A Study Guide for Thomas Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.

Reproduction of the original: The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd

The Spanish Tragedy was the first 'revenge tragedy' on the English Renaissance stage: but for its influence, major dramas including The Revenger's Tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi and even Hamlet would not exist as they do. It is thus a key text for the study of Renaissance drama and normally appears in introductory undergraduate courses on Renaissance drama and Shakespeare. Despite its initial smash-hit status, after the closing of the theatres in 1642 the play was only once performed in Britain before its gradual revival in the 20th century. Following its first professional performance in 1973, the play has come to be recognised as a Renaissance classic, receiving frequent performance. This volume will bring together its most insightful and influential modern scholars to produce an edition read both by experts in the field and lovers of Thomas Kyd's drama.

Soliman and Perseda, written c. 1588 and first published in 1592 or 1593, is a late Elizabethan romantic tragedy by Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy. It dramatises the triangular relationship of the Turkish emperor Soliman, his captive Perseda and her beloved Erastus, and the fortunes of the comic servant Piston and the braggart knight Basilisco, against the fictionalised backdrop of the Turkish invasion of Rhodes in the early sixteenth century. The introduction to this facsimile edition contains the fullest analysis of the text to date. It also provides an account of the play's editorial history, a detailed analysis of its original printing, and lists of all erroneous readings in the first quarto, together with significant differences between the first and second quartos. This edition provides the best access we have to an important play by one of Shakespeare's leading early contemporaries.

Doing Kyd reads Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, the box-office and print success of its time, as the play that established the revenge genre in England and served as a ‘pattern and precedent’ for the golden generation of early modern playwrights, from Marlowe and Shakespeare to Middleton, Webster and Ford. Interdisciplinary in approach and accessible in style, this collection is crucial in two respects: firstly, it has a wide spectrum, addressing readers with interests in the play from its early impact as the first sixteenth-century revenge tragedy, to its afterlife in print, on the stage, in screen adaptation and bibliographical studies. Secondly, the collection appears at a time when Kyd and his play are back in the spotlight, through renewed critical interest, several new stage productions between 2009 and 2013, and its firm presence in higher-education curriculum for English and drama.