A House Divided: The Politics of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy
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Date
2014-05
Authors
Williams, Christian
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Ohio State University
Abstract
Many scholars have written about the social and political issues and conflicts that plagued both the historical and fictional sixteenth-century Spain represented in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. Some scholars allude to the historical national conflict between sixteenth-century Spain and England while others discuss class antagonism, gender struggle and familial issues in the drama. In my essay, I bring together these different ideas, reproduce them in a single work and present The Spanish Tragedy as a holistic and all-encompassing depiction of sociopolitical struggle that afflicted sixteenth-century Spain. In reproducing Spain’s sixteenth-century sociopolitical world, Kyd writes The Spanish Tragedy as a war story in which he captures conflict, not only on a national scale, but among characters and “little” alliances within the Spanish state. Spain is therefore presented as having to deal with warfare on two fronts: one abroad and one at home. Though Spain seeks to align its nation with Portugal in preparation for a possible war against “little England,” the conflict among members of the Spanish regime show us a nation also at war with itself. As a consequence, because a “house divided against itself cannot stand” (Mark 3:25), a nation at war with itself is destined to be destroyed, not from without, but from within.
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Keywords
Politics, Class, Gender, War, Marriage, National