, since Pedringano's belief that he will be pardoned stops him from
exposing Lorenzo as one of Horatio's murderers before it is too late.
The Ambassador -
The Portuguese Ambassador is the agent of communication between the King and
Viceroy. His presence appears purely functional, exchanging information between
the Portuguese and Spanish court.
6.
Character Horatio, Lorengo, Bel Imperia
Answer:Horatio: The proud, promising
son of Hieronimo. Horatio sense of duty and loyalty is shown in his actions
towards Andrea, and he gives Andrea the funeral rites that let the ghost cross
the river Acheron in the underworld. He also captures Andrea's killer,
Balthazar, in battle, thus recovering Andrea's body. His sense of pride is
shown in his confrontation with Lorenzo; though Lorenzo greatly outranks him in
stature, he does not defer, but instead continues to argue his case in front of
the King.
Lorenzo - One of Horatio's
murderers. Lorenzo's character remains fairly constant throughout the play. He
is a proud verbal manipulator and a Machiavellian plotter. A great deceiver and
manipulator of others, Horatio unsurprisingly has an enthusiasm for the
theater. Lorenzo has a foil in Horatio; they are both brave young men, but
Horatio's directness, impulsiveness, and honesty, contrast and highlight
Lorenzo's guardedness, secretiveness, and deception.
Bel Imperia: Lorenzo's
sister and Andrea's former lover. She finds "second love" in Horatio,
if only partly to spite Balthazar. She eventually stabs Balthazar as a
character in Hieronimo's play and commits suicide. Heironimo claims that the
suicide is out of love for Andrea, but this point remains a matter of dispute.
Her actions in the second half of the play are motivated by the desire to exact
revenge .She is headstrong, as evidenced by her decisions to love Andrea and
Horatio, both against her father's wishes. She is intelligent, beautiful, and,
in moments of love, tender. She also is bent on revenge, both for her slain
lover Andrea and for Horatio. She is seen to have "Machiavellian"-
type traits which really surface towards the end of the play.
7.
Lorengo as a Machiarellian hero.
Answer: Lorenzo is an example of the
Machiavellian villain. He is typical of many Elizabethan tragedies and dramas.
Lorenzo uses his verbal cleverness to lead the people around him to injustice,
playing on their moral weakness as well as their lack of knowledge.
9.
Use of Supernatural element?
Answer:Significance of the supernatural
element in a most perfect descriptive manner in the spanish tragedy. The Ghost
and Revenge act as the Greek-style Chorus to the tragedy. The Ghost acts as a
metaphysical measure of good and evil. It is part of the afterlife that is
removed from reality yet still plays a role in the unfolding of the future.
12.
Play within the play?
Answer: Of the nine deaths
that occur on stage (not including Villuppo's and Andrea's), three of them are
suicides. Of the three, Isabella and Hieronimo's suicides are the realization
of a death wish expressed throughout the play: they desire to join Horatio in
death. But this wish is not repeated by the Viceroy, an equally loving father.
This difference is intriguing, as Hieronimo and his wife have a reason to delay
their deaths (they must exact revenge), whereas nothing holds back the
Viceroy-or so it seems. The lack of a real death wish may reflect a
politically-oriented part of his character that complicates his desire to live
in solitude after he discovers that Balthazar is still alive. Finally,
Bellimperia's suicide remains an unexplained aspect of the play. Why does she
unnecessarily keep to her role in Hieronimo's play-within-a-play? Hieronimo's
explanation that she loved Andrea too much is unsatisfactory at best. Her death
thus shows a vague but strong link between the fulfillment of revenge and the
death wish.
13.
Role of handkerchief.
Answer: The handkerchief starts off as a
symbol of love and memory, becomes a symbol of the memory of a lost loved one,
and then a symbol for the desire to avenge that loved one. Ironically, by the
end of the play, it can be seen as a symbol of the need to erase memory through
death. Before Andrea went off to war, Bel-Imperia gave him a scarf, which he
wore into battle something by which to remember her. Initially a symbol of love
between Andrea and Bel-Imperia, Horatio takes it off his friend's dying body as
a memorial, and it then becomes a symbol of Horatio's remembrance of his
friend, a symbol of love between Horatio and Bel-Imperia, and of Bel-Imperia's
memory of her lost knight. Of course, Bel-Imperia's love for Horatio is itself
a form of revenge against Balthazar, so the scarf begins to take on
connotations of vengeance. After Horatio's death, Hieronimo presumably takes
the same handkerchief. It is now a symbol of both love and vengeance,
intertwined in Hieronimo's desire to avenge his beloved son. By the end of the
play, it becomes a symbol of annihilation and erasure. Hieronimo holds the
handkerchief up in the midst of the corpses onstage and then runs off to commit
suicide, embracing death and the erasure of all memories.
