ABSTRACT
The persistence of ‘Broudian’ readings of The Spanish Tragedy is visible in an essay by J.R. Mulryne published in 1996, in which he discusses Hieronimo’s play ‘Soliman and Perseda’ as follows: ‘If we accept the Hispanophobic prejudice drawn out by [Ronald] Broude and [Eugene] Hill as pertinent to the play as a whole, then the relevance of the Turkish tragedy of Soliman and Perseda to the play’s portrayal of the fall of the papist realm of Spain becomes obvious.’3 Reflecting the importance of The Spanish Tragedy in Broude’s theory of ‘classic’ revenges, this tragedy was the only one to which Broude accorded a whole essay on matters religious.4 Since this essay presents Broude’s most detailed and developed illustration of his theory, it is without apology that I begin with a consideration of Hill and Broude’s specific arguments: on them both, as Mulryne recognized, The Spanish Tragedy’s alleged anti-Catholicism has substantially rested, while Broude’s particular attention to the play deserves a particular response. Despite Mulryne, however, notice from the outset that although given focus by a Spanish Armada both threatened and in 1588 delivered, English antipathy to Imperial Spain is not to be equated simply with anti-Catholicism: irrespective of their religion, Elizabethans (including Catholics)
1 Parts of the first section of this chapter have been previously published in a journal as: Thomas Rist, ‘Memorial Revenge at the Reformations(s): Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy’, in Cahiers Elisabéthains: A Biannual Journal of English Renaissance Studies 71 (Spring 2007), pp. 15-25.
