Thomas Kyd (November 3, 1558 – July 16, 1594) was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama. Events 644 - Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Muslim Caliph, is killed by a Persian slave in Medina. Events 622 - The beginning of the Islamic calendar. 1054 - Three Roman legates fractured relations between the Western and England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or Drama. The Spanish Tragedie or Hieronimo is mad againe is an Elizabethan Tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 &ndash 92 English Renaissance theatre is English drama written between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642.
Although well-known in his own time, Kyd fell into obscurity until 1773 when Thomas Hawkins (an early editor of the The Spanish Tragedie) discovered that Kyd was named as its author by Thomas Heywood in his Apologie for Actors (1612). Year 1773 ( MDCCLXXIII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common Jim Hawkins is a Radio presenter for BBC Radio Shropshire 96FM The Spanish Tragedie or Hieronimo is mad againe is an Elizabethan Tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 &ndash 92 Thomas Heywood (early 1570s&mdash 16 August[[ 641]] was a prominent English playwright actor and miscellaneous author whose peak period of activity falls between 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. Scholarly method &mdash or as it is more commonly called scholarship &mdash is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as The Ur-Hamlet (the German prefix Ur- means "primordial" is the name given to a theoretical play believed lost that may have been extant before 1589 a
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Early life
Thomas Kyd was the son of Francis and Anna Kyd and was baptized in the church of St Mary Woolnoth in the Ward of Langborn, Lombard Street, London on November 6, 1558. St Mary Woolnoth is an Anglican church in the City of London, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor located on the corner of Lombard Street and King London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. Events 355 - Roman Emperor Constantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with As baptisms were carried out at that time 3 days after birth, it is assumed that Kyd's birth date was November 3. Events 644 - Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Muslim Caliph, is killed by a Persian slave in Medina. The baptismal register at St Mary Woolnoth carries this entry: "Thomas, son of Francis Kydd, Citizen and Writer of the Courte Letter of London". St Mary Woolnoth is an Anglican church in the City of London, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor located on the corner of Lombard Street and King Francis Kydd was a scrivener and in 1580 was warden of the Scriveners' Company. The Worshipful Company of Scriveners of the City of London is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London.
In October 1565 the young Kyd was enrolled in the newly-founded Merchant Taylors' School, whose headmaster was Richard Mulcaster. Merchant Taylors' School ( MTS) is a British boys' independent, Day school, originally located in the City of London, and since Richard Mulcaster (c 1531 Cumberland &ndash 15 April 1611, Essex) is known best for his headmasterships and pedagogic writings Fellow students included Edmund Spenser and Thomas Lodge. Edmund Spenser (c 1552 &ndash 13 January, 1599) was an important English Poet and Poet Laureate best known for The Thomas Lodge (c 1558 &ndash 1625 was an English Dramatist and writer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods Here, Kyd received a well-rounded education, thanks to Mulcaster's progressive ideas. Apart from Latin and Greek, the curriculum included music, drama, physical education, and "good manners". There is no evidence that Kyd went on to either of the English universities. He may have followed for a time his father's profession; two letters written by him are extant and his handwriting suggests the training of a scrivener.
