Legacies of Revenge: The Spanish Tragedy in Performance & Context

 By Melody Gleason MA '25

Over the past two semesters, Dr. Dailey, Dr. Chelsea Phillips from the Theater department, and a group of students from various programs and departments have been working together to examine the theme of revenge and justice as a tragic element. The first half of this project started as class in the fall 2023 semester called, Legacies of Revenge – Across Time, Space, Genre, & Media. The course engaged both graduate and undergraduate students from multiple disciplines including English majors, minors, and theatre majors. Students in the course studied narratives of revenge across a plethora of entertainment mediums: from classical drama, to contemporary fiction, to modern film. The class especially focused on the play, The Spanish Tragedy written in the 1580s. 

Dr. Dailey describes The Spanish Tragedy as “the precursor to Hamlet and to a whole extensive revenge tragedy genre that enters the Elizabethan Theater scene through the Spanish tragedies. So it’s an enormously influential, important play, but it’s very rarely performed.” 

 Lucky for us, The Spanish Tragedy is being put on here at Villanova this April! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see an incredible work of tragic drama put on by your peers, colleagues, and friends at Villanova. This is Dr. Dailey’s fourth collaborative production at Villanova but her first full-on theatrical production within the theater department. It also serves as an honorary second part to the fall course, as most of the students are now helping to put on this production. Many different people from different areas of Villanova are coming together to work on this project. 

Dr. Dailey notes, “I think part of what’s been really cool about it is that we have a lot of skill sets represented and a lot of different kinds of creativity, different ranges of experience, but I think it’s very clear to the cast that we need everybody and that the show is dependent on the skills of a range of people. What has been conveyed to us is that it’s kind of bringing people together in an exciting way and helping them to appreciate what these other populations of people at Villanova have to offer.” 

This interdisciplinary approach is one of the greatest aspects of the production as not many other academic and creative endeavors on campus provide such an opportunity to work with others outside of your field of study.

Sam Phillips, an English MA student said, “I feel like all education should be like that. Not a lot of people fully experience it, but I think one of the things that's important about literature studies, especially as they keep getting put into question, what is English and how do how do English studies stay alive is: who do you have to talk to? and where does that go? And a lot of that has to do with also the same questions that theaters are asking: how do we stay alive? How do we get money? How do we get people? And the sensationalization, the bringing together different voices, this kind of collaborative nature is the root of art that seems to get forgotten about.” 

So what exactly is the play about? Villanova’s Theatre website reads:

“Before Game of Thrones, before Kill Bill, before Carrie – even before Hamlet – there was The Spanish Tragedy, the great-granddaddy of modern revenge tales. Deprived of justice for the murder of his son, the loyal courtier Hieronimo abandons legal redress and, joined by the canny and resolute Bel-Imperia, sets out to seek blood for blood. With its intricate plotting and bold theatricality, Thomas Kyd’s timeless tragedy speaks to our present moment with its unflinching look at judicial inequity, legacies of violence and the all-too-persistent seduction of vengeance.” 

The Spanish tragedy merges some classical dramatic material, Senecan tragedy, and that kind of material where plots are ignited by these extended revenge cycles. It's a place where a bunch of those things come together with a ghost and kind of give birth to, on the Elizabethan stage, something like the ghost of Hamlet's father. The Spanish tragedy introduces revenge as a tragic motive. 

If you’re not a fan of classical drama, don’t let that deter you. 

“There’s some contemporary influence and we’re not making it super faithful to the period which I like. I think it's going to be an interesting artistic creation as a whole, not just like going to an old play” - Anabella Nordlund, English MA student. 

Overall, as English MA student Mahtab Chaudhry tells us, it is a “very fun, very violent, very bloody,” and significant piece of early 16th century drama that should be fun to see. 

You can read more about the production and get your tickets now at this link! Tickets are already going quickly so get them while you can!