In 1588, he published a translation of Tasso's Padre di Famiglia, under the title The Householder's Philosophy. In 1587 or 1588, Kyd entered the service of a lord, possibly the earl of Sussex, as a secretary or tutor. Kyd wrote for this company until 1587, although none of his plays has survived.
By 1583, he had begun writing plays for the company of actors known as the Queen's Company. Kyd may have remained at Merchant Taylors for eight to ten years, although his date of departure is unrecorded.Īfter leaving school, Kyd was probably apprenticed to his father, although this cannot be established beyond doubt. The poet Edmund Spenser was also a student there at the time. Kyd entered the Merchant Taylors' School when he was seven years old, in 1565. Kyd's father was sufficiently well off to send his son to the Merchant Taylors' School, which had a reputation for high academic standards. His father, Francis Kyd, was a successful scrivener, that is, a man who copied documents. The exact date on which Thomas Kyd was born is unknown, but he was baptized on November 6, 1558, at a church in London. The emphasis was on a malignant fate that led inevitably to a bloody and horrific catastrophe.Īlthough The Spanish Tragedy is not performed in the early 2000s, its intricate plot, full of intrigue and even containing comic incidents, its swift-moving and sensational action, the questions it poses about the nature of justice and retribution, and the well-developed character of the revenger, Hieronimo, make it a rewarding play to read. Kyd based The Spanish Tragedy on the tragedies written by the Roman playwright Seneca, whose plays focused on murder and revenge. The most famous of all revenge tragedies is Shakespeare's Hamlet, and some of the plot devices in The Spanish Tragedy, such as the protagonist's hesitation in carrying out his revenge, are echoed in Shakespeare's play.
The play is important not only for its own merits but also because it is the first example of a revenge tragedy, a type of play that was to become extremely popular on the Elizabethan stage during the last decade of the sixteenth century and beyond. The Spanish Tragedy is one of very few extant plays that can with certainty be attributed to him. Kyd was a popular dramatist in his day, although most of his plays have been lost. Norton, revised edition, 1989), a play by English dramatist Thomas Kyd, was written between 15, when the first known performance took place.
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