ABSTRACT
From the time of its composition in the 1580s until the closing of the English theatres in 1642, Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy was frequently performed on the stage and appeared in nine known printed editions. The divergent modes of linear perspective referenced in both The Spanish Tragedy and the Painter Addition may be usefully correlated to competing notions of representation described in the work of Svetlana Alpers, first in an article and later in her book The Art of Describing. In The Spanish Tragedy, the various levels of the stage itself are shared by characters and spectators, who are all watched in turn by the even more spectral playhouse audience. Kyd's original play therefore draws on the visual arts, perhaps especially Italianate linear perspective, both by the nature of the framing device but also by his exploitation of the spatial arrangement of the Elizabethan playhouse to shape and give depth to the materials of his drama.
