Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd died in 1594, at the age of 35. He was buried on the 15th of August, in the church of St Mary Colechurch in London. Seventy years later, that church burned down in the Great Fire of London and was never rebuilt. So even the ground where he was laid to rest has vanished from the map.
The man himself came close to vanishing too. Within a few decades of his death, people had nearly forgotten him. Yet Kyd may have written the single most popular play of the entire Age of Shakespeare. His name had come loose from his own work.
Who was Thomas Kyd, and how does a writer that celebrated slip so completely out of the record? What happened in the last two years of his life that left him pleading for the return of a lost patron's favor? And could he really have written a version of Hamlet before Shakespeare ever did?
The baptismal register at St Mary Woolnoth, in the Ward of Langborn on Lombard Street, records a christening on the 6th of November 1558. The entry reads: "Thomas, son of Francis Kydd, Citizen and Writer of the Courte Letter of London." No record survives of the day he was actually born. His father, Francis Kyd, worked as a scrivener, and by 1580 he served as warden of the Scriveners' Company.
In October 1565, young Kyd enrolled in the newly founded Merchant Taylors' School, led by headmaster Richard Mulcaster. His classmates included Edmund Spenser and Thomas Lodge, both of whom would later make their own marks on English letters. The curriculum stretched across Italian, Latin, Greek, music, drama, physical education, and what the school called "good manners." Nothing suggests Kyd ever attended university.
Two surviving letters in his own hand share the practiced style of a scrivener, suggesting he may have followed his father's trade. His schoolmates Spenser and Lodge built reputations in poetry and prose; Kyd's own name would soon attach itself to the London stage instead.
Francis Meres, writing at the time, ranked Kyd among "our best for tragedy." Thomas Heywood, elsewhere, called him simply "Famous Kyd." Ben Jonson, in the Shakespeare First Folio, placed Kyd's name alongside Christopher Marlowe and John Lyly. Little else is known about Kyd's activity as a playwright during the 1580s, even though evidence suggests he was already an important one.
The Spanish Tragedy was probably written in the mid to late 1580s. Its first recorded performance came on the 23rd of February 1592, staged by Lord Strange's Men. The earliest surviving edition, printed that same year, carried a lengthy title naming its central figures Don Horatio, Bel-imperia, and old Hieronimo. Audiences, though, usually just called it "Hieronimo," after its protagonist.
The play was, arguably, the most popular of the entire Age of Shakespeare. It set new standards for plot construction and character development. Historian J. R. Mulryne counts "twenty-nine performances between 1592 and 1597" and "eleven editions between 1592 and 1633." He calls that a tally "unequaled by any of the plays of Shakespeare."
In 1602, a version of the play appeared with new "additions." Philip Henslowe's diary records a payment to Ben Jonson that year for the additions. Historians dispute whether the published text reflects Jonson's work, or whether it preserves material written for an earlier revival of the play in 1597.
That same year, a slim pamphlet called The Murder of John Brewen carried Kyd's name into print, far removed from the stage.
Torquato Tasso's Italian treatise Padre di Famiglia reached English readers in 1588, translated by Kyd and published as The Householder's Philosophy. Soliman and Perseda, a tragicomedy, is also credited to Kyd. A separate work called Don Horatio survives only in fragments, folded into a 1605 quarto called The First Part of Hieronimo. Scholars disagree on what that quarto represents, a memory-based reconstruction of a genuine Kyd play or a rival writer's parody of it.
King Leir, Fair Em, and Arden of Faversham are among the plays sometimes linked to Kyd, in whole or part. Portions of 1 Henry VI and Edward III have also been floated as his work, though none of these attributions is settled.
Across the Channel, versions of The Spanish Tragedy held German and Dutch stages for generations after Kyd's death. That lasting European influence is largely why German scholars grew fascinated with Kyd during the nineteenth century.
What those admirers did not yet know was how much of Kyd's own life still lay buried in silence.
From 1587 until his arrest in 1593, Kyd worked in the service of a nobleman whose identity is not recorded. After his imprisonment, he wrote of having lost "the favours of my Lord, whom I haue servd almost theis vi yeres nowe." Historians have proposed several candidates for that lord. They include the Earl of Sussex, the Earl of Pembroke, Lord Strange, and Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Kyd may have worked as the lord's secretary, whether or not he was also writing plays for him.
Around 1591, Christopher Marlowe also joined the same patron's service, and for a time the two men shared lodgings.
Within two years, that shared household would be torn apart by accusations neither man saw coming.
