16th-century English dramatist
Thomas Kyd
(baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English
playwright
, the author of
The Spanish Tragedy
, and one of the most important figures in the development of
Elizabethan drama
.
Although well known in his own time, Kyd fell into obscurity until 1773 when
Thomas Hawkins
, an early editor of
The Spanish Tragedy
, discovered that
Thomas Heywood
, in his
Apologie for Actors
(1612), attributed the play to Kyd. A hundred years later, scholars in Germany and England began to shed light on his life and work, including the controversial finding that he may have been the author of a
Hamlet
play pre-dating Shakespeare's, which is now known as the
Ur-Hamlet
.
Early life
[
edit
]
Thomas Kyd was the son of Francis and Anna Kyd. There are no records of the day he was born, but he was baptised in the church of
St Mary Woolnoth
in the Ward of Langborn, Lombard Street, London on 6 November 1558. The baptismal register at St Mary Woolnoth carries this entry: "Thomas, son of Francis Kydd, Citizen and Writer of the Courte Letter of London". Francis Kydd was a
scrivener
and in 1580 was warden of the
Scriveners' Company
.
In October 1565 the young Kyd was enrolled in the newly founded
Merchant Taylors' School
, whose headmaster was
Richard Mulcaster
. Fellow students included
Edmund Spenser
and
Thomas Lodge
. Here, Kyd received a well-rounded education, with the curriculum including Italian, Latin, Greek, music, drama, physical education, and "good manners". There is no evidence that Kyd went on to university. He may have followed in his father's professional footsteps because there are two letters written by him where his handwriting style is similar to that of a scrivener.
[1]
Career
[
edit
]
Evidence suggests that in the 1580s Kyd became an important playwright, but little is known about his activity.
Francis Meres
placed him among "our best for tragedy" and Heywood elsewhere called him "Famous Kyd".
Ben Jonson
mentions him in the same breath as
Christopher Marlowe
(with whom, in London, Kyd at one time shared a room) and
John Lyly
in the
Shakespeare
First Folio.
The Spanish Tragedy
was probably written in the mid to late 1580s, with its first recorded performance on 23 February 1592 by
Lord Strange's Men
.
[2]
The earliest surviving edition was printed in 1592, the full title being
The Spanish Tragedie, Containing the lamentable end of Don Horatio, and Bel-imperia: with the pittifull death of olde Hieronimo
. However, the play was usually known simply as "Hieronimo" after the
protagonist
. It was arguably the most popular play of the "Age of Shakespeare" and set new standards in effective plot construction and character development. There were "twenty-nine performances between 1592 and 1597" and "eleven editions between 1592 and 1633", which the historian J. R. Mulryne states is "a tally unequaled by any of the plays of Shakespeare”.
[1]
In 1602 a version of the play with "additions" was published.
Philip Henslowe
's diary records payment to Ben Jonson for additions that year, but it is disputed whether the published additions reflect Jonson's work or if they were actually composed for a 1597 revival of
The Spanish Tragedy
also mentioned by Henslowe.
Other works by Kyd are his translations of
Torquato Tasso
's
Padre di Famiglia
, published as
The Householder's Philosophy
(1588), and of
Robert Garnier
's
Cornelie
(1594), along with the play
Soliman and Perseda
. Plays disputedly attributed, in whole or in part, to Kyd include
King Leir
,
Fair Em
,
Arden of Faversham
and parts of
1 Henry VI
and
Edward III
.
[3]
A play related to
The Spanish Tragedy
called
The First Part of Hieronimo
(surviving in a quarto of 1605) may be a
bad quarto
or
memorial reconstruction
of a play by Kyd, or it may be an inferior writer's burlesque of
The Spanish Tragedy
inspired by that play's popularity.
[4]
Kyd is supposed by some to have been the author of a
Hamlet
, the precursor of the Shakespearean play (see:
Ur-Hamlet
).
The success of Kyd's plays extended to Europe. Versions of
The Spanish Tragedy
were popular in Germany and the
Netherlands
for generations. The influence of these plays on European drama was largely the reason for the interest in Kyd among German scholars in the nineteenth century.
Later life
[
edit
]
From 1587 to 1593 Kyd was in the service of an unidentified noble, since, after his imprisonment in 1593 (see below), he wrote of having lost "the favours of my Lord, whom I haue servd almost theis vi yeres nowe". Proposed nobles include the
Earl of Sussex
,
[5]
the
Earl of Pembroke
,
[6]
Lord Strange
.
