Social consciousness: Spaces for characters in The 'Spanish Tragedy' (Thomas Kyd)

Though the historical conditions shaping a play like Kyd's Spanish Tragedy dictate a notion of character quite different from the rounded psyches we e xpect in much twentieth century drama, it is mistaken to assume that the ch aracters are merely the projections of rhetorical tropes. As is demonstrate d by an analysis grounded in performance and the problems of staging Kyd's characters for a modern audience, the characters possess rudimentary or emb ryonic consciousness visible in, even generated by, the conflict between th eir social positions and their dramatic functions. When fissures in the rhe toric defining characters such as Balthazar, the Portuguese Viceroy and Hie ronimo open up, they expose not only the consciousnesses behind the rhetori c, but also the social and dramatic reasons for the existence and nature of that rhetoric. Thus Hieronimo, deprived of a language for grief and domest ic intimacy by his courtly function, is transformed rhetorically into a Sen ecan revenger on the death of his son. This moment of transition, like that when he loses tongues, identity and life on the conclusion of the revenge, centers on a moment in which the formulaic rhetoric is momentarily suspend ed, revealing a consciousness seeking a new mode of expression and self-def inition.