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Thomas Kyd. By Chelsi Thomas. Early Life. Thomas was born in London in 1558 His father was Francis Kyd a scrivener and his mother was Anna Kyd He was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School, of which Richard Mulcaster, was head master
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Thomas Kyd By Chelsi Thomas
Early Life • Thomas was born in London in 1558 • His father was Francis Kyd a scrivener and his mother was Anna Kyd • He was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School, of which Richard Mulcaster, was head master • Thomas was baptized in the church of St Mary Woolnoth in the Ward of Langborne, Lombard Street, London on 6 November 1558. As baptisms were carried out at that time 3 days after birth, it is assumed that Kyd's birth date was 3 November.
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” • Ben Jonson mentions him in the same breath as Christopher Marlowe (with whom, Kyd at one time shared a room, in London) and John Lyly in the Shakespeare First Folio. • Thomas’s most popular play is The Spanish Tragedy. He wrote it from 1582-1592....
...The Spanish Tragedy • The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English Theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. • Its plot contains several violent murders and includes as one of its characters the personification of Revenge. • The Spanish Tragedy was often referenced (or parodied) in works written by other Elizabethan playwrights, including William Shakespeare , Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe. • Many elements of The Spanish Tragedy, such as the play-within-a-play used to trap a murderer and a ghost intent on vengeance, appear in Shakespeare's Hamlet. • Thomas Kyd is frequently proposed as the author of the hypothetical Ur-Hamlet (the first Hamlet) that may have been one of Shakespeare's primary sources for Hamlet.
Later Life • Around 1591 Christopher Marlowe also joined the service of 4th Earl of Sussex, and for a while Marlowe and Kyd shared lodgings, and perhaps even ideas. • On 11 May 1593 the Privy Council ordered the arrest of the authors of "divers lewd and mutinous libels" which had been posted around London. The next day, Kyd was among those arrested; he would later believe that he had been the victim of an informer, under torture, he implicated Marlowe, who died gruesomely on 30 May. • Thomas Kyd was buried on 15 August in London; 30 days traditionally lapsing before burials putting his death date on 16 July. 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.
Glossary • Folio - a sheet of paper folded once to make two leaves, or four pages, of a book or manuscript. • Manuscript - the original text of an author's work, handwritten or now usually typed, that is submitted to a publisher. • Scrivener - A professional copyist; a scribe: "Gutenberg's invention of movable type . . . took words out of the sole possession of monastic scriveners and placed them before the wider public” • Personification- the person or thing embodying a quality or the like; an embodiment or incarnation • Parody - a humorous or satirical imitation of a serious piece of literature or writing • Renounced- to give up or put aside voluntarily: to renounce worldly pleasures.