[7]
and
Edward De Vere
, 17th Earl of Oxford. He may have worked as a secretary, if he did not also write plays. Around 1591
Christopher Marlowe
also joined this patron's service, and for a while Marlowe and Kyd shared lodgings, and perhaps even ideas.
On 11 May 1593 the
Privy Council
ordered the arrest of the authors of "divers lewd and mutinous libels" which had been posted around London. One libel was found on the property of a Dutch Church and contained violent anti-foreigner sentiments and multiple allusions to the works of Marlowe.
[8]
The next day, Kyd was among those arrested; he would later believe that he had been the victim of an informer.
[2]
His lodgings were searched and instead of evidence of the "libels" there was found an
Arianist
tract, described by an investigator as "vile heretical conceits denying the eternal deity of Jesus Christ found amongst the papers of Thos. Kydd
[
sic
]
, prisoner ... which he affirmeth he had from C. Marley
[
sic
]
". Historians such as
Frederick Boas
believe that Kyd was tortured brutally to obtain this information.
[2]
Kyd told authorities the writings found in his possession belonged to Christopher Marlowe, a fellow dramatist and former roommate. Kyd “accused his former roommate of being a blasphemous traitor, an atheist who believed that Jesus Christ was a homosexual,”
[9]
an uninformed confusion over the Arian and Early Gnostic concept of
homoousios
. Following the accusation, Marlowe was summoned by the Privy Council and, while waiting for a decision on his case, was killed in an incident in
Deptford
involving known government agents.
Kyd was eventually released but was not accepted back into his lord's service. Believing he was under suspicion of atheism himself, he wrote to the
Lord Keeper
, Sir John Puckering, protesting his innocence, but his efforts to clear his name were apparently fruitless. The last we hear from the playwright is the publication of
Cornelia
early in 1594. In the dedication to the
Countess of Sussex
he alludes to the "bitter times and privy broken passions" he had endured. Kyd died later that year at the age of 35, and was buried on 15 August in
St Mary Colechurch
in London. In December of that same year, Kyd's mother legally renounced the administration of his estate, probably because it was debt-ridden.
[2]
St Mary Colechurch was destroyed in the
Great Fire of London
in 1666, and not rebuilt.
Works
[
edit
]
The dates of composition are approximate.
[10]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
"Kyd, Thomas (bap. 1558, d. 1594), playwright and translator"
.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004.
doi
:
10.1093/ref:odnb/15816
. Retrieved
3 May
2023
.
(Subscription or
UK public library membership
required.)
- ^
a
b
c
d
Boas, Frederick (1901).
The Works of Thomas Kyd
(2nd ed.). London: Oxford University Press.
ISBN
979-8713135416
.
- ^
Freebury-Jones, Darren (2022).
Shakespeare's tutor : the influence of Thomas Kyd
.
ISBN
978-1-5261-6474-2
.
OCLC
1303076747
.
- ^
Thomas Kyd,
The First Part of Hieronimo
and
The Spanish Tragedy
, ed. Andrew S. Cairncross, Regents Renaissance Drama Series, Lincoln, Neb., 1967, p. xiv.
- ^
Arthur Freeman,
Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems
, Oxford, 1967
- ^
Lukas Erne,
Beyond the Spanish Tragedy: A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd
, Manchester University Press 2002,
ISBN
0-7190-6093-1
- ^
Charles Nicholl,
The reckoning: the murder of Christopher Marlowe
, University of Chicago Press, 1995,
ISBN
0-226-58024-5
, p. 225
- ^
Freeman, Arthur (1973).
"Marlowe, Kyd, and the Dutch Church Libel"
.
English Literary Renaissance
.
3
(1): 44?52.
doi
:
10.1086/ELRv3n1p44
.
ISSN
0013-8312
.
JSTOR
43446737
.
S2CID
151720064
.
- ^
Gainor, J. Ellen., Stanton B. Garner, and Martin Puchner.
The Norton Anthology of Drama
. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009.
[
ISBN missing
]
- ^
"Beyond 'The Spanish Tragedy': A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd ? Departement de langue et litterature anglaises ? UNIGE"
. 12 June 2015.
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Philip Edwards,
The Spanish Tragedy
, Methuen, 1959, reprinted 1974.
ISBN
0-416-27920-1
.
- Charles Nicholl,
The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe
, Vintage, 2002 (revised edition).
ISBN
0-09-943747-3
(especially for the circumstances surrounding Kyd's arrest).
External links
[
edit
]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Thomas Kyd
.
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