In addition, the influences of 'The Spanish Tragedy' on Hamlet are many, and it is fun to spot them as they arise. Yet the individual scenes-Hieronimo discovering his son hanging in the garden, Hieronimo and the painter, Hieronomo with a book, Hieronimo surrounded by legal suitors, Hieronimo's direction of the play-within-a-play-are all very powerful and make reading the play worthwhile. Who in the court knows Horatio has been murdered and when do they know it? Clear answers to these questions might have clarified motivations and illuminated dialogue-both of which are occasionally baffling. The exposition (political rivalry between Spain and Portugal, events leading up to Horatio's murder) is well executed, but after that Kyd's passion for powerful effect (particularly in Hieronimo's mad scenes) overshadows and occasionally confounds coherent plot development.

This strange, lumpy drama is oddly effective in its own discursive way, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves Elizabethan theatre in general or Hamlet in particular or who is fascinated by the theme of revenge. 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. 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. This edition explores the play in relation to its historical context and contemporary Iberian dynastic policy. Hieronimo's main antagonist is one of the first Machiavellian characters of English drama. 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.

As a revenge tragedy, it set up the salient features of a dramatic genre that would last decades. 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. A major new edition of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy,an outstanding landmark of Elizabethan drama.

The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd