Thomas Kyd

Thomas Kyd (baptized Nov. 6, 1558, London, Eng.—died c. December 1594, London) was an English dramatist who, with his The Spanish Tragedy (sometimes called Hieronimo, or Jeronimo, after its protagonist), initiated the revenge tragedy of his day. Kyd anticipated the structure of many later plays, including the development of middle and final climaxes. In addition, he revealed an instinctive sense of tragic situation, while his characterization of Hieronimo in The Spanish Tragedy prepared the way for Shakespeare’s psychological study of Hamlet.

The son of a scrivener, Kyd was educated at the Merchant Taylors School in London. There is no evidence that he attended the university before turning to literature. He seems to have been in service for some years with a lord (possibly Ferdinando, Lord Strange, the patron of Lord Strange’s Men). The Spanish Tragedy was entered in the Stationers’ Register in October 1592, and the undated first quarto edition almost certainly appeared in that year. It is not known which company first played it, nor when; but Strange’s company played Hieronimo 16 times in 1592, and the Admiral’s Men revived it in 1597, as apparently did the Chamberlain’s Men. It remained one of the most popular plays of the age and was often reprinted.

The only other play certainly by Kyd is Cornelia (1594), an essay in Senecan tragedy, translated from the French of Robert Garnier’s academic Cornélie. He may also have written an earlier version of Hamlet, known to scholars as the Ur-Hamlet, and his hand has sometimes been detected in the anonymous Arden of Feversham, one of the first domestic tragedies, and in a number of other plays.

About 1591 Kyd was sharing lodgings with Christopher Marlowe, and on May 13, 1593, he was arrested and then tortured, being suspected of treasonable activity. His room had been searched and certain “atheistical” disputations denying the deity of Jesus Christ found there. He probably averred then and certainly confirmed later, in a letter, that these papers had belonged to Marlowe. That letter is the source for almost everything that is known about Kyd’s life. He was dead by Dec. 30, 1594, when his mother made a formal repudiation of her son’s debt-ridden estate.