Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558 – buried 15 August 1594) was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.
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). A hundred yea...
more
Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558 – buried 15 August 1594) was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.
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). 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.
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 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...
less
