Transcript Thomas Kyd - College St

Thomas
Kyd
By Chelsi Thomas
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
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-withina-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 debtridden.
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.