On the 11th of May 1593, the Privy Council ordered the arrest of whoever had written "divers lewd and mutinous libels" posted around London. One such libel had turned up on the property of a Dutch Church, full of anti-foreigner sentiment and pointed allusions to Marlowe's own plays. The next day, Kyd himself was arrested; he later came to believe an informer had turned him in.
When his lodgings were searched, investigators found no libel at all, only an Arianist tract. One investigator described the tract as containing "vile heretical conceits denying the eternal deity of Jesus Christ." He noted it was found among the papers of "Thos. Kydd, prisoner," who said he had gotten it from "C. Marley." The historian Frederick Boas believed Kyd was tortured brutally to produce that information.
Kyd told his questioners the writings belonged to Christopher Marlowe, his former roommate and fellow dramatist. He accused Marlowe of being "a blasphemous traitor, an atheist who believed that Jesus Christ was a homosexual." That accusation badly confused the old theological concept of homoousios, tangled up with early Arian and Gnostic ideas. The Privy Council summoned Marlowe to answer for the charge. While his case was still pending, Marlowe was killed in an incident at Deptford involving known government agents.
Marlowe's death in Deptford would leave Kyd to answer for the fallout completely alone.
Released from custody, Kyd was not welcomed back into his lord's service. Fearing he was suspected of atheism himself, he wrote to the Lord Keeper, Sir John Puckering, protesting his innocence. Those efforts to clear his name apparently went nowhere.
Early in 1594, Kyd published Cornelia, his translation of Robert Garnier's Cornélie. In its dedication to the Countess of Sussex, he wrote of enduring "bitter times and privy broken passions."
In December that year, Kyd's mother formally renounced administration of his estate, likely because it was mired in debt. The paperwork closing out his debts is the last trace of Kyd for more than a century afterward.
Kyd's name faded from view until 1773, when Thomas Hawkins, an early editor of The Spanish Tragedy, made a discovery. Hawkins found that Thomas Heywood, in his Apologie for Actors of 1612, had credited the play to Kyd all along.
About a hundred years after that, scholars in Germany and England began piecing together new details of Kyd's life and work. One finding was especially controversial: that Kyd may have written an early version of Hamlet, now known as the Ur-Hamlet.
That question, whether Kyd got to Hamlet before Shakespeare did, is one no one has definitively answered to this day.
Common questions
Who was Thomas Kyd?
Thomas Kyd was an English playwright and the author of The Spanish Tragedy, regarded as one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama. He was baptised on the 6th of November 1558 and died in 1594.
When and where was Thomas Kyd baptised?
Thomas Kyd was baptised on the 6th of November 1558 at the church of St Mary Woolnoth in the Ward of Langborn on Lombard Street in London. No record survives of the actual day he was born.
What is Thomas Kyd's most famous play?
Thomas Kyd's most famous play is The Spanish Tragedy, first recorded on stage on the 23rd of February 1592 by Lord Strange's Men. It was often called simply Hieronimo, and historian J. R. Mulryne records eleven editions printed between 1592 and 1633.
Why was Thomas Kyd arrested in 1593?
Thomas Kyd was arrested in connection with an investigation into anti-foreigner libels posted around London in May 1593. A search of his lodgings turned up an Arianist tract rather than evidence of the libels, which he said he had gotten from Christopher Marlowe.
How did Thomas Kyd's arrest affect Christopher Marlowe?
Thomas Kyd told his questioners that the heretical writings found in his rooms belonged to Christopher Marlowe and accused him of blasphemous, atheist views. Marlowe was then summoned by the Privy Council and was killed in an incident at Deptford involving known government agents.
When did Thomas Kyd die and what happened to his estate?
Thomas Kyd died in 1594, at the age of 35, and was buried on the 15th of August at St Mary Colechurch in London. In December of that year his mother renounced administration of his estate, likely because it was debt-ridden.
What is the Ur-Hamlet and how is it connected to Thomas Kyd?
The Ur-Hamlet is a lost, pre-Shakespearean version of Hamlet that some scholars, beginning about a hundred years after Kyd's rediscovery, controversially believe Thomas Kyd may have written.
All sources
6 references cited across the entry
- 2BookShakespeare's tutor : the influence of Thomas KydFreebury-Jones, Darren — 2022
- 4JournalMarlowe, Kyd, and the Dutch Church LibelArthur Freeman — 1973
- 5BookThe Works of Thomas KydFrederick Boas — Oxford University Press — 1901