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The First Part of Hieronimo, and The Spanish Tragedy
The First Part of Hieronimo and The Spanish Tragedy Author:Thomas Kyd The complete title for this book is: — "[The Spanish Comedy, or] The First Part of Hieronimo, and — The Spanish Tragedy [or, Hieronimo is Mad Again]" — Edited by Andrew S. Cairncross — Volume 22 of the Regents Renaissance Drama Series — The purpose of the Regents Renaissance Drama Series is to provide soundly edited texts, in modern spelling, of the ... more »more significant plays of the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline theater. Each text in the series is based on a fresh collation of all sixteenth- and seventeenth-century editions.
Thomas Kyd (1558?1594), an English dramatist, was one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama. The Spanish Tragedy was probably written in the mid to late 1580s. The earliest surviving edition was printed in 1592; the full title being, "The Spanish Tragedie, Containing the lamentable end of Don Horatio, and Bel-imperia: with the pittifull death of olde Hieronimo." However, the play was usually known simply as "Hieronimo", after the protagonist. It was arguably the most popular play of the "Age of Shakespeare" and set new standards in effective plot construction and character development.
Textual notes at the bottom of each page of the University of Nebraska edition record all substantive departures from the edition used as the copy-text. Variant substantive readings among sixteenth- and seventeenth-century editions are also listed. Explanatory notes, chiefly concerned with glossing obsolete words and phrases, also appear at the bottoms of each page.« less