The dating of The Spanish Tragedy to the period 1582–92 locates it within a period of great fear and hostility towards Spain and other Catholic nations (see further Mulryne, ‘Nationality and Language’, Bevington, Tudor Drama, ch.14), though the play cannot be fixed with any certainty to either side of the English victory against the Spanish Armada in 1588. Pope Pius V had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth in 1570, and thereby released English Catholics from any duty of obedience to her. Government fears of a rebellion by English Catholics were therefore coupled with fears of invasion by one or both of the great Catholic European powers, France and Spain, or by a suspected Catholic conspiracy united against England.

The queen's immediate response, in 1571, was to pass three new statutes: the Treasons Act, which made it high treason to impugn the queen's right to rule or to speak or write of her as a heretic; the Act ‘against the bringing in and putting in execution of Bulls and other Instruments from the See of Rome’, which forbade English subjects to bring in any bulls or printed matter from the pope, on pain of high treason, and even prohibited the bringing in of crosses and pictures from Rome; and the Act against Fugitives over the Sea, which imposed forfeit of property on anyone who had gone overseas without licence and failed to return within six months (13 Elizabeth I, cc.1, 2, 3).