The cast included Siobhan Redmond as Bel-imperia, Robert Glenister as Lorenzo, Peter Wright as Hieronimo, Jeffry Wickham as the King of Spain. The Royal Shakespeare Company performed The Spanish Tragedy in May 1997 at the Swan Theatre, directed by Michael Boyd. It transferred to the Lyttelton Theatre in 1984. The Spanish Tragedy was performed at London's National Theatre, first in 1982 at the Cottesloe Theatre, with Michael Bryant in the role of Hieronimo, directed by Michael Bogdanov. English actors performed the play on tour in Germany (1601), and both German and Dutch adaptations were made. The records of Philip Henslowe suggest that the play was on stage again in 16.

The Admiral's Men revived Kyd's original on 7 January 1597, and performed it twelve times to 19 July they staged another performance conjointly with Pembroke's Men on 11 October of the same year. It is unclear whether Jeronimo was The Spanish Tragedy, or The First Part of Hieronimo (printed in 1604), the anonymous 'prequel' to Kyd's play, or perhaps either on different days. It is unlikely, however, that the performance in February 1592 was the play's first performance, as Henslowe did not mark it as 'ne' (new). Lord Strange's Men staged a play that the records call Jeronimo on 23 February 1592 at The Rose for Philip Henslowe, and repeated it sixteen times to 22 January 1593. (Thomas Kyd is frequently proposed as the author of the hypothetical Ur-Hamlet that may have been one of Shakespeare's primary sources for Hamlet.) Many elements of The Spanish Tragedy, such as the play-within-a-play used to trap a murderer and a ghost intent on vengeance, appear in Shakespeare's Hamlet. The Spanish Tragedy is often considered to be the first mature Elizabethan drama, a claim disputed with Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine, and was parodied by many Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, including Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

The play contains several violent murders and includes as one of its characters a personification of Revenge. Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 15.

The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd