Shakespeare and Kyd

It's inevitable that anyone who studies Hamlet will eventually encounter the scholarly discussion associating Shakespeare's play with that of one of his predecessors, Thomas Kyd, whose The Spanish Tragedy presents many themes that would work their way into Hamlet. Although I doubt that I am going to shine any new light on the points of comparison between the two plays here, I nonetheless wanted to put down in writing my observations after having read The Spanish Tragedy.

First of all, it's quite certain that Shakespeare would have been very familiar with The Spanish Tragedy. Written in the mid-1580s, the play was one of the most popular of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods. Though many of the thematic elements of the play were popular ones at the time, the precise combination of themes from The Spanish Tragedy that are repeated in Hamlet makes it highly unlikely that mere coincidence is at work here.

Beyond the fact that both plays are revenge tragedies that feature a ghost and a play-within-a-play, the most pronounced point of similarity between the two plays is the suicidal impulses experienced by the tragic avengers of both plays.  These suicidal tendencies are the distillation of a deep-seated melancholy that springs from grief. This melancholy disposition represents a transformation of character both for Hieronimo in TST and for Hamlet.  Each bore a different persona, a different personality before murder intruded on the father-son relationship.  Does this thematic element -- the suicidal urge in response to profound grief -- have its origins somehow in Senecan tragedy? I am not familiar enough with Seneca to be able to say, but it would be worth an investigation.  Regardless, both plays treat the suicidal impulse as a natural response to the death of one who is loved so dearly, and both plays present this kind of deep melancholy as an impediment to action -- ironically, an impediment to vengeance.

Hieronimo first presents his death wish in a speech immediately after his son's murder, in Act 2, Scene 5. After a dramatic expression of his desire to cease living, Hieronimo concludes his speech, which is in Latin, by saying:

Let me die with thee; thus would I go into the shadows. But nonetheless I will avoid yielding too quickly to death lest then no vengeance should follow thy death.
(Translation courtesy of the 1951 Croft Classics edition of the play.)

Hamlet inhabits a similar mental state, of course, when we first encounter him.  (It's also worth noting the parallels here to Romeo and Juliet and to the Pyramus and Thisbe parody in A Midsummer Night's Dream.)  Hamlet's first soliloquy -- "O that this too, too sullied flesh would melt" -- expresses his attitude, which might seem, to a modern audience, to display an unusual and extreme form of grief.  Considered as a response to Kyd's play, however, Hamlet's  suicidal despair makes more sense. 

It is tempting, then, in terms of this theme, to see Hamlet as a case of the anxiety of influence, that influence being limited not to Kyd but perhaps to other revenge tragedies of the time, which employed similar plot points and character features.  If we choose to see the play this way, we have to consider that as Shakespeare composed the play he consciously or subconsciously strived to one-up Kyd and other revenge tragedy writers at every step.  Shakespeare knew, as he drafted this play, that the story would remind audiences of Hieronimo. Dazed by grief, beset by confusion regarding the nature of his son's murder, Hieronimo delays in his pursuit of revenge.  Hamlet's delay, then, must be more pronounced in order to trump Hieronimo's.  Hamlet's morbid nature, his suicidal disposition, his antic behavior, all must seem more intense than Hieronimo's for the play to work.  Shakespeare could take it for granted that play-going audiences would be familiar with the generic conventions of revenge tragedy.  The masterstroke of the revenge tragedy genre is the delay, the period of feigned madness that comes perilously close to the real thing -- and in Hamlet seems to become quite actually the real thing.

In TST, however, Kyd ultimately gives us the perfect avenger in Hieronimo.  Hamlet, by contrast, is a reluctant avenger who, it seems, would rather return to his studies in Germany.  Vengeance is Hieronimo's only motive, the only thing that holds him upright after his son's death, the only thing that animates his flesh.  His delay is initially a practical matter -- he does not know who has killed his son.  Next, he suspects but does not know for sure; he is worried he is being tricked.  Hieronimo doubts the letter that Bel-Imperia sends to him -- written grotesquely with her own blood -- suspecting it may be entrapment.  He seeks to verify the information contained in it just as Hamlet will seek to verify the Ghost's word as genuine.  When Hieronimo finally knows with certainty, he has to face the task of seeking vengeance upon some very important members of the royal court, people above his station, just as Hamlet has to venge himself upon his King and uncle.  Hieronimo devises his plan; then he follows it out to the very letter.  To be sure, Hamlet, by contrast, stumbles somewhat into vengeance in his own Act 5.  He is perhaps merely fulfilling the fate that is ordained to him, but there is no pronounced plan at work when Hamlet finally swashbuckles his way to Claudius' death -- and Hamlet's own.  Does Hamlet know that the fate of the revenger also entails the avenger's own destruction?  (He certainly seems to: "The readiness is all," he claims, and we suspect that he knows he is facing more than mere sport in what awaits.)  If so, perhaps it is because he, too, an avid theatregoer, is aware of what happens to Hieronimo.