10.
Description of hell? (Gost)
Answer:
Except that he's dead. And that he
and Bel-imperia were in love. And that he was killed by an un-chivalrous,
cowardly act in war. And that he is very, very, impatient while waiting for the
revenge he so desperately craves. Strangely enough, Andrea isn't alive at all
in the play.He's a ghost. Boo!
Even
though he dies before the action of the play, we do get a ride-along with him
as he tours Hell for three days. On the tour we learn that he was a lover and
a fighter during his life, which leaves the administrators in Hell
scratching their heads as to whether he should spend eternity with warriors or
lovers. Since the hellish experts can't even make up their mind, we'll leave
that alone for now.
But in
the process of describing his trip through Hell, Andrea gives us an early clue
about a character trait that proves vitally important
Basically, he's saying he's from
the wrong side of the tracks compared to Bel-Imperia. And this is a big problem
for the aristocratic snobs in the play. Given his warrior credentials and his
boldness for dating way over his head, we can probably assume he is courageous.
And since he's not the only courageous guy of humble birth in the play (we've
got Horatio and Hieronimo, remember?), maybe the point is that you're not born
with nobility, you earn it.
4. Role of Madness?
Answer: The role that madness plays in The
Spanish Tragedy, indeed in all revenge tragedies, is a vital one; it provides
an opportunity for the malcontent to be converted by the environment into the
avenger. In almost all revenge tragedies, the malcontent takes the form of a
renaissance man or woman who is confronted with a problem - the deed to be
avenged. This crime, and the criminals that perpetrated it, effect that
surroundings to such an extent that it is impossible to remain unchanged by
them.
Or as Hieronimo put it in The Spanish Tragedy, while holding a
noose (this is to symbolise suicide, which is the ultimate form of withdrawal
from the world) and a dagger (the tool that is most appropriate for the avenger
to interact with the world with):
This way or that way? Soft and fair, not so:
For if I hang myself, let's know
Who will revenge Horatio's murder then?
2. Spanish Tragedy as a senecan Tragedy.
Answer:
The Spanish Tragedy belongs to a class of drama known as the revenge play,
which comes from the pen of Thomas Kyd (1558-1594). In all the plays of
Seneca we find the revenge theme. Revenge was the main plot, main motive
in his plays. Like him, Kyd also used the revenge theme. As we find The Ghost
of Andrea, Bel-Imperia, Horatio, Isabella and Hieronimo all the characters want
to take revenge. In Senecan plays, all the characters think that if they take
revenge upon the killers who have murdered their dearest persons, it can never
be a sin. Rather it is a sacred duty. Because by killing the murderers they
will be able to get proper justice. Very same tendency we observe in the character
of Bel-Imperia and Hieronimo. We see Bel-Imperia uttering: “But how can love
find harbor in my breast, / Till I revenge the death of my beloved?” (1. 4.
64-65).
3. Use of Melodramatic element as a Spanish
Tragedy.
Answer:
Melodramatic elements,
such as declamatory speech, excessive passion, musically acted, cured appeal to
poetic justice, all of such qualities were used by Seneca in his plays.
Similarly Kyd in this play has employed such elements too. We find declamatory
speech in Hieronimo’s soliloquies and excessive passion in Bel-Imperia’s
dialogues. In Melodrama good characters are rewarded and bad characters are
punished. The Spanish Tragedy does not maintain this rule of Melodrama
properly.
Seneca used horror elements, blood-shed,
violence and terror, bloody atmosphere in his plays, so does Kyd. The brutal
killing of Horatio, the preparation of the upcoming burning of Alexandro, the
killing of Serberine, the stabbing scene of Isabella, the killing of Lorenzo,
Balthazar, and Don Cyprion, the biting of Hieronimo’s tongue himself, all these
elements of horror incidents, of blood-shed, create an atmosphere of terror and
violence in the mind of the readers.
11. Use of Greek Mythological character?(Pluto, Proserpine, Hactas, Lacherron, Charan).
Answer: Pluto:The
ancient Roman people were afraid to utter the name of Pluto for fear it would
attract the attention of the deity known as the judge of the dead. Pluto was
also a god of wealth, as the lord of all the metals and riches that lie under
the ground. His name is derived from the Latinized form of the Greek name
Plouton, which means wealth.
