Editing Thomas Kyd

{{short description|16th-century English dramatist}}
{{Other people|Thomas Kidd}}
{{more citations needed|date=April 2019}}
{{Use British English|date=November 2013}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2025}}
'''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 theatre|Elizabethan drama]].

Although well known in his own time, Kyd fell into obscurity until 1773 when [[Thomas Hawkins (literary editor)|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==
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, Northwood|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.<ref name=":1">{{Cite ODNB |title=Kyd, Thomas (bap. 1558, d. 1594), playwright and translator |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-15816 |access-date=2023-05-03 |year=2004 |language=en |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/15816 }}</ref>

==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.

==Later life==
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 [[Henry Radclyffe, 4th Earl of Sussex|Earl of Sussex]],<ref>Arthur Freeman, ''Thomas Kyd: Facts and Problems'', Oxford, 1967</ref> the [[Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke|Earl of Pembroke]],<ref>Lukas Erne, [https://books.google.com/books?id=qjMVA_FmHHEC ''Beyond the Spanish Tragedy: A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd''], Manchester University Press 2002, {{ISBN|0-7190-6093-1}}</ref> [[Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby|Lord Strange]].<ref>Charles Nicholl, ''The reckoning: the murder of Christopher Marlowe'', University of Chicago Press, 1995, {{ISBN|0-226-58024-5}}, p. 225</ref> and [[Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford|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 of the United Kingdom|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.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Freeman|first=Arthur |date=1973 |title=Marlowe, Kyd, and the Dutch Church Libel |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43446737 |journal=English Literary Renaissance |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=44–52 |doi=10.1086/ELRv3n1p44 |jstor=43446737 |s2cid=151720064 |issn=0013-8312}}</ref> The next day, Kyd was among those arrested; he would later believe that he had been the victim of an informer.<ref name=":0" /> His lodgings were searched and instead of evidence of the "libels" there was found an [[Arianism|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.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Boas |first=Frederick |title=The Works of Thomas Kyd |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1901 |isbn= 979-8713135416 |edition=2nd |location=London}}</ref> 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]],"<ref>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?}}</ref> 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 [[Bridget (Morrison) Radcliffe (Countess of Sussex)|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.<ref name=":0" />

St Mary Colechurch was destroyed in the [[Great Fire of London]] in 1666, and not rebuilt.

==Works==
The dates of composition are approximate.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.unige.ch/lettres/angle/en/collaborateurs/modernearly/erne/publications/books/beyond-the-spanish-tragedy-a-study-of-the-works-of-thomas-kyd/|title = Beyond 'The Spanish Tragedy': A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd – Département de langue et littérature anglaises – UNIGE|date = 12 June 2015}}</ref>

* ''Don Horatio'' (partially extant in ''The First Part of Hieronimo'', ''c''. 1586)
* ''[[The Spanish Tragedy]]'' (''c''. 1587)
* ''The Householder's Philosophy'' (translation, 1588)
* ''[[The Murder of John Brewen]]'' (pamphlet, 1592)
* ''Solyman and Perseda'' (attributed, ''c''. 1593)
* ''[[Cornelia (play)|Cornelia]]'' (translation of [[Robert Garnier]], 1594)

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

===Bibliography===
*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==
{{wikiquote|Thomas Kyd}}
{{wikisource author}}
{{Commons category|Thomas Kyd}}
* [http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/kyd.htm Thomas Kyd] at the Lumniarum website
* {{Gutenberg author |id=1919| name=Thomas Kyd}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Thomas Kyd}}
* {{Librivox author |id=2755}}
* {{Cite EB1911|wstitle= Kyd, Thomas | volume= 15 |last= Gosse |first= Edmund William |author-link= Edmund William Gosse| pages = 958–959 |short = 1}}
* {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050519073317/http://facstaff.uwa.edu/rmu/kyd.htm |date=19 May 2005 |title=Thomas Kyd and The Spanish Tragedy }} (University of West Alabama)
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20030802125850/http://parallel.park.uga.edu/~jnettles/kyd.html Perverse justice in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, by John Nettles] (University of Georgia)

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kyd, Thomas}}
[[Category:1558 births]]
[[Category:1594 deaths]]
[[Category:English Renaissance dramatists]]
[[Category:People educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood]]
[[Category:16th-century English writers]]
[[Category:16th-century English dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:English male dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:University Wits]]
[[Category:16th-century English male writers]]