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Isabella is a character in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. She is the mother of Horatio and the wife to Hieronimo. Isabella only appears in three scenes and is one of three female characters in the play. She is defined by her inaction and represents Early Modern women at this time period as she is consistently not given a voice or power in society. However, Isabella distances herself from this defined role of motherhood as she decides to avenge her son Horatio by killing herself and simultaneously chopping down the tree of his murder. Isabella's action represents a form of revenge within the greater genre of revenge tragedy: suicide. Her soliloquy is one of the most notable from the play and defines this tragic path of revenge.
References
- ↑ Henke, James T. (1981). "Politics and Politicians in "The Spanish Tragedy"". Studies in Philology. 78 (4): 353–369. ISSN 0039-3738.
- ↑ Kyd 2009, p. 33.
- ↑ Kyd 2009, p. 117.
- ↑ Machiavelli, Niccolò (2005). The Prince. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-280426-X.
- ↑ Ponce, Timothy M. (2018). "Reconsidering the Early Modern Machiavellian: Illicit Manuscripts and Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy". Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 60 (4): 443–466. ISSN 1534-7303.
- ↑ McMillin, Scott (1972). "The Figure of Silence in the Spanish Tragedy". ELH. 39 (1): 27–48. doi:10.2307/2872289. ISSN 0013-8304.