Amanda Jiang
In 1963, Lionel Abel coined the term metatheatre in his work, Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form. The term begins with meta, a prefix that denotes transcendence, and ends with theatre, a visual performance.[1] Metatheatricality offers players a heightened sense of awareness and, thereby, transforms theater into life and life into a theatricalized work of art (60). The metadramatic concept of “the world as a stage” can be traced back to theatrum mundi—the theater as a presentation of human life.[2] Although metatheatre and theatrum mundi both highlight an interconnection between the spectacle and spectators, performance and reality, theatrum mundi argues that divine power is the sole playwright of human fate, whereas Abel’s metatheatre captures human agency (Erne 97). The Spanish Tragedy, an Elizabethan play written by Thomas Kyd, embraces deterministic theatrum mundi and free-willed metatheatre, a notion best illustrated by Hieronimo’s dual roles as a playwright and actor. The Spanish Tragedy establishes the reconciliation of free will and determinism through a play-within-a-play where vengeance, the ultimate goal of revenge tragedy, is achieved.
The audience is first introduced to the concept of metatheatre when Don Andrea appears on stage. While asserting his position in the play, Don Andrea dramatizes himself: “To whom no sooner ’gan I make approach / To crave a passport for my wand’ring ghost” (1.1.34-35). According to Lionel Abel, in a metatheatrical play, characters were self-aware individuals before the playwright took note of them (60). Akin to Don Andrea, there are several other characters, such as Revenge, Lorenzo, and Hieronimo, who are equally aware of their motives and roles in the play. In this way, character awareness helps create different plays within the same play. Hell’s court is the setting of the first play, and the setup of the introduction is unique in that it combines Senecan traits and Pagan mythological elements. In Seneca’s Thyestes, the audience meets Tantalus, a character trapped in Hell lamenting the reenactment of evil deeds committed by his descendants. Hence, there is a presence of determinism. Likewise, in The Spanish Tragedy, Don Andrea is caught in a predetermined cycle; when he dies, he will vanish from the mundane world and live in Hell.
Although Don Andrea’s fate—and his eventual destination—is determined by the Underworld, the judges do not know where he should go. Later, when he is brought to Pluto’s court, Pluto allows his wife, Proserpine, to decide where Don Andrea should proceed. Proserpine orders Don Andrea to enter the Gate of Horn with the spirit of Revenge to watch the inner play, a second scenario within The Spanish Tragedy (1.2.82). The ‘Gate of Horn’ alludes to Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid, where Aeneas dismisses the Gate of Horn and enters the ivory gate: “Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn;/ Of polished ivory this, that of transparent horn: True visions through transparent horn arise; Through polished ivory pass deluding lies” (204). The fact that Revenge and Don Andrea are looking into “true visions” is essential to the development of the metadramatic plot. “True” opposes the fictional quality of the play. Thus, the dreams that the players and the audience witness are more than just a product of theatrical imagination; they are real-world experiences anyone can have at any time. The concept of dreaming is prominent in Elizabethan literature. Gregory Semenza posits:
In Shakespeare’s comedies—such as The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, and especially A Midsummer Night’s Dream, such parallels between the semi-rational worlds of comedic festivity and dreams are commonplace. When Theseus, for example, extols the powers of the imagination in a play positing dreams as epitome of it, he highlights the shaping powers capable of molding meaning out of airy nothing. (156)
According to Semenza, the suggestion that Hieronimo’s tale is really just Don Andrea’s dream obscures the separation of reality and perception and, in turn, grants shaping powers to the mind of the observer. In The Spanish Tragedy, the audience witnesses the conflation, or more accurately, the reconciliation of playgoers, playwrights, and actors in the same scene, each possessing equal shaping power within the plot. Despite the limitations of the theatrical and mundane worlds, dramatic characters and non-dramatic characters have the power to shape plots, responses, and motives. The ability to manipulate provides proof of free will, through which characters possess the agency to modify the play.
