The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592,  "The Spanish Tragedy" was often referred to (or parodied) in works written by other Elizabethan playwrights, including which English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era, also known as Kit Marlowe?
Christopher Marlowe
Title: Hieronimo
Passage: Hieronimo is one of the principal characters in Thomas Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy".  He is the knight marshal of Spain and the father of Horatio.  In the onset of the play he is a dedicated servant to the King of Spain.  However, the difference in social status becomes apparent when his son is wrongfully murdered by Balthazar, the son of the viceroy of Portugal, and Lorenzo, the son of the Duke of Spain, which eventually causes tragic events to unfold.  In order to revenge the death of his son, Hieronimo takes on additional roles, a playwright and an actor.  He uses his position in the King's court to write and perform a play within a play.  This performance mirrors the actual events surrounding Horatio's death, and within this show Hieronimo commits his own acts of revenge against the perpetrators.  Many critics see Hieronimo as a dynamic character that by the end of the tragedy has become obsessed with taking revenge against the murderers of his son.  Literature of 16th century England was greatly concerned with plots of deceit, confusion and madness as its central theme.  The Spanish Tragedy is no different.
Title: The Siege of Numantia
Passage: The Siege of Numantia (Spanish: El cerco de Numancia ) is a tragedy by Miguel de Cervantes set at the siege of Numantia.  The play is divided into four acts, ("jornadas", or "days").  The dialogue is sometimes in tercets and sometimes in "redondillas", but for the most part in octaves.  The work was composed "circa" 1582 and was apparently very successful in the years before the advent of the playwright Lope de Vega.  It remained unpublished until the eighteenth-century.  Since then, it has been hailed by many as a “rare specimen of Spanish tragedy” and even as the best Spanish tragedy not only from the period before Lope de Vega, but of all its literature.  Some critics have seen resemblances between Cervantes' tragedy and Aeschylus's "The Persians", while others reject that the play is a conventional tragedy.  Some envision the play as containing epic elements or even exhibiting opposing epics: Virgil's "Aeneid" and Lucan's "Pharsalia", while Barbara Simerka argues for generic instability and the counter-epic
Title: Christopher Marlowe
Passage: Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (baptised 26 February 156430 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era.  Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day.  He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's mysterious early death.  Marlowe's plays are known for the use of blank verse and their overreaching protagonists.
Title: The Spanish Tragedy
Passage: 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.  Its plot contains several violent murders and includes as one of its characters a personification of Revenge.  "The Spanish Tragedy" was often referred to (or parodied) in works written by other Elizabethan playwrights, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe.
Title: Bel-imperia
Passage: Bel-imperia is a character in Thomas Kyd’s "The Spanish Tragedy".  She is the daughter of the Duke of Castile, the sister of Lorenzo, and the lover of the dead Don Andrea.  Throughout the play, Bel-imperia attempts to avenge the death of Don Andrea.  She begins by feigning a relationship with Horatio to “spite the prince that wrought his end”, then joins forces with Hieronimo to eventually murder Balthazar and complete her revenge mission.  However, critics view Bel-imperia in various roles based on her actions throughout the play.
Title: Senecan tragedy
Passage: Senecan tragedy refers to a set of ancient Roman tragedies.  Ten of these plays exist, of which most likely eight were written by the Stoic philosopher and politician Lucius Annaeus Seneca.  The group includes "Hercules Furens", "Medea", "Troades", "Phaedra", "Agamemnon", "Oedipus", "Phoenissae", "Thyestes", "Hercules Oetaeus", and "Octavia".  "Hercules Oetaeus" is generally considered not to have been written by Seneca, and "Octavia" is certainly not.  In the mid-16th century, Italian humanists rediscovered these works, making them models for the revival of tragedy on the Renaissance stage.  The two great, but very different, dramatic traditions of the age — French neoclassical tragedy and Elizabethan tragedy — both drew inspiration from Seneca.  Usually, the Senecan tragedy focuses heavily on supernatural elements.
Title: Tamburlaine
Passage: Tamburlaine the Great is a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe.  It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor, Timur (Tamerlane/Timur the Lame, d. 1405).  Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan public drama; it marks a turning away from the clumsy language and loose plotting of the earlier Tudor dramatists, and a new interest in fresh and vivid language, memorable action, and intellectual complexity.  Along with Thomas Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy", it may be considered the first popular success of London's public stage.
Title: Thomas Kyd
Passage: Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English playwright, the author of "The Spanish Tragedy", and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.
Title: Induction (play)
Passage: An induction in a play is an explanatory scene, summary or other text that stands outside and apart from the main action with the intent to comment on it, moralize about it or in the case of dumb show to summarize the plot or underscore what is afoot.  Typically, an induction precedes the main text of a play.  Inductions are a common feature of plays written and performed in the Renaissance period, including those of Shakespeare.  While Shakespeare plays do not typically have inductions, they are sometimes depicted as part of the device of the play within the play.  Examples include the dumb show in "Hamlet" and the address to the audience by Puck in "A Midsummer Night's Dream".  Another example, in "The Spanish Tragedy" by Thomas Kyd, is the introduction to that play by the ghost of Andrea who preps the audience by laying out the story to come.  Likewise, Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" opens with induction scenes which involve characters watching the play proper.
Title: Revenge tragedy
Passage: Revenge tragedy (less commonly referred to as revenge drama, revenge play, or tragedy of blood) defines a genre of plays made popular in early modern England.  Ashley H. Thorndike formally established this genre in his seminal 1902 article "The Relations of Hamlet to Contemporary Revenge Plays," which characterizes revenge tragedy "as a tragedy whose leading motive is revenge and whose main action deals with the progress of this revenge, leading to the death of the murderers and often the death of the avenger himself."  Thomas Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy" (c.1580s) is often considered the inaugural revenge tragedy on the early modern stage.  However, more recent research extends early modern revenge tragedy to the 1560s with poet and classicist Jasper Heywood's translations of Seneca at Oxford University, including "Troas" (1559), "Thyestes" (1560), and "Hercules Furens" (1561).  Additionally, Thomases Norton and Sackville's play "Gorbuduc" (1561) is considered an early revenge tragedy (almost twenty years prior to "The Spanish Tragedy").  Other well-known revenge tragedies include William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (c.1599-1602) and "Titus Andronicus" (c.1588-1593) and Thomas Middleton's "The Revenger's Tragedy" (c.1606).
Christopher Marlowe The Spanish Tragedy