"Author and actor in this tragedy": The Influence of Apuleius's "The Golden Ass" on Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy"

Most significantly, Kyd uses the example of The Golden Ass as a Silenus box to create a mystery play, a revenge tragedy on the literal level with a political allegory as its subtext. [...]like Apuleius, who presents initiation into the mysteries of Isis as a drama culminating in the awareness of the nature of destiny, Kyd parallels initiation into the mysteries to a hermeneutic process of enlightenment concerning the play's political subtext. [...]Lucius enters "the most secret and sacred place of the temple," and the profane are asked to leave (265). "62 When Mithras announces at 11.15 that the previous plot had higher meanings not seen until the initiation of Lucius, the attentive reader realizes that Lucius Apuleius is "auctorem et toremactor and author,63 in the prologue and text as the initiated deacon of Isis who has narrated his path to enlightenment. [...]the perspective that validates the higher meanings emerging from the more accessible meanings is that of the initiated reader.64 Just as Lucius achieves clarity and illumination through his initiation into an understanding of the nature of destiny, the reader also experiences an initiatory recognition of the unified nature of the seemingly diverse tales. [...]Hieronimo declares at the conclusion of the revenge playlet that he is the "Author and actor in this tragedy" (4.4.147), who ends his role and the playlet with the deaths of his son's murderers and his own death.