Prior to the development of Act 1 Scene 2, Revenge remarks:
Then know, Andrea, that thou art arrived
Where thou shalt see the author of thy death,
Don Balthazar, the Prince of Portingale,
Deprived of life by Bel-imperia.
Here sit we down to see the mystery,
And serve for Chorus in this tragedy. (1.2.86-91)
The metatheatrical quality of the play emerges again with Revenge’s telling of Balthazar’s murderer, Bel-imperia. How does Revenge know that she will kill Balthazar? Is this an unplanned prediction, response, or foreknowing? In the beginning of The Spanish Tragedy, all three of the concepts collide and are reconciled with one another. One could argue that the response of Don Andrea’s death, which is caused by Balthazar, leads to a kind of foreknowing that is accurate enough to become an absolute occurrence. Furthermore, when Revenge claims that it and Don Andrea will serve as Chorus for the play, the character is following the classical roots of the metatheatrical genre. For instance, in the Old Comedy of Aristophanes, the chorus self-consciously discusses the play with the audience. In The Acharnians, the leader of the chorus speaks in the playwright’s voice, comments on the drama, and guides the audience’s responses (Pollard 69). In the Elizabethan era, self-conscious attention to the nature of the theater reflects widespread fascination with the medium in which the audience finds realistic, worldly qualities projected through a theatrical lens (68). By positioning Don Andrea and Revenge as players who watch the internal play, The Spanish Tragedy transforms them into jurors who have the ability to judge and respond to Hieronimo’s tale. The goal, Revenge professes, is to watch Bel-imperia kill Balthazar and avenge Don Andrea’s death (1.2.87-89). Therefore, Don Andrea’s vengeance is achieved through a metatheatrical lens.
To understand the state of the internal play, it is important to examine the various characters’ renditions of Don Andrea’s death. The spectators hear four versions of the battle in which Don Andrea was killed, and three of these are spoken by Horatio, the Spanish general, and Villuppo in the Portuguese court. The fourth version of the battle is Don Andrea’s original account of his own demise. The multiple narratives of Don Andrea’s death and the actual event resulting in his murder highlight the characters’ self-awareness and motives to deceive one another. For instance, Villupo creates a “forged tale” to trick the Portuguese king into believing that Alexandro is at fault for Balthazar’s “death” (1.4.93). Although the renditions of the battle seem like vocal narratives, one could argue that they are also ‘vocal plays’ that survive and reemerge in the spectators’ minds. Such is the power of vocal art; it can delude and betray the audience.
The Spanish Tragedy is a revenge tragedy, yet vengeance is delayed in the play. One cause of the delay is the characters’ heightened sense of awareness. Their knowledge and inquisitive minds control the movement of the play rather than the other way around. The control that the characters possess neutralizes the power of determinism. In Act 2, scene 4, vengeance is initiated when Balthazar and Lorenzo decide to murder Horatio. Prior to taking Horatio’s life, Balthazar and Lorenzo are behind the scenes and hidden from other characters. Thus, in the process of planning to commit evil deeds, Lorenzo and Balthazar become playgoers. When they murder Horatio, they then become playwrights who dictate Horatio and Bel-imperia’s fate but not their own. Lorenzo and Balthazar’s transformations reveal the complicity of playgoers and the playwright of The Spanish Tragedy, Thomas Kyd himself.
Horatio’s murdered body echoes descriptions of Christ’s betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane and his eventual execution on the Cross—the holy tree.[3] The Garden of Gethsemane was where Jesus prayed alongside his disciples preceding his crucifixion. The allusion to the garden and Christ’s brutal punishment is vital to the creation of the play. First, it highlights the presence and significance of betrayal. Christ was betrayed by Judas prior to his crucifixion. Likewise, in The Spanish Tragedy, Horatio and Bel-imperia are betrayed by Pedringano. Second, the evil deeds committed in the garden are reminiscent of the sins initiated in the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve consumed the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and became the first sinners.[4] The biblical references remind the audience that sins are prevalent in garden settings and that Horatio’s death in Hieronimo’s garden is inevitable. Horatio is not the creator of the sinful act, but he is an unwilling participant. His existence allows Pedringano to perpetuate sin, and, later, to be executed due to the betrayal. The fall of Pedringano–and others who commit murderous acts–underscores determinism. Humans are subject to death through the commission of original sin.
