Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy has been widely-read by the academic
community, but not always for its own sake. Its influence on the Revenge Tragedy genre,
and Shakespeare's Hamlet, have been common topics, sometimes at the expense
of readings that engage with the play itself. This thesis continues a tradition of applying
the ideas of Michel Foucault to the Early Modern era in order to interrogate the role of power,
knowledge, and sovereignty. This thesis explores the way that Michel Foucault's theory of
biopolitics, and the related concepts of necropolitics and necroresistance, create significant
new ways of understanding the characters and themes of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy.
I first examine Bel-Imperia's presence in the text, as both a woman and a political pawn,
and argue that her physical body exists in a contested space, serving as both a location for
control and a means of resistance. By reinterpreting her role in the revenge narrative and her
suicide through a political lens, we can more fully appreciate her violent actions as expressions
of agency in pursuit of a calculated goal. Additionally, when we look at the stories of Hieronimo
and Horatio through a necropolitical lens, it foregrounds the centrality of class in the conflict
of the play. Through a close reading of Horatio's murder, I argue that Horatio and Hieronimo
represent the threat of social mobility to the insular aristocratic class embodied by Lorenzo and
Balthazar, and Horatio's murder serves as a reassertion of absolute sovereign control.
Hieronimo's violent actions carry different implications when we are able to read them
as not only acts of vengeance, but also, to some extent, of revolution. Ultimately, I argue that
applying biopolitical theories to The Spanish Tragedy, and other plays from the Early
Modern era, presents scholars with an opportunity to differently appreciate the relationship between
agency and violence, and make sense of the seemingly senseless violence that often characterizes
these works.
“Take (Meta)physic, pomp”: King Lear and (Dis)oriented Ontology