Hamlet's delay, in the context of Hieronimo's delay, and in the context of the ruination that is the result of Hieronimo's finally revenging the murder, is both more understandable and more curious.  Hamlet has to delay because Hieronimo delays, and he has to delay more profoundly.  But why else should Hamlet delay?  Hamlet doubts the nature of the task, doubts himself, doubts the nature of all that he perceives, and, as I said, would rather resume his studies at the university, where he is learning to be a modern skeptic rather than the medieval prince who would be his father's son.  A mere precautionary measure and a matter of mere strategy to Hieronimo become to Hamlet representations of the qualities of his character.  He endlessly questions just about everything.  Through Shakespeare's pen, this quality in Hamlet gives his character depth, and it generates a sense of ambiguity.  It gives us time to see the reluctance in Hamlet's character.  (Hamlet's eventual springing into action mode in Act 5, then, makes him, in a Kantian way, all the more the hero because he has, against his nature, summoned up the courage to act.)  Hamlet presents to us a very different kind of avenger than the one we have with Hieronimo, whose delay occupies only about a third of TST, while Hamlet's occupies nearly the entirety of the play that bears his name.  It may well be that Hamlet's delay is primarily plot-driven: Shakespeare needed a five-act play, and vengeance automatic is not going to supply acts two to four.  But still, the result is the same: we are left to make sense of acts two through four.  If Shakespeare's strategy here is merely to fill up the acts, he succeeds beyond the measure of his ambition, and the material he creates is so convincing and compelling that we have to treat it as though there were more to it.  The relationship between structure and theme is so tight here that it may be impossible to separate the two.

Hieronimo does in fact possess a depth of character, as well, even if it is not so deeply pronounced as Hamlet's.  Part of TST's emotional resonance comes from the fact that its hero cannot speak of what he believes to be true, especially not to Lorenzo, the chief villain of the play.  Hieronimo says, "My grief no heart, my thoughts no tongue can tell" (Act 3, Scene 2).  Hamlet says nearly the same: "But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue" (Act 1, Scene 2).  The suffering that each hero bears, audible only to the audience, is a clear point of comparison between the two plays.  Furthermore, both characters take on a madness that is partly feigned and partly real.  Compare Hieronimo's clever disguise -- "my simplicity may make them think / That ignorantly I will let all slip" (Act 4, Scene 6) -- with Hamlet's -- "As I perchance hereafter shall think meet / To put an antic disposition on" (Act 1, Scene 5).  Both heroes must not be themselves in order ultimately to be themselves.

Finally, in comparing these two, we have the fact that both protagonists are playwrights.  Hieronimo is a playwright by circumstance.  The plan to perform a drama is a mechanism by which he will exact vengeance on his son's killers.  Hamlet, by contrast, is a playwright and dramaturge by nature.  It just so happens that the play he directs presents the opportunity to catch his father's killer through the study of physiognomy. 

In both plays, the suicidal impulse must also extend beyond the tragic heroes.  In TST, it reaches Isabella, Hieronimo's wife, who succumbs to her suicidal yearnings late in the play but before revenge is acted out.  In Hamlet, it destroys Ophelia, whose "self-slaughter," to borrow, out of context, a term from Hamlet, seems to be both an accident and an event with very clear antecedents.  And of course, in both plays the body counts only mount from the points of these deaths onward.

Some further differences that must be noted include the inversion of father-son relationships (in terms of who is to be avenged and who is to seek the vengeance) and the frankly pagan attitude of the Kyd play, which boldly and unequivocally takes place in a universe in which the geography of classical mythology is valid, thus providing a pronounced contrast to the obsession with Christian religious themes that we see in Hamlet.  Christian values are frequently cited as reasons for what not to do in Hamlet (reason not to commit suicide, reason not to kill a murderer who is, theoretically, praying, but, oddly enough, not reason to follow the Bible's advice ["Vengeance is mine ... saith the Lord"] and forebear seeking revenge), but we rarely see actions performed on the basis of the core Christian principals of faith, hope, and charity, or any other Christian value, for that matter.  Still, the play inhabits a universe in which Christian beliefs provide context.

Would it be fair to say that if there were no Spanish Tragedy there would be no Hamlet?  In such cases, it is always impossible to claim much of anything with certainty, but at the very least Hamlet would doubtless have been a very different thing if not for Kyd's play.  The Spanish Tragedy does have a certain flair to it -- though melodramatic at times and a bit pedestrian in its language, it is a highly readable play, one that is almost flawlessly strucutred and designed, one that features well-drawn and compelling characters.  Shakespeare's play, by contrast, is at times a glorious mess, which is no doubt partly due to the fact that the text was likely never prepared for publication by its author, but also perhaps due to something else at work in Shakespeare -- in all of his works, not just the one in question here.  So many things are going at so many different levels.  Shakespeare's language is dynamic and, when he wants it to be, sophisticated; with every word and phrase he grasps for something distinctive.  But he also creates some scattershot imagery at times, as in the "To be or not to be" soliloquy with that business of "slings and arrows" and other military-style references mixing it up with a "sea of troubles."  This kind of mixed metaphor is not an isolated incident in Shakespeare.  Yet, all told, the speech is movingly profound, and the play digs more deeply into our consciousness -- and into that of the play's protagonist -- than The Spanish Tragedy ever does.  I say this not to diminish the significance of Kyd's work, but to say that all the patter about Shakespeare over the centuries is a legitimately warranted phenomenon.  It is hard to pin down exactly what it is about Shakespeare that makes him superior to a Kyd or a Marlowe, but superior he is.  Perhaps it is exactly this quality -- that it is hard to get a handle on things in Shakespeare -- that makes him so great.  We know that the words are powerful, but we have a hard time figuring out what exactly it is that they mean.