The Spanish Tragedy

In Act II, Horatio’s murder at the hands of Lorenzo and Balthazar sets the main plot—Hieronimo and Bel-Imperia’s quest for revenge—in motion and adds another dimension to The Complexities of Justice and Revenge for both Bel-Imperia and Hieronimo. 

Horatio and Bel-Imperia’s second meeting is secretly spied upon by Lorenzo and Balthazar, who comment on the lovers’ exchange; the audience can hear them, but Bel-Imperia and Horatio are unaware of the villains’ presence. As they eavesdrop on the lovers, Lorenzo uses antithesis to contradict Balthazar’s fatalistic reaction to seeing Horatio and Bel-Imperia together:

BALTHAZAR. Oh sleep, mine eyes, see not my love profaned;

Be deaf, my ears, hear not my discontent;

Die, heart: another joys what thou deservest. 

LORENZO. Watch still, mine eyes, to see this love disjoined;

Hear still, mine ears, to hear them both lament;

Live, heart, to joy at fond Horatio’s fall (2.2.18-23).

Lorenzo takes the rhetorical structure of Balthazar’s lament and inverts its meaning to give Balthazar courage. While Balthazar wishes to be blind and deaf so he does not have to witness Bel-Imperia with another man, Lorenzo uses the opportunity to imagine the lovers’ downfall. Following this is a rapid, complex exchange in which the lovers’ lines are punctuated by Lorenzo and Balthazar’s interjections:

BEL-IMPERIA. But whereon dost thou chiefly meditate?

HORATIO. On dangers past, and pleasures to ensue.

BALTHAZAR. On pleasures past, and dangers to ensue.

BEL-IMPERIA. What dangers, and what pleasures dost thou mean?

HORATIO. Dangers of war, and pleasures of our love. 

LORENZO. Dangers of death, but pleasures none at all (2.2.26-31).

Here, Kyd uses two forms of repetition: Anaphora, the repetition of the first words of a line, and epistrophe, the repetition of the last words of the line. Kyd combines this with chiasmus, a rhetorical device which reverses the structure of a phrase in the second part (“on dangers past, and pleasures to ensue” (2.2.27) and “On pleasures past, and dangers to ensue” (2.2.28), for example). The scene creates a sense of dramatic irony between what Horatio and Bel-Imperia expect from their new love and what the audience can expect from Lorenzo and Balthazar. While Horatio reflects on the war and the anticipated pleasure of loving Bel-Imperia, Lorenzo reminds the audience that though the war is over, death always looms. 

In Kyd’s time, bowers had strong romantic connotations, often serving as sites for private encounters and secret romances. Bel-Imperia and Horatio’s clandestine meeting in the bower is thus filled with symbolic significance (See: Symbols & Motifs). Bel-Imperia chooses the bower specifically for its association with privacy and intimacy: “Then be thy father’s pleasant bower the field / Where first we vowed a mutual amity / The Court were dangerous, that place is safe” (2.2.42-44). The bower is thus a space where love is free to flourish, away from the watchful eyes and political intrigues of the court. 

The abrupt transition of the bower from a site of mutual affection to one of death and betrayal underscores the fragility of such private spaces in a world rife with The Dangers of Deception and corruption. When Lorenzo and Balthazar kill Horatio, Lorenzo uses language that grotesquely inverts the traditional symbolism of growth and fertility associated with gardens, saying, “Aye, thus, and thus: these are the fruits of love” (2.4.56, emphasis added) as he stabs him. His cruel remark plays on the imagery of the tree bearing fruit: Horatio’s body, hanging from a tree like a piece of overripe fruit, signifies how love itself has been corrupted. Lorenzo’s dark humor is further emphasized when he adds, “Although his life were still ambitious-proud / Yet is he at the highest now he is dead” (2.4.60-61). Lorenzo here twists the idea of achieving greatness, as Horatio, who once surpassed Lorenzo in honor and valor, is now literally elevated in death. The irony is that the height of his physical position reflects not his accomplishments, but his victimization, and the perversion of justice and honor.

When Hieronimo finds Horatio’s dead body hanging in the tree in Scene 5, part of the horror he experiences is what he sees as the sheer randomness of the crime. In the first 1602 addition, Hieronimo experiences his first bout of “madness” due to the trauma of finding his only son dead, with his overwhelming emotions invoking The Effects of Grief and Loss. The additions tend to support the argument that Hieronimo is experiencing a form of mental illness due to bereavement; this creates tension with the core of Kyd’s play, which tends to portray Hieronimo’s “madness” as a deliberate, covering tactic for his revenge plot.