The Spanish Tragedy

The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again 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. It is considered one of the most influential plays of the Renaissance theatre. The play contains several violent murders and personifies Revenge as its own character. The Spanish Tragedy is often considered to be the first mature Elizabethan drama, a claim disputed with Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine, and was parodied by many Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, including Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

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. (Thomas Kyd is frequently proposed as the author of the hypothetical Ur-Hamlet that may have been one of Shakespeare's primary sources for Hamlet.)

Lord Strange's Men staged a play that the records call Jeronimo on 23 February 1592 at The Rose for Philip Henslowe, and repeated it sixteen times to 22 January 1593. It is unlikely, however, that the performance in February 1592 was the play's first performance, as Henslowe did not mark it as 'ne' (new). It is unclear whether Jeronimo was The Spanish Tragedy, or The First Part of Hieronimo (printed in 1604), the anonymous "prequel" to Kyd's play. The two plays were staged as pairs (over consecutive performances) in March and May 1597.

English actors performed the play on tour in Germany in 1592. The Admiral's Men revived Kyd's original on 7 January 1597, and performed it twelve times to 19 July; they staged another performance jointly with Pembroke's Men on 11 October of the same year. The records of Philip Henslowe suggest that the play was on stage again in 1601 and 1602.

The play became a popular hit in Germany and The Netherlands. Playwright Jakob Ayrer produced a translation into German before 1600, which appeared in an anthology of his plays in 1618. Everaert Siceram included scenes in his Dutch translation of Orlando Furioso, published Antwerp, 1615.

The Spanish Tragedy was performed at London's National Theatre, first in 1982 at the Cottesloe Theatre, with Michael Bryant in the role of Hieronimo, directed by Michael Bogdanov. It transferred to the Lyttelton Theatre in 1984.

The Royal Shakespeare Company performed The Spanish Tragedy in May 1997 at the Swan Theatre, directed by Michael Boyd. The cast included Siobhan Redmond as Bel-imperia, Robert Glenister as Lorenzo, Peter Wight as Hieronimo, Jeffry Wickham as the King of Spain. The production later transferred to The Pit at London's Barbican in November 1997.

An amateur production of The Spanish Tragedy was performed 2–6 June 2009 by students from Oxford University, in the second quad of Oriel College, Oxford. Another amateur production was presented by the Hyperion Shakespeare Company 21–30 October 2010 with students from Harvard University in Harvard's New College Theatre. In November 2012, Perchance Theatre in association with Cambridge University's Marlowe Society staged a site-specific production in King's College Chapel, Cambridge. In October/November 2013, the Baron's Men of Austin, TX performed the work in a near-uncut state, with period costumes and effects, at Richard Garriott's Curtain Theatre, a mini replica of the Globe Theatre. Another amateur production was presented by the Experimental Theater Board of Carleton College 27–29 May 2015.