Thomas Kyd
baptized Nov. 6, 1558, London, Eng.
died c. December 1594, London
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.
