The Spanish Tragedy Characters

Meet the Cast

Hieronimo, the Knight Marshal of Spain

Man of Justice After reading the play, you might think Hieronimo is just a bloodthirsty avenger hell-bent on killing and satisfying his rage. Fair enough. he does eventually become insanely murdero...

Bel-Imperia

An Unfortunate Life And we mean unfortunate to say the least. Because her misfortune defines her character and her actions, let's take a look at her bad luck: Her first love dies at the start of th...

Lorenzo

The Machiavel Bel-Imperia and Hieronimo are the only really complex characters in the play. The rest are more or less blah, consistent types that play straightforward roles. And Lorenzo is straight...

Horatio

A Very Nice (and Boring) Guy Look, sometimes boring is good. And in this case, the very boring Horatio is good in many respects. First of all, in a play where nearly every character has some kind o...

Pedringano

Bad Guy on Call If Lorenzo is the primary antagonist, Pedringano is the secondary antagonist. And in lots of ways, he's even more important to the action of the play than Lorenzo. That's because he...

The Ghost of Andrea

The play also doesn't think we need to know terribly much about the dead Andrea. Except that he's dead. And that he and Bel-imperia were in love. And that he was killed by an un-chivalrous, cowardl...

Isabella

Victim in Pain She's simply the voice of despair in the play. We meet her just after her son is murdered, which she first responds to by saying, "What world of grief […] Oh, where's the author of...

Balthazar

An Unremarkable CreepMake no mistake: Balthazar is bad to the bone. But he's not much of a schemer from what we can tell. Yes, he commits the first murder of the play (and we only get a report abou...

Revenge

This One is EasyRevenge is revenge personified. Yep, it's that simple.And by a personification, we mean he's the idea of revenge in the flesh. Being the personification of an idea makes him pretty...

The Viceroy of Portugal

Spineless Jellyfish"Viceroy" is a fancy word for a stand-in king. In large empires, overworked kings would often delegate powers to viceroys, who basically served as kings in their respective realm...

The King of Spain

Out to LunchWe get another weak leader in the form of the Spanish king. And just like with the viceroy, we learn about his weakness right off the bat. It's clear that the king is either gullible, o...

The Duke of Castile

Ah, here's a minor character that still manages to play a significant plot role. One really telling thing we learn about the duke is that he does his best to discover and prevent the villainous act...