The Spanish Tragedy (First Edition) (Norton Critical Editions) by Thomas Kyd

Author:Thomas Kyd [Kyd, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

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† From the Anglican homily (1547). Published to be read from the pulpit, the Church of England’s homilies were designed to limit the opportunities offered by individually composed sermons for the expression of heterodox opinion. The exhortation presents an orthodox opinion of the destructiveness of revenge, which threatens to subvert the divinely appointed order embodied in the state.

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

From Of Cruelty†

I fancy virtue to be something else, and something more noble, than good nature, and the mere propension to goodness, that we are born into the world withal. Well-disposed and well-descended souls pursue, indeed, the same methods, and represent in their actions the same face that virtue itself does: but the word virtue imports, I know not what, more great and active than merely for a man to suffer himself, by a happy disposition, to be gently and quietly drawn to the rule of reason. He who, by a natural sweetness and facility, should despise injuries received, would doubtless do a very fine and laudable thing; but he who, provoked and nettled to the quick by an offence, should fortify himself with the arms of reason against the furious appetite of revenge, and after a great conflict, master his own passion, would certainly do a great deal more. The first would do well; the latter virtuously: one action might be called goodness, and the other virtue; for methinks, the very name of virtue presupposes difficulty and contention, and cannot be exercised without an opponent. It is for this reason, perhaps, that we call God good, mighty, liberal and just; but we do not call Him virtuous, being that all His operations are natural and without endeavour

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The savages do not so much offend me, in roasting and eating the bodies of the dead, as they do who torment and persecute the living. Nay, I cannot look so much as upon the ordinary executions of justice, how reasonable soever, with a steady eye * * * even in justice itself, all that exceeds a simple death appears to me pure cruelty; especially in us who ought, having regard to their souls, to dismiss them in a good and calm condition; which cannot be, when we have agitated them by insufferable torments.

From Cowardice, the Mother of Cruelty‡

* * * What is it in these times of ours that makes our quarrels mortal; and that, whereas our fathers had some degrees of revenge, we now begin with the last in ours, and at the first meeting nothing is to be said but ‘kill’? What is this but cowardice? Everyone is sensible that there is more bravery and disdain in subduing an enemy, than in cutting his throat; and in making him yield, than in putting him to the sword: besides that the appetite of revenge is better satisfied and pleased because its only aim is to make itself felt: And this is the reason why we do not fall upon a beast or a stone when they hurt us,

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