ABSTRACT
By far the most influential play during the English Renaissance was The Spanish Tragedy, written (c.1585-90) by Thomas Kyd, the unfortunate playwright who was imprisoned, tortured, and professionally ruined as a consequence of having shared lodgings with Christopher Marlowe. One of the most remarkable features of this tragedy is its overt theatricality: its consciousness of itself as drama; its presentation of dramatic entertainments as part of the plot; its continuous use of metaphors that emphasise the resemblance between life and the stage, action and acting, intrigue and plot. There is no theatricality of this kind in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great. But due in some measure no doubt to the enormous popularity of Kyd’s play, the ludic conception is conspicuous in Marlowe’s later work: in Edward II and, most notably, in The Jew of Malta and Doctor Faustus.
