Question

Write an essay on the senecan elements in the spanish tragedy

Answer 1

The Spanish Tragedy’ or ‘Hieronimo is Mad Again’, a popular Elizabethan revenge tragedy by Tomas Kid is highly is highly influenced by Seneca, a Roman dramatist. ... Senecan tragedy is a form of tragedy modelled on the drama of Seneca. ... Christopher Marlowe’s “The Jew of ...

Answer 2

The Spanish Tragedy belongs to a class of drama known as the revenge play, which comes from the pen of Thomas Kyd (1558-1594). Almost all the English playwrights of that time followed the Classical playwrights, Classical tragedies. Kyd also did the same. Especially he followed Roman playwright Lucius Annaneus Seneca (4BC-65AD) blindly. So he is called The English Seneca.

Seneca was also a Roman Stoic philosopher. Primly he wrote tragic dramas. His dramas were full of melodramatic elements, such as, blood-shed, killing, assassination, horror scenes, etc. For these reasons his dramas are suitable for only to read in chamber or in closed room. Let us now have a brief discussion about the elements of Seneca used by Kyd in his play The Spanish Tragedy.

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.

          In the revenge plays of Seneca, we find an introduction to ghost. And in the same way Kyd in The Spanish Tragedy has also introduced some supernatural machinery, such as The Ghost of Andrea and The Spirit of Revenge, who serve the purpose of chorus. Beside a Du mb Show that takes place in Act 3, Scene 15 is also an element of supernatural mystery.

In fine, from the light of the above discussion it has been cleared that Thomas Kyd is the pioneer of revenge tragedy following the traditions of Seneca, though Senecan plays were only for reading out not for enacting. In this play The Spanish Tragedy, he has used elements of Seneca profoundly. As Kyd indiscreetly followed the elements of Seneca is his play, so his has rightly been called The English Seneca.