The Hangman's Noose and the Empty Box: Kyd's Use of Dramatic and Mythological Sources in The Spanish Tragedy (III.iv-vii)
Source study has generally been discredited as a useful critical tool because of the past simplistic conception of the relationship between the source and its adapted context. Generally, source hunters emphasized parallel passages as the major proof of similarities between texts, merely listing the parallels without investigating more important critical implications. If we are to continue to consider source study a valuable scholarly tool—and there are good reasons to do so—we need to establish its interpretational relevance through a method which compares the conventional ideas and symbols of the source with the motifs and themes of the adapted context. Thus, the contextual method of ascription, as it shall be termed for purposes of discussion, will require an understanding of the interaction between the source's original context, including subsequent intellectual history, and the themes of the new context.