Although determinism is unavoidable, there are instances in which free will prevails. For instance, Lorenzo obtains agency by transforming into an artist. When Lorenzo leaves Horatio’s hanging body on the arbor, he remarks, “Yet is [Horatio] at the highest now he is dead” (2.4.60). Here, the audience is forced to watch the hanging of Horatio’s innocent body, as master playwright—or artist—Lorenzo showcases his work. The word “high” refers to Horatio’s distance above the physical ground, but it also relates to the contradicting notion that Horatio is most unfortunate when he is at the highest part of Fortune’s wheel. By leaving Horatio’s body on display, Lorenzo creates a divide between himself—the artist and playgoer—and Horatio’s crucified body, the actor in Lorenzo’s work of art. The distancing also allows Revenge, Don Andrea, and the Elizabethan audience to enjoy the dead spectacle voyeuristically. Molly Smith contends, “the double framing of [Horatio’s death]—the audience as spectators watching an already framed event—explicitly raises the questions about the value of death as entertainment” (224). Perhaps, when a character in a revenge play becomes both a playwright and a player, he or she has the potential to become a manipulative villain or, in Lorenzo’s case, a ruthless killer who escapes the limitations of determinism through generating a macabre work of art.
In The Spanish Tragedy, Hieronimo is the primary figure that encapsulates determinism and free will; however, he does not serve this purpose in the first half of the play. Initially, Hieronimo believes it is up to God to exact vengeance. The audience witnesses his transformation through his soliloquies. After seeing Horatio’s dead body, Hieronimo exclaims, “Eyes, life, world, heavens, hell, night, and day” (3.2.22). There is a unique order to Hieronimo’s statement. “Eyes” could refer to the eyes of the audience and the characters, and “life” could stand for the overall quality of a theatrical work because the inner plays mirror a certain criticism of life (Bradbrook 6). The third word is “world,” which connects to the essence of metatheatre and the notion that the theatre is a microcosm of a larger world. “Heavens,” “hell,” “night,” and “day” are words that relate to the greater cosmos. The reference to heavens proves that Hieronimo initially does believe in divine justice and heavenly intervention. In addition, the theme, with a range of significance—“eyes, life, world, heavens,”—which parallel organ, organism, social milieu, and cosmos, is “the progressive perversion of all order into disease through the murder of Horatio” (Barish 181). By gathering all the phenomena, Hieronimo is attempting to help the world regain justice. Yet, the heavens and hell do not listen or respond to him. The silence of the phenomena propels Hieronimo to take vengeance into his own hands.
One of the challenges that Hieronimo finds in living in a corrupt world is the validation of response: What is right? What is wrong? The Spanish Tragedy is not merely a revenge play where a hero or villain kills to seek justice. Rather, it is a play that explores different kinds of responses men can make to endure pain and suffering (Hamilton 190). In Act 3, scene 13, there is a shift from divine duty to private duty. Hieronimo moves in eighteen lines from “heaven will be reveng’d” (3.13.2) to “I will revenge” (3.13.20). Once Hieronimo recognizes that divine power does not exert absolute control over men in Act 3, “his search for meaningful response leads him to art, which by mirroring his experiences, also helps him learn their universal quality, a lesson which gives him some relief from his torment” (190). If Hieronimo did not react to the king’s heedless behavior or the cosmos’ neglectful response, then perhaps the play would truly be deterministic. But Hieronimo’s defiance—his intervention—calls upon Lionel Abel’s version of metatheatricality in which characters in the play have an awareness of what can be done to and for them.
With Hieronimo’s change in perspective, the spectators also witness a shift in the meaning and overall purpose of this tragedy. Initially, tragedy consists of predestined events that cause great suffering, destruction, or distress, typically involving death.[5] With Hieronimo becoming a playwright, the word ‘tragedy’ becomes more of a dramatic, character-initiated performance that conveys pain and suffering.[6] Hieronimo’s play, which takes place in Act 5, is a device for vengeance and justice. According to Clara Calvo, Hieronimo’s play “questions the boundary between reality and representation, going beyond the theatrum mundi topos” (56). Indeed, the play is so realistic and out of the norm that Hieronimo seems to demand the spectators to not only treat his play as a fictional work but also as evidence for his vengeance against Lorenzo and Balthazar.
When Hieronimo describes himself as a playwright, he calls Balthazar and Lorenzo “actors of the accursed tragedy” (3.7.41-42). As Hieronimo dictates the actions and the foreign tongues that his players speak, he becomes a precursor to other tragedians—such as Shakespeare’s protagonist, Hamlet, a character who takes control of fate by guiding external forces, despite his inability to escape his role as an actor in his own play. Hieronimo’s ability to dictate Balthazar and Lorenzo’s behaviors allows him to punish his enemies, a necessary course of action that restores the balance of justice. Lukas Erne draws a comparison between Hieronimo and God. In the Bible, God punishes the pride and ambition of the people of Babel by creating many new languages and speech barriers. This punishment causes confusion amongst the people of Babel and minimizes their ambition to build a tower that reaches Heaven.[7] Hieronimo, in a corresponding manner, facilitates the demolition of Lorenzo and Balthazar’s pride when he takes control of their tongues and, thereby, becomes a commander of human actions.
Hieronimo’s show does not end with Balthazaar and Lorenzo’s death. More accurately, the purpose of his play is introduced when he pulls Horatio’s dead body onto the stage. Hieronimo’s actions are so strategic that the Portuguese and Spanish royalties do not initially comprehend the murder of Lorenzo and Balthazar. Before he runs to hang himself, Hieronimo cries,
See here my show, look on this spectacle, […]
With pitchy silence hushed these traitors’ harms,
And let them leave, for they had sorted leisure
To take advantage in my garden plot
Upon my son, my dear Horatio.
There merciless they butchered up my boy,
In black, dark night, to pale, dim, cruel death
He shrieks, I heard—and yet, methinks, I hear—
His dismal outcry echo in the air. (4.4.88-108)
Hieronimo’s demand for spectators to look on his spectacle is a metatheatrical command. Here, Hieronimo is conscious of his play and is aware that he is being watched, not only by players, but the world outside the theatrical space, where Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy takes place. Hieronimo’s recollection of Horatio’s death is accompanied by pain. The phrase “Black, dark night, to pale, dim, cruel death” counteracts Hieronimo’s initial “Eyes, life, world, heavens, hell, night, and day” (3.2.22). Heavens—or divine intervention—no longer exist in Hieronimo’s world, for darkness has obscured God’s eyes. The employment of present tense in “shrieks,” “hears,” and “echo,” which are also acoustic words, takes spectators back to the night when Horatio was murdered and his cries were ignored by the cosmos, the complicit audience, and other characters in the play. By narrating Horatio’s death in a repetitive sequence, Hieronimo is emphasizing his view that it is justifiable for him to kill Balthazar and Lorenzo. Horatio’s death may be predetermined, but through the constant recounting of his death, Hieronimo becomes a guardian of Horatio’s premature death and a tragedian who transforms reality into a narrative. In retrospect, what is determined becomes an instrument of free will.
Furthermore, Hieronimo’s attempt to hold up his son’s body in the last act represents his persistence in defying the claim that justice is futile. Deep inside his heart, Hieronimo still believes in justice, even if it is not validated by divine power. When the dead Horatio becomes an actor on stage, life and death become one. Given the power of imagination, the dead can become undead, a source of vitality necessary for Hieronimo and the audience to experience catharsis. When Hieronimo recounts Horatio’s death, the spectators may also feel pain and suffering. The ultimate goal of vengeance, which is achieved by Hieronimo, is not only to kill, but to justify his motive for killing and eventually achieve equilibrium. When Bel-imperia asks Hieronimo, “With what excuses canst thou show thyself,” Bel-imperia is calling upon Hieronimo’s duty to be a father, not a murderer (Semenza 157). In his closing lines, Hieronimo reminds the audience of his paternal connection with Horatio, his son and his boy (4.4.104-105). In doing so, Hieronimo supports and advances the flawed yet necessary system of justice despite being limited by a theatrical space.
