lthazar, and 'Revenge' admonishes him to be patient; at the end of
the fifth act both return satisfied to the lower regions. Then
Bellimperia suddenly falls in love with Horatio, who now steps into
Andrea's place, and is persecuted by Lorenzo, at first without any cause
whatever, and is finally assassinated. By some means which remain
perfectly unexplained and incomprehensible, Lorenzo keeps old Jeronimo
from the Court, so that he cannot bring forward his accusation against
the murderers of his son. Jeronimo is consequently seized with madness,
which, however, suddenly turns into a well calculated and prudent
action. The conclusion of the piece is a general massacre, in which
Jeronimo, after having killed Lorenzo, bites off his own tongue, stabs
the Duke of Castile, and then himself with a penknife."

It can hardly seem strange that the critic should add: "This at once
explains why no piece was more generally ridiculed by contemporary and
younger poets, than "The Spanish Tragedy.""

If Shakspere imitated Kyd in "Titus," from such stuff as this, he was
surely wise in his "sluggish avoidance of needless invention."

We are tempted to suggest, however, that "The Spanish Tragedy" affords a
rich and ample field to modern critics who are solicitous to save the
life and work of "the gentle William" from the imputation of being
"superhuman": Is it not clear that "Hamlet" was only an imitation of
"The Spanish Tragedy"? Did not Hamlet have a friend whose name was
Horatio? Was not Hamlet, like Jeronimo, "essentially mad," and did not
his madness "turn into a well calculated and prudent action"?

Kyd was the undoubted author of another work, under the following title:
"Pompey the Great, his fair Cornelia's Tragedie: effected by her
Father's and Husband's downe-cast Death and fortune, written in French
by that excellent Poet, R. Garnier, and translated into English by
Thomas Kyd." This translation was printed in 1595. The play is thus
summarized: It is "a piece which is constructed upon a misunderstood
model of the ancients; it is altogether devoid of dramatic action, in
reality merely lyrics and rhetoric in dialogue. The whole of the first
act consists of one emphatic jeremiad by Cicero, about the desperate
condition of Rome as it then was, its factiousness, its servility,--a
jeremiad which is continued at the end of the act, by the chorus, in
rhymed stanzas. In this tone it proceeds without a trace of action
through the whole o