Editing Thomas Kyd (section)

==Career==
[[File:Kyd-SpanishTragedie-title.JPG|thumb|Title page of Kyd's ''[[The Spanish Tragedy]],'' with a woodcut showing (left) the hung body of Horatio discovered by (centre) [[Hieronymo]]; and [[Bel-imperia]] being taken from the scene by a [[blackface]] Lorenzo (right).]]

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]].<ref name=":0" /> 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".<ref name=":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 ''[[Cornélie (play)|Cornélie]]'' (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 ''[[Henry VI, Part 1|1 Henry VI]]'' and ''[[Edward III (play)|Edward III]]''.<ref>{{Cite book |author=Freebury-Jones, Darren |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1303076747 |title=Shakespeare's tutor : the influence of Thomas Kyd |date=2022 |isbn=978-1-5261-6474-2 |oclc=1303076747}}</ref> 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.<ref>Thomas Kyd, ''The First Part of Hieronimo'' and ''The Spanish Tragedy'', ed. Andrew S. Cairncross, Regents Renaissance Drama Series, Lincoln, Neb., 1967, p. xiv.</ref> 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.