| Summary: | One of the most popular plays of the Elizabethan period, The Spanish Tragedy has long been accepted as the first major example of the revenge tragedy genre which enjoyed a great vogue in Tudor and Stuart England. However, in this first full-length study in English of the play, the author offers an original analysis of its mystery subtext. He shows how Kyd defines the play as a mystery by analogies between the large play and three plays-within-the-play, and then he discusses the ways in which the play is a mystery: as an allegory, as a prototypical detective story, and as a mystery ritual. This monograph not only expands our knowledge of Kyd's dramaturgy but it also broadens our understanding of the learned dimensions of Elizabethan popular drama.
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