User:Hummingbird Hue/Scholarly Source 1: Death as Spectacle

Research Topic: Revenge in The Spanish Tragedy

NOTE: I reference the page numbers, but I am still writing the information in my own words.

I

 * Kyd is known for writing plays where hangings involve spectacles (217).
 * The audiences are spectators on the play's spectators on the play's hangings (217).
 * The Triple Tree was a famous place for hangings to be conducted as entertainment (218).
 * Before death, criminals could act as heroes as authority taunted them (221).
 * There is a difference in how hangings were for spectacles, but theaters were for tragedies (218).
 * People of all socioeconomic statuses congregated to see the entertainment of staged theater or public punishment (218).
 * There is a shift from real life to the theater. Since the public enjoyed watching death, the theater too started to take on plots of death (219).
 * Theater and public punishment started to mirror each other during Renaissance England (220).
 * The great age of drama in England
 * There is a distance in how a show reaches its onlookers.
 * [Theme] Royal and state power  shows up in the play's themes, such as through the
 * Distance between the audience that views the play and the play itself (221)
 * The audience is left with an open-ended interpretation of whether to view the outcome as terror or something else (222)

II

 * The Triple Tree most likely influenced the unfolding of hangings and murders (222)
 * [Scene] In The Spanish Tragedy, the most well-known hanging is when Horatio is murdered in the arbor (222).
 * The play's audience is captivated during this gruesome murder scene (222)
 * Compared to Hamlet, The Spanish Tragedy uses more references to horror (222).
 * In the underworld, death is more complicated and severe (223)
 * After the death in the world, there is something far worse waiting for them in the underworld (223)
 * !!! [Theme]  The value of death as entertainment  (223)
 * [Scene] Bel-imperia and Horatio meet
 * The characters are spectators
 * The audience is public spectacles
 * For a performance to take effect, it's necessary to have an audience (224)
 * "Voyeuristic interest in death as spectacle" (224)
 * Play within a play
 * Don Andrea's death is talked about, but we never see it (225)
 * [Shift] After Hieronimo discovers that Horatio is murdered, he plans revenge. This is kind of like the second part of the play, going from the first revenge to the second revenge (225).
 * Psychological torture/turmoil
 * Hieronimo shares his mental pain with an audience
 * Public hangings are a way of demonstrating justice (226)
 * The hangman carries out the job, the person being hung is a criminal against the sovereign, and the crowds act as witnesses
 * But based on how the execution is carried out, the public may challenge the power between the subject and the sovereign (For example, what if the crowd thought that the criminal was not guilty? Then they wouldn't want the sovereign to execute him and would see the situation as unjust) (226)
 * Hieronimo's revenge scheme serves to include the audience in the experience, for they can now reflect on what goes into a tragedy and what is considered evil (228)
 * Questions to consider: Why does the audience enjoy death as entertainment? What is Kyd trying to tell us about this structured unfolding of spectacle participation? (229)
 * Merge "the spectacle of public execution with all its ambiguities from the socio-political to the cultural worlds" (229)
 * To conclude, Kyd is innovative in how he dramatically ties death and evil into a play that requires a critical spectacle (230).

Criteria

 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic
 * Yes because death can be a trigger for revenge
 * Is it written neutrally?
 * It's leaning a bit to the argumentative side on how important the spectacle contribution is to the effectiveness of the play. I think that the evidence is grounded nicely, so I might still use this source but say how Smith argues that...
 * Does each claim have a citation?
 * For the most part, yes. There's even a NOTES section at the bottom.
 * Are the citations reliable?
 * Yes because I believe that they draw from other scholars. I haven't double-checked though.
 * Does the article tackle one of Wikipedia's equity gaps (coverage of historically underrepresented or misrepresented populations or subjects)?
 * I think that the article highlights the cleverness of Kyd's writing (like the mechanics). It also compares uplifts The Spanish Tragedy in comparison to Hamlet for example, which was a nice distinction.
 * Check out the article's Talk page to see what other Wikipedians are already contributing. Consider posting some of your ideas to the article's Talk page, too.
 * Oh, not sure if I was supposed to read an article or a scholarly source. All of my answers have been obtained the scholarly sources. The Spanish Tragedy article is where I will be doing my edits. There isn't much in the Revenge section, so I hope to do some more research on that, bringing in themes such as death and horror.