The Noble Spanish Soldier

Dramatic characters

Plot

After enjoying the favours of Onaelia, niece to the duke of Medina, the Spanish king repudiates her and her son, Sebastian, making Paulina, daughter of the duke of Florence, his queen. On hearing this, the noble soldier Balthazar works on the conscience of the king to take back Onaelia. Despite the threat of civil war, the king refuses. Count Malatesta proposes to the queen that she pretend to be pregnant, to sound the hearts of the Spanish people. Roderigo, Lopez, and Valasco, dons of Spain, rally to the cause of their majesties against the duke of Medina's faction. Angered at her rival, the queen proposes to Balthazar the murder of Onaelia and her son, to which he pretends to acquiesce after receiving the king's command. But, loyal to Onaelia, Balthazar announces these plots to Medina, who disguises himself as a French doctor to gain access to the king.

When the disguised Medina speaks to the king, he becomes convinced of the legitimacy of the king's plot to murder his niece as well as Balthazar's loyalty. To appease the rebellious faction, the king proposes a marriage between Onaelia and Cockadillio, a courtier, an offer which is accepted. The queen and Malateste again confer, deciding to poison Onaelia. During the marriage ceremony, the king takes up the poisoned cup meant for Onaelia, to the queen's and Malateste's consternation. While the king is drinking, Malateste admits their crime and is stabbed to death by the faction. While dying, the king passes the crown to Sebastian and commands that the queen be sent back to Florence with treble dowry. Onaelia and Balthazar are appointed to protect Sebastian in his youth.

Commentary

The sub-title given to the text in the Quarto edition is 'A contract Broken, Justly Revenged'. Although this title is likely to have been added by the printers, it does succinctly sum up one aspect the play, the theme of revenge which is reminiscent of Elizabethan revenge plays such as Thomas Kyd's 'The Spanish Tragedy'. Revenge plays however, are generally patterned around a revenger and what may be termed a ‘revengee’, while the action of NSS revolves around a power struggle between two factions both of whom are concerned with violent intent. In reality, the play reflects the seventeenth century fashion for mixing elements of tragedy and comedy in a style first identified by Sir Philip Sydney in 1579 as being 'mongrel tragicomedy’; thus while death intrudes on the final act, it only strikes unsympathetic characters. There is also regular light relief provided by two comic characters, Cornego and Cockadillio, as well the cameo appearances of Signor No and Medina as a French Doctor.

The two groups of characters at the centre of the play are on one hand, the ruling cabal, that is the King, his Italian Queen and their supporters, including the Italian Malateste, and on the other a number of disenchanted Spanish noblemen who are in sympathy with the King's former betrothed lover, Onaelia. This later faction, led by the Duke of Medina, eventually includes the key figure of the patriotic soldier Balthazar, a man who has earned respect for his martial exploits and whose ‘nobility’, as celebrated in the title to the play, is a tribute earned by action rather than by birth or inheritance. He is thus differentiated from the King, whose nobility of birth is cancelled out by the dishonesty of his character.

Nevertheless, Balthazar is something of a problematic figure and in many ways an unconvincing hero for a play with ostensibly, a strong moral theme. His basic character is presented as that of an honest uncomplicated soldier; in his first appearance(2.1), he has already been slighted by the Dons, and presents an unkempt appearance and rails against the ‘pied-winged butterflies’ of the effete court who put appearance before patriotic duty. Nevertheless, subterfuge seems to come too readily to him as we see in 2.2 when he makes a false offer to assassinate the King to test Onaelia, again in 3.3 when he pretends to agree to murder Sebastian and Onaelia to placate the Queen and finally in 5.1 when he tells the King that the murder has been carried out. Scene 3.3 shows a further unedifying side of Balthazar when he bursts in on the King and stabs a servant and refuses to express remorse as the servant is a mere groom. On a different note, the character is also used to comic effect, especially in 4.2 when he acts out bawdy dialogue with Cornego. His last significant act is to dissuade the faction from attempting to assassinate the King, before being reduced to a minor role in the closing scene where he only has five short speeches and plays no significant part in the denouement. The character then, is something of a patchwork affair, playing different roles as the play progresses before being effectively jettisoned at the conclusion.

The King by contrast maintains a degree of consistency, notwithstanding his formulaic deathbed renunciation of evil. As we have seen, his Queen is Italian, but he may be associated with Italy by more reasons than his marriage. In Act 5 Scene 2, Daenia says that ‘There’s in his breast / Both fox and lion, and both those beasts can bite’ This is a direct reference to the works of the Italian courtier Niccolò Machiavelli who wrote in his work on statecraft 'The Prince’: 'A Prince must know how to make good use of the beasts; he should choose from among the beasts the fox and the lion; for the lion cannot defend itself from traps and the fox cannot protect itself from wolves.’. Although the book from which this extract was taken, 'The Prince', had yet to be published in English, the ideas it contained (or at least a caricature of them) had been in circulation for many years following its initial publication in Italy in 1531. These were often treated with profound suspicion by the English who saw the advocacy of the use of manipulation and deception to maintain power as being the idea of a disreputable foreign country. Indeed, Machiavelli was seen as a satanic figure who was known as 'Old Nick', a still-used reference to the devil, and the machiavel became a stock figure on the early modern stage, a tradition which the portrayal of the King is drawing on.

The other interesting opposition within the play is between the two claimants to the title of Queen, the current incumbent and Onaelia. There is little doubt that it is Onaelia who is the representative of virtue, her behaviour often rising above that of the ‘noble’ Balthazar. In Act 1 Scene 2 she makes a fearless statement in defacing the King's portrait, this being an act of treason. Despite her strong feelings however, she does not rise to Balthazar's bait when he introduces the possibility of assassinating the King; the remnants of her love for him and her concern for the stability of the realm rule this possibility out. She is not however prepared to accept her treatment without protest and, in Act 3 Scene 2, engages a poet to propagandise on her behalf. His refusal, on the grounds of self-preservation is denounced in striking terms when she accuses poets generally of being 'apt to lash / Almost to death poor wretches not worth striking / but fawn with slavish flattery on damned vices / so great men act them'. The effective conclusion of her involvement as early as the end of 3.2 impoverishes the rest of the play. The Queen's less admirable character is highlighted by the way she is prepared to condone the taking of life to secure her position. Her ruthless outlook is punished when she is deprived of her position and forced to return to Italy .

The final scene of the play utilises a dramatic technique that had played an important part in Dekker's most famous play, The Shoemaker's Holiday: the banquet scene. Planned by the King in an attempt to achieve reconciliation and remove the threat of Onaelia by marrying her off, it represents a means of bringing almost the entire cast on stage to witness the meting out of justice. It is ironic that the King's scheme is undermined, not by his political rivals but by his allies, The Queen and Malateste, who do not believe that the marriage will provide a stable settlement and instead seek to pursue a deadlier course of action. The banquet provides the context for the unwinding of this plot as vengeance consumes itself, bringing about the regime change that justice demands.

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