Hieronimo is the great character of the play. Most of the others are mere continuations, serviceable enough but without improvement, of those in Jeronimo, Pedringano being a second edition of Lazarotto. But from the outline sufficient may be gathered to make unnecessary a long analysis of the author's new and greatest creation. We see in it originality of conception; we are touched by its intense humanness and by its inherent simplicity; but we are startled by its change, its growth, under the influence of circumstances, to a certain subtle complexity. All are great qualities, but the last is the greatest. Growth, the reaction of events upon character—not the easily portrayed action of character upon events—are the marks by which we recognize the work of the master-artists in characterization. We can guess at the tragic intensity of human sorrow from the difference between the simple-minded little Marshal who acts as Master of the Revels in arranging a 'show' and illustrates his reason for preferring Horatio's claim to be Balthazar's captor by quaint parallels from some old fable, and the arch-deceiver who can converse easily with the Duke of Castile as he fixes up the curtain that is to conceal Horatio's corpse and be the background to the murder of the duke's only son and daughter. Hieronimo's smallest claim to greatness, yet a considerable one, is the fact that he revealed to playwrights the strength and horror of madness on the stage. Of the extent to which Shakespeare made use of this character and certain scenes a reminder may be added. In Hamlet is found madness, assumed simplicity, delay in action, the invisible influence of the supernatural, and sacrifice of the avenger's life in the attainment of revenge, besides the ordinarily remembered adoption of an inset play. King Lear, in the scene between the king and Edgar on the heath, echoes the scene between Hieronimo and Bazulto.
Humour is absent from the play, unless we extend the courtesy of that name to the grim hoax (explained to us by a chuckling page, who thoroughly enjoys his part in it) practised by Lorenzo upon Pedringano, and the consequently mocking spirit of jest which pervades the hall of judgment during the misguided wretch's trial. The pert confidence of the prisoner, at the foot of the gallows, in the saving contents of a certain box, which the audience knows to be empty, is dramatic irony in its bitterest form.
Hard words have been written about the horrible scenes in the play, as though it were a huddled-up bundle of bloodshed and ghosts. Such a conception is far from the truth. Horror is an element in almost all powerful tragedies; it is hardly to be separated from any unexpected or violent death. We reject it as monstrous only when its cause is the product of a vile and unnatural motive, or of a motive criminally insufficient to explain the impulse. What is repulsive in Arden of Feversham, and in such recognized 'Tragedies of Blood' as have Tourneur, Marston and Webster for their authors, is the utter callousness of the murderers, and their base aims, or disgusting lack of any reasonable excuse for their crimes. When D'Amville pushes his brother over the edge of the quarry, or Antonio stabs the child Julio, or Bosola heaps torments upon the Duchess of Malfi, we turn away with loathing because the deed is either cruelly undeserved or utterly unwarranted by the gain expected from it. Alice Arden's murder of her husband is mainly detestable because her ulterior motive is detestable. Again, the ghosts which Marston and Chapman give us are absurd creatures of 'too, too solid flesh', who will sit on the bed to talk comfortably to one, draw the curtains when one wishes to sleep, or play the scout and call out in warning whenever danger threatens. Kyd does not serve up crime and the supernatural world thus. He shows us terrible things, it is true. But the causes are to be found deep down in the primary impulses of man, in jealousy, in fear, in despair, in blood-revenge. These impulses are not vile; our moral code does not cry out against them as it does against lust, greed, and motiveless cruelty. When we rise from the play it is not with a sense that we have moved amongst base creatures. Lorenzo repels us; but it is Hieronimo who dominates the stage, filling us with pity for his wrongs and weakness. The supernatural remains outside nature, crude, as all stage representations of it must be, but unobtrusive (and, in the prologue, at least, thoroughly dignified), serving a useful purpose in keeping before us the imminence of Nemesis biding its appointed hour. It is not easy to suggest how better an insistence upon this lofty motif could have been maintained.
If we now revert to our former statement of the essential elements of a successful tragedy we find that each has been included and lifted to a high level in Kyd's masterpiece. The catastrophe is not only overwhelming but greatly just. The figure of Hieronimo has set a new standard in characterization. Scene after scene stamps itself on our memory. And the procrastinating evolution of the plot keeps us in fear, in hope, in uncertainty to the last. If this estimate of the greatness of the play seems exaggerated, we may fairly ask what other tragedy, before its date, combines all four qualities in the same degree of excellence. Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta contain far more wonderful verse, and the former holds within it grander material for tragedy, but as an example of tragic craftmanship The Spanish Tragedy is inferior to neither. It can be shown that both suffer very seriously from the neglect of one or more of the four essentials which we have named.
It is only fair to the reader to add that entirely opposite views to those set forth above have been expressed by other writers. Perhaps the most slashing criticism of the play is that by Mr. Courthope.[64]
It remains to illustrate Kyd's verse. In The Spanish Tragedy it still clings to the occasional use of rhyme, as in Jeronimo. Moreover it is becoming, if anything, more restrained, less spontaneously natural. The weight of tragedy seems to oppress the poetic inspiration, so that it rarely ventures outside the limits of melancholy dignity or regulated passion. Kyd's formalism is, unfortunately for him, magnified by its contrast with the superb freedom of the interpolated passages. If we resolutely shut our eyes to these patches of fierce irregularity, we shall be better able to criticize the author's own work by the standard of his contemporaries. The uncertainty of priority in time encourages a comparison between Kyd and Marlowe. It is fairly clear that the former was not much influenced by the latter, or he would have caught the taint of rant and bombast which infected Greene and Peele. If, then, Kyd's blank verse is an original development of the verse of Gorboduc and other Senecan plays, and if he is the author of Jeronimo—the verse of which, as may have been seen from the quotations offered, is very much freer than that of The Spanish Tragedy—he must share some of the honour accorded to Marlowe as the father of dramatic blank verse. The two men are not on the same level as poets. Marlowe's muse soars repeatedly to heights which Kyd's can only reach at rare moments. Nevertheless, a comparison of Kyd's better passages with those of Sackville and Hughes will demonstrate how much blank verse might have owed to his creative spirit had not Marlowe arisen at the same time to eclipse him by his greater genius. Isolated extracts offer a poor criterion, but the following—to be read in conjunction with those selected from Jeronimo and Soliman and Perseda—will help the reader to form at least an idea of Kyd's originality and ability:
(1)
[Isabella rejects all medicine for her grief.]
Isabella. So that you say this herb will purge the eye,
And this the head. Ah, but none of them will purge the heart!
No, there's no medicine left for my disease,
Nor any physic to recure the dead. [She runs lunatic.
Horatio! O, where's Horatio?
Maid. Good madam, affright not thus yourself
With outrage for your son Horatio;
He sleeps in quiet in the Elysian fields.