The Spanish Tragedy Madness Quotes

Isabella is clearly freaking out her maid with her lunatic behavior. But Isabella responds that her insanity gives her a kind of special vision that allows her to see all the way to Heaven. Some might call this hallucination. But others might say insanity grants privileged vision—or at least that's what Isabella is trying to say. She insists that she can see her son sitting among angels who dance around his newly healed wounds.

Is insanity a means to cushion humans from overwhelming trauma? Does insanity provide a higher perspective from which to view an unjust world? Kyd leaves these questions up to you. But to be sure, Isabella's movements are limited in the play as a woman. Nevertheless she has found access to other places, even if that access is a product of insanity. When Shakespeare writes Hamlet, he uses Ophelia to portray feminine insanity in much the same way: she's also wisely disjointed. In fact, there seem to be a lot of connections between Isabella and Ophelia—dig deeper into this and your teachers will think you have special insight.

Wow. What's so funny? Why all the laughing? Well, First Portuguese (great name) is laughing because he simply asked Hieronimo where he could find Lorenzo. And let's just say that Hieronimo's answer came off a bit extreme. Hieronimo took the long road to essentially say, "You'll find him in Hell!" And not understanding the context of Hieronimo's rage leads the Portuguese pals to conclude that Hieronimo is mad.

But is he? We're never quite sure. And maybe that's the point. Maybe madness is sometimes just a matter of speaking out of context. Or, at least that's what this passage might suggest. As the audience, we know exactly what Hieronimo is talking about, so he really doesn't come off that crazy. But to the rest of the world, he's off his rocker. We know that Isabella believes her nervous breakdown grants her special wisdom. Could Kyd be exploring how what sounds crazy is often just outlaw speech? Is Hieronimo's madness a necessary part of rebelling against the corrupt powers that be? We smell some ideas for a good paper.

Hieronimo finally gets his chance to tell the King that Lorenzo killed Horatio, and instead of getting his attention with reason, he rants and raves and tries to dig a hole to Hell with his dagger. This of course plays right into the hands of Lorenzo, who physically blocks Hieronimo's path to the King while also misleading his uncle to believe that Hieronimo is merely complaining about not getting paid.

It's a blown moment for justice-seeking Hieronimo, but one that brings back the question of how someone sounding crazy can just be a product of another person listening out of context. Which is to say, if the king thinks Hieronimo is digging manically in the ground because of a late paycheck, there's a whole lot of crazy going on. But if you know (like we and Lorenzo do) that Hieronimo is complaining about his murdered son, the grieving father's actions become more justifiable. What do you do with all this? Well, that's up to you. But think about this: if everybody acts crazy (or corrupt) then the only sane (or just) person is going to look nuts.