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Thomas Kyd

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Very little is known about the life of Renaissance playwright Thomas Kyd (1558?-1594). Though scholars say that often, in this case there is an especially frustrating dearth of information (and surviving texts). Thomas Kyd was born in 1558 in London, the son of Francis and Anna Kyd. Francis was a scriviner. From 1565 he attended Merchant Taylors' School, where he was a contemporary of Edmund Spenser, who later authored The Faerie Queene. At some point after he left school Kyd shared a room with fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe. Though little of his work survives, we know he was successful in his day as Ben Jonson called him "famous Kyd", and Francis Meres wrote he was among "our best for tragedy". It is possible that some time before 1589 he wrote what is known as the Ur-Hamlet, the lost version of Hamlet on which Shakespeare's play was based 16th century illustration of 'The Spanish Tragedy', by Thomas Kyd. [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons In 1589 he wrote his most famous play, The Spanish Tragedy. The bitter tale of family revenge and courtly corruption was a smash-hit. It was published in 1592, and went through at least nine...
Read the essay: Thomas Kyd: An English Tragedy by Kate O'Connor
# Title Description Contributor
1 The Spanish Tragedy: Thomas Kyd

Popular tragedy in which Hieronimo pursues aristocratic murderers of his son Horatio and takes...

Emma Smith
# Essay Title Description Contributor
1 English Renaissance Timeline: Some Historical and Cultural Dates

This list offers an overview of some historical and cultural dates from the English Renaissance...

Kate O'Connor
2 Thomas Kyd: An English Tragedy

Very little is known about the life of Renaissance playwright...

Kate O'Connor
3 Renaissance Theatre

When John Brayne built the Red Lion Theatre in London’s Whitechapel in 1569, he could hardly...

Emma Smith
# Title Description Author
1 The Spanish tragedie

ebook version of The Spanish tragedie

Kyd, Thomas, 1558-1594
2 Literary detection : a symposium on "Macbeth"

""The thesis is...that there is clear literary evidence of the past existence of a lost pre-...

J. M. Robertson
# Resource Title Description Contributor
1 The Spanish Tragedy

16th century illustration of The Spanish Tragedy, by Thomas Kyd.