Lionel Abel asserts, “Tragedy makes human existence more vivid by showing its vulnerability to fate. Metatheatre makes human existence more dreamlike by showing that fate can be overcome” (113). In The Spanish Tragedy, the audience witnesses characters’ vulnerabilities and their triumph over deterministic fate. Kyd’s tragedy, according to Semenza, is a microcosm in which the world of the play reflects the world inhabited by the Elizabethan [audience] (154). It is true that the play references real questions and embodies realistic conflicts relevant to what the Elizabethans experienced. However, instead of a microcosm that “reflects,” I would argue that The Spanish Tragedy is a fundamental component of life, not just a mere reflection. When Don Andrea watches Hieronimo, the audience becomes him: curious, responsive, and alert. The moment Hieronimo pulls a deceased Horatio onto the stage, the complete shattering of the fourth wall allows the audience to experience Hieronimo’s pain. While playwrights, players, and spectators all live in restricted space, free will—and the awareness of motives—allows them to enact their version of justice.
Works Cited
Abel, Lionel. Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form. Hill and Wang, 1963.
Barish, Jonas A. “From The Spanish Tragedy, or The Pleasures and Perils of Rhetoric.” Neill, pp. 171-187.
Bradbrook, M. C. Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy. Cambridge UP, 1980.
Calvo, Clara, ed. The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd. Arden Shakespeare, 2013.
Egginton, William. How the World Became a Stage. State U of New York P, 2003.
Erne, Lukas. Beyond The Spanish Tragedy. Manchester UP, 2001.
Hamilton, Donna B. “From The Spanish Tragedy: A Speaking Picture.” Neill, pp. 189-203.
Neill, Michael, ed. The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd. Norton Critical Edition, Norton, 2014.
Pollard, Tanya. “Tragedy and Revenge.” Smith and Sullivan, pp. 58-72.
Semenza, Gregory M. Colón. “The Spanish Tragedy and Metatheatre.” Smith and Sullivan, pp. 153-162.
Smith, Emma, and Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr., ed. The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Tragedy. Cambridge UP, 2010.
Smith, Molly. “The Theater and the Scaffold: Death as Spectacle in The Spanish Tragedy.” Studies in English Literature, vol. 32, no. 2, spring 92, pp. 217. EBSCOhost,ccc.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=9208172691&site=ehost-live.
The Geneva Bible. 1560 Edition, Hendrickson, 2007.
Thompson, Ann, and Neil Taylor, ed. Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Arden Shakespeare, 2006.
Virgil. The Aeneid. Translated by John Dryden, the Franklin Library, 1982.
[1] The Oxford English Dictionary, “meta-, prefix.” “With sense ‘beyond, above, at a higher level’”; and “theatre, n.” “Dramatic performance as a branch of art.”
[2] The Oxford English Dictionary, “theatrum mundi, n.” “The theatre thought of as a presentation of all aspects of human life.”
[3] “Who his own self bare our sins in his body on the tree, that we being dead to sin, should live in righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24).
[4] “So the woman (seeing that the tree was good for meat, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired, to get knowledge) took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also her husband with her, and he did eat” (Genesis 3).
[5] The Oxford English Dictionary, “tragedy, n.” “An event, series of events, or situation causing great suffering, destruction, or distress, and typically involving death.”
[6] The Oxford English Dictionary, “tragedy, n.” “The genre of drama or literature which consists of tragedies; tragedies as a class; (also) the style or form of tragedies.”
[7] “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they all have one language, and this they begin to do, neither can they now be stopped from whatsoever they have imagined to do” (Genesis 11: 1-9).