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"O eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears; O life, no life, but lively form of death; O world, no world, but mass of public wrongs, Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds! O sacred heavens! if this unhallowed deed, If this inhuman and barbarous attempt, If this incomparable murder thus Of mine, but now no more my son, Shall unrevealed and unavenged pass, How should we term your dealings to be just, If you unjustly deal with those that in your justice trust?"

Hieronimo is the speaker (III.ii.1–11) and is alone on the stage. This is his first soliloquy since he discovered his dead son. In it, he poses the central question of the play: how the world be just when there is so much injustice. It is essentially the question of how bad things can happen to good people. Kyd uses a very ornate rhetorical style, using anaphora (the repetition of initial words), parallel structure, and alliteration, especially in the first five lines of the speech. The language certainly conveys a serious tone, and builds up emotional momentum as Hieronimo condemns first his eyes, then life, then the world, then the heavens themselves (and presumably God), moving from body part to deity in a crescendo of despair. But when critics attack Kyd's rhetorical style as being over-blown, this is the passage they usually cite. And when later playwrights wanted to mock Kyd's play, this is the passage they often used.

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