The Spanish Viceroy - Gondomar and Osuna

Gondomar and Osuna

Early critics developed the argument that The Spanish Viceroy was a play about the Count of Gondomar, the diplomat who had served as Spain's ambassador to England to 1622. The King's Men had made a sensation in August 1624 with their staging of Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess, with its satiric portrayal of Gondomar. In this view, the King's Men attempted to repeat their controversial success of August 1624 with a similar play in December.

There is some reason to think that controversial plays like A Game at Chess were backed by interested factions at Court, and that the King's Men would not have staged such plays without some measure of official support. (Officials supported plays on controversial subjects when it was in their interest to do so, as with Sir John van Olden Barnavelt and The Late Lancashire Witches.) By this reasoning, the actors dared to stage the unlicensed Spanish Viceroy because they had protection from some segment of the Jacobean power structure.

The Gondomar hypothesis regarding The Spanish Viceroy is, however, speculative, with no firm evidence to support it.

A more modern and perhaps more plausible hypothesis suggests that The Spanish Viceroy was about Pedro Giron, Duke of Osuna, who had served as the viceroy of Sicily and Naples. Osuna was suspected of planning to set himself up as king of an independent kingdom. He was recalled to Spain in 1620, and put on trial; he died in prison. Osuna's story would have been of current interest in 1624, and could have suited the English public's anti-Spanish mood.