ABSTRACT
The Spanish Tragedy's climactic playlet in "sundry languages" is orchestrated by Hieronimo, Spain's Knight Marshal. Despite its "pocas palabras", The Spanish Tragedy has received significant critical attention for its "sundry languages", which take the forms of Latin sententiae, Italian mottos, and the violent multilingual playlet in which the tragedy is consummated. This chapter considers the Spanish Tragedy as a touchstone, a play that did much to fix English ideas about Spain-and about language-even as it built on earlier models of strange Spanish speakers. The Spanish suit, the vice conventions attendant on Spanish speech and the range of theatrically interesting languages that accompany stage Spanish all make Spanish speakers seem both familiar and fictionalized. While the playlet may express anxieties about English, it aims most of its vengeful energy against unintelligibility: that is, against languages that frustrate open communication, social cohesion, and the orderly administration of justice.
