Chapter 2 - Dramatic Hyperboles

Summary

Chapter 2 turns to the important idea in Kyd’s design of rhetorical hyperbole and dramatic excess by comparing the emerging ethical effects engendered by the moral void of Kyd’s play to similar but crucially different devices involving abused emblems of writing in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. These early, near-contemporary responses to Kyd weigh through performance the consequences of violent action when neither the circumstances of plot nor the demands of justice can help explain or assign meaning to such action within any conceivable moral calculus. In the process, the moral-tragic weight of such plays sinks under the irruption of farce and burlesque, thereby forcing the audience to re-evaluate their voyeuristic complicity in the unfolding onstage representation of ritualised, and highly aestheticised retaliatory acts of violence.