Pluto
was previously referred to as Dis Pater, meaning Father of Gods. However, he is
best known for his role as ruler of the underworld and as the counterpart to
the Greek god Hades. When the Romans conquered Greece, the gods Hades and Pluto
were combined and replaced Dis Pater as the god of wealth, the dead and
agriculture.
Prosepine: Proserpine ("to
emerge") (Proserpina) is a Goddess of the Underworld, her story is the
basis of a myth of springtime. Her Greek goddess equivalent is Persephone. She
was abducted by Pluto who wished to marry her and live together in the
underworld. Her mother Ceres searched for her, but was unable to find her, in
sorrow she stopped the fruits and vegetables from growing.
Eventually Jupiter sent Mercury to order
Pluto to free Proserpina. Before letting her go he made her eat three
pomegranate seeds which meant she would have to live three months of each year
with him. In spring when Ceres receives her daughter back, the crops blossom,
and in summer they flourish.
Hades: Hades, Greek Aïdes (“the
Unseen”), also called Pluto or Pluton (“the Wealthy One” or “the Giver of
Wealth”), in Greek mythology, god of the underworld. Hades was a son of the
Titans Cronus and Rhea, and brother of the deities Zeus, Poseidon, Demeter,
Hera, and Hestia.
After Cronus was overthrown by his sons, his
kingdom was divided among them, and the underworld fell by lot to Hades. There
he ruled with his queen, Persephone, over the infernal powers and over the dead
in what was often called “the house of Hades,” or simply Hades. He was aided by
the dog Cerberus. Though Hades supervised the trial and punishment of the
wicked after death, he was not normally one of the judges in the underworld,
nor did he personally torture the guilty, a task assigned to the Furies
(Erinyes). Hades was depicted as stern and pitiless, unmoved by prayer or
sacrifice (like death itself).
Chiron: Chiron, in Greek mythology,
one of the Centaurs, the son of the Titan Cronus and Philyra, an Oceanid or sea
nymph. Chiron lived at the foot of Mount Pelion in Thessaly. Unlike other
Centaurs, who were violent and savage, he was famous for his wisdom and
knowledge of medicine. Many Greek heroes, including Heracles, Achilles, Jason,
and Asclepius, were instructed by him. Chiron frequently appears in the legends
of his grandson, Peleus, and his great-grandson, Achilles. Accidentally pierced
by a poisoned arrow shot by Heracles, he renounced his immortality in favour of
Prometheus and was placed among the stars as the constellation Centaurus.
12. Role of letter?
Answer: Balthazar is captured by Horatio, son of
Hieronimo. Bel-Imperia falls in love with Horatio, only to find that
Balthazar is in love with her. Bel-Imperia and Horatio meet in secret, but she
is betrayed by her servant, Pedringano, to her brother, Lorenzo, and Balthazar.
Horatio is murdered and Bel-Imperia taken away.
Hieronimo
finds his son’s body and vows revenge. He receives a letter from Bel-Imperia
revealing the identity of the killers but suspects it is a trick. Lorenzo
tries to cover his tracks by disposing of witnesses, using Pedringano.
Hieronimo realises Lorenzo’s guilt and the truth of the letter, but his
struggle to obtain justice and the breakdown of his wife, Isabella, make him go
mad. Bel-Imperia’s betrothal to Balthazar is announced.
Hieronimo
and Lorenzo seem reconciled, but secretly he and Bel-Imperia vow to avenge
Horatio’s death. After Isabella’s suicide, Hieronimo arranges a play, in which
the characters take part. Hieronimo stabs Lorenzo, Balthazar and Bel-Imperia,
explains the reason for the killings, bites out his tongue so he won’t reveal
more and kills himself.
14. Diary of Hieronimo.
Answer: Hieronimo is one of the principal
characters in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. He wrote a play on his dairy. The
screen of the play was the nine deaths that occur on stage (not including
Villuppo's and Andrea's), three of them are suicides. Of the three, Isabella
and Hieronimo's suicides are the realization of a death wish expressed
throughout the play: they desire to join Horatio in death. But this wish is not
repeated by the Viceroy, an equally loving father. This difference is
intriguing, as Hieronimo and his wife have a reason to delay their deaths (they
must exact revenge), whereas nothing holds back the Viceroy-or so it seems. The
lack of a real death wish may reflect a politically-oriented part of his
character that complicates his desire to live in solitude after he discovers
that Balthazar is still alive. Finally, Bellimperia's suicide remains an
unexplained aspect of the play. Why does she unnecessarily keep to her role in
Hieronimo's play-within-a-play? Hieronimo's explanation that she loved Andrea
too much is unsatisfactory at best. Her death thus shows a vague but strong
link between the fulfillment of revenge and the death wish.