Career
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". Francis Meres (1565 &ndash January 29, 1647) was an English churchman and Author. 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. Benjamin Jonson ( c 11 June 1572 &ndash 6 August 1637) was an English Renaissance Dramatist John Lyly ( Lilly or Lylie) (c 1553 or 1554 &ndash November 1606 was an English writer best known for his books Euphues The Anatomy of Wit William Shakespeare ( baptised
The Spanish Tragedie was probably written in the mid to late 1580s. 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. The Protagonist or main character is the central figure of a story. It was arguably the most popular play of the "Age of Shakespeare" and set new standards in effective plot construction and character development. Mythos (Aristotle In literature the plot comprises all the events in a story particularly rendered towards the achievement of some particular Artistic or Emotional 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 mentioned by Henslowe. Benjamin Jonson ( c 11 June 1572 &ndash 6 August 1637) was an English Renaissance Dramatist
Other works by Kyd are his translations of Torquato Tasso's Padre di Famiglia, published as The Householder's Philosophy (1588); and Robert Garnier's Cornelia (1594). Torquato Tasso ( 11 March 1544 &ndash 25 April 1595) was an Italian Poet of the 16th century best known for his poem Robert Garnier ( La Ferté-Bernard, Maine 1544 - Le Mans 1590 was a French tragic Poet. Plays attributed in whole or in part to Kyd include Soliman and Perseda, King Leir and Arden of Feversham. King Leir is an anonymous Elizabethan play published in 1605 but believed to have been written c Arden of Faversham (original spelling Arden of Feversham) is an Elizabethan play entered into the Register of the Stationers Company 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. Bad quarto is a term and concept developed by twentieth-century Shakespeare scholars to explain some problems in the early transmission of the texts of Shakespearean [1] Kyd is more generally accepted to have been the author of a Hamlet, the precursor of the Shakespearean play (see: Ur-Hamlet). The Ur-Hamlet (the German prefix Ur- means "primordial" is the name given to a theoretical play believed lost that may have been extant before 1589 a Some poems by Kyd exist, but it seems that most of his work is lost or unidentified.
The success of Kyd's plays extended to Europe. Versions of The Spanish Tragedy and his Hamlet were popular in Germany and the Netherlands for generations. Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. The Netherlands ( Dutch:, ˈnedərlɑnt is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which consists of the Netherlands the Netherlands 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
About 1587 Kyd entered the service of a noble, possibly Ferdinando Stanley Lord Strange, who sponsored a company of actors. Ferdinando Stanley 5th Earl of Derby (c 1559 &ndash April 16, 1594) was the son of Henry Stanley 4th Earl of Derby and Lady Margaret Clifford An actor, actress, player or thespian (see terminology) is a person who Acts in a Dramatic production and who works 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 May 11, 1593 the Privy Council ordered the arrest of the authors of "divers lewd and mutinous libels" which had been posted around London. Events 330 - Byzantium is renamed ''Nova Roma'' during a dedication ceremony but is more popularly referred to as Constantinople Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council is a body of advisors to the British Sovereign. The next day, Kyd was among those arrested; he would later believe that he had been the victim of an informer. His lodgings were searched and instead of evidence of the "libels" there was found an Arianist tract, described by an investigator as "vile heretical conceits denying the eternal deity of Jesus Christ our LORD and Saviour found amongst the papers of Thos. Arianism is the theological teaching of Arius (c AD 250-336 who was ruled a heretic by the Christian church at the Council of Nicea. Kydd (sic), prisoner . . . which he affirmeth he had from C. Marley (sic)". It is believed that Kyd was tortured brutally to obtain this information. Marlowe was summoned by the Privy Council after the events of this, and, while waiting for a decision on his case, was killed in an incident 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 Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, and later of Great Britain, was formerly an officer of the English Crown charged with physical custody of the Great The last we hear from the playwright is the publication of Cornelia early in 1594. In the dedication to the Countess of Sussex he alludes to the "bitter times and privy broken passions" he had endured. Kyd died later that year, and was buried on August 15 in London; 30 days traditionally lapsing before burials putting his death date on July 16. Events 778 - The Battle of Roncevaux Pass, at which Roland is killed Events 622 - The beginning of the Islamic calendar. 1054 - Three Roman legates fractured relations between the Western and He was only 35 years of age. In December of that same year, Kyd's mother legally renounced the administration of his estate, probably because it was debt-ridden.
References
- 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)
Notes
- ^ Thomas Kyd, The First Part of Hieronimo and The Spanish Tragedy, ed. Andrew S. Cairncross, Regents Renaissance Drama Series, Lincoln, Neb. , 1967, p. xiv.
External links
- Works by Thomas Kyd at Project Gutenberg
- The Spanish Tragedie Full text of the play
- The Spanish Tragedy Full text of the play, modern spelling
- The Spanish Tragedy Shorter version of the play for a modern audience
- Text of Kyd's letter to Puckering
- Thomas Kyd and The Spanish Tragedy (University of West Alabama)
- Perverse justice in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, by John Nettles (University of Georgia)
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