Hieronimo, the Knight Marshal of Spain Timeline and Summary

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• Hieronimo enters the play early on in the company of the king as they wait for news about the recent battle between Spain and Portugal.
• After learning that Spain won the battle and finding out there's a beef about who actually captured the Spanish prince, Hieronimo sticks up for the heroics of his son.
• After the war, Hieronimo writes a play to celebrate the Spanish victory. The play is well received by the King, who lavishly praises him for producing an awesome work on the history of fallen kings.
• Hieronimo is awakened in the middle of the night by the blood curdling screams of his son getting murdered. He runs to the scene and finds his son bleeding and hanging from a tree (dead). He then makes a solemn vow to avenge the murder.
• He delivers a series of thoughtful, emotionally driven soliloquies about his son's murder, the ethics of justice and revenge, committing suicide, and the tactics he intends to use on his quest.
• Hieronimo is just hanging when a letter written in blood seemingly drops from the sky. The letter calls out his son's murderers. He takes the letter seriously, but decides that he needs more information before he can act. We know that Bel-Imperia wrote and dropped the letter.
• As Hieronimo becomes more and more unhinged (maybe?), his obsession with revenge pushes him to believe that crime is the only way to get justice. His obsession begins to mar his work as Knight Marshal. Still, he does preside over the execution of Pedringano. But at the time of the hanging he is unaware that Pedringano was one of the henchmen that murdered his son.
• Hieronimo tries to talk with the king about Horatio's murder, but Lorenzo, who succeeds at making Hieronimo look crazy, blocks all of his attempts at legal justice.
• Lorenzo and Balthazar tell Hieronimo that the king wants him to write a play in celebration of Bel-Imperia's wedding. He agrees to write and produce the play because he sees it as an opportunity to kill his enemies.
• Hieronimo casts Lorenzo and Balthazar as characters that get murdered in the action of his play. The trick of it all is that Hieronimo plans to kill them in earnest.
• The play comes off without a hitch (i.e. he gets his revenge).
• After plotting the murders of Lorenzo and Balthazar, Hieronimo tells his tale to the royal parties of Spain and Portugal. The King of Spain and Portugal are of course outraged.
• Under interrogation by the King, Hieronimo declares that he will say no more (even though there really isn't anything left to say). He then bites off his own tongue so that he couldn't talk at all.
• The King calls for a pen to force Hieronimo to write more of his story. Hieronimo takes the pen and stabs the Duke of Castile. The duke isn't perfect, but he also wasn't involved with Horatio's death, making him a relatively innocent bystander.
• Hieronimo runs off the stage and kills himself.