Thomas Kyd

Thomas Kyd (baptized November 6, 1558 in London ; buried August 15, 1594 [?] Ibid) was an English playwright and, along with William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, is one of the outstanding Elizabethan playwrights.

Life

Little is known about Kyd's life. His father Francis was a clerk in London. Together with his wife Anna he enabled him to get a good education at the Merchant Tailor's School ; however, he did not attend university. From 1583 to 1587 he wrote plays for the theater group Queen Elizabeth's Men , which had just been put together by the royal court , but none of them survived. He may have started training with his father, but this is not considered to be proven. From 1590 he was probably in the service of an aristocrat for some years (presumably Lord Strange , a cultural patron or the Earl of Sussex ). From 1591 he lived and worked with Christopher Marlowe and was withBen Jonson and John Lyly friends.

Kyd and Marlowe

Kyd's life seems closely linked to that of Christopher Marlowe. Presumably on May 12 or 13, 1593, he was arrested in connection with posters that were dangerous to the state (so-called Dutch Church Libels) that were circulating in London and signed by a certain Tamburlaine (the main character from the drama Tamburlaine by Marlowe). During a search of his apartment, in which he had lived with Marlowe a few years earlier, not these, but other writings (of “vile heretical conceits denying the deity of Jesus Christ.” ) Were found during the search for the authors of the above posters . found who massively accused him of " atheism " and heresy . He was arrested and tortured to extort a confession in Bridewell Prison. He tried to shift all the blame on to Marlowe, who, however, had died under obscure circumstances during Kyd's imprisonment on May 30, 1593. The real cause of Marlowe's death (for many years he was thought to be stabbed in a pub brawl) was only cleared up when Leslie Hotson discovered the original documents of the Coroners Inquest in the British State Archives in 1925 . Kyd was later released but died only about a year later, probably as a result of torture, impoverished and in disgrace without the protection of a noble patron.

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The Spanish Tragedie: Title page of the 1615 print

With his manageable work, which was published largely anonymously during his lifetime, Kyd had a significant influence on the literature of his time. Although the clarification of the authorship of Kyd is sometimes difficult or problematic due to the anonymous publications, his works include Die Spanische Tragödie (German first translation 1881) and The Tragedie of Solimon and Perseda (1592?) Also the reading drama Cornelia (1594), which is an adaptation of the Seneca-inspired tragedy Cornélie (1574) by the French author Robert Garnier . Solimon and Perseda , whose plot corresponds to that of the play in the play in The Spanish Tragedy , is attributed to the authorship of Kyd solely on the basis of internal evidence. Furthermore, an original version of Hamlet is often attributed to Kyd , which Shakespeare probably used as a source for his Hamlet .

Kyd's drama The Spanish Tragedy (around 1592), a revenge tragedy , is seen as a genre-building and model for numerous plays written in this popular genre. The hypothetical Ur-Hamlet, often attributed to Kyd, a no longer preserved drama, is likely to have drawn from the Amletus saga handed down by Saxo Grammaticus , which also had a revenge theme. The piece Arden of Faversham (around 1590), on the other hand, cannot be assigned to Kyd with sufficient certainty.

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• Albert E. Jack, Thomas Kyd and the Ur-Hamlet, PMLA 1905
• TW Baldwin, On the Chronology of Thomas Kyd's Plays., Modern Language Notes 1925
• Howard Baker, Ghosts and Guides: Kyd's “Spanish Tragedy” and the Medieval Tragedy, Modern Philology 1935
• Arthur Freeman: Thomas Kyd. Facts and Problems . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1967
• Peter B. Murray: Thomas Kyd . Twayne Publ., New York 1969
• Frank R. Ardolino: Apocalypse and Armada in Kyd's “Spanish Tragedy” . Northeast Missouri State Univ. Press, Kirksville 1995 (Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, 29) ISBN 0-940474-31-X

Web links

Wikisource: Kyd, Thomas (DNB00)  - Sources and full texts (English)

• Literature by and about Thomas Kyd in the catalog of the German National Library
• Original works by Thomas Kyd on LibriVox
• Works by and about Thomas Kyd on Internet Archive

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Jens Mittelbach: Kyd, Thomas . In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 329. Deviating from this, the Encyclopædia Britannica only mentions 30 December 1594 as the latest possible verifiable time of death to whom his mother formally refused to accept his debt-laden estate. See the corresponding entry Thomas Kyd - English dramatist [1] , accessed on January 11, 2015. In other reputable sources such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , only the dates 1558 - 1594 are given. See archived copy ( memento of the original from March 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on January 11, 2016. In some older editions of the Dictionary of National Biography , 1557 was given as the year of birth and 1597 as the year of death. See [2] , accessed on January 11, 2016. 
2. ↑ See Jens Mittelbach: Kyd, Thomas . In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 329.
3. ^ Gale, Cengage Learning: A Study Guide for Thomas Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy" in the Google Book Search
4. ↑ Kyd's biography in the Encyclopaedia Britannica
5. ↑ A libel, Fixte vpon the French Church Wall, in London. Ann ^o 1593 ^o ( Memento of the original dated September 8, 2001 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Tamburlaine The Great - Part I ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ The information on the exact day of the arrest is not uniform in different sources; for example, in the by Robert A. Logan ed. The Jew of Malta: A Critical Reader , The Arden Shakespeare 2013, ISBN 978-1-441-11079-4 , here Timeline p. XII, and in Tom Rutter in The Cambridge Introduction to Christopher Marlowe , CUP Cambridge 2012, ISBN 978- 0-521-12430-0 , here key dates p. XIII, May 12, 1593 given as the day of Kyd's arrest. The Encyclopædia Britannica , on the other hand, mentions May 13, 1593. See the corresponding entry Thomas Kyd - English dramatist [3] , accessed on January 11, 2015. In other sources, May 15, 1593 is sometimes given as the day of the arrest, see. z. B. the entry Playwright Thomas Kyd's accusations lead to an arrest warrant for Christopher Marlowe. [4] . From: history.com , accessed January 11, 2016.
8. ↑ Kyd's Accusations ( Memento of the original from January 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ↑ Kyd's Letter To Sir John Puckering ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ The Coroner's Inquisition ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
11. ↑ See Jens Mittelbach: Kyd, Thomas . In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 329f.
12. ↑ See Jens Mittelbach: Kyd, Thomas . In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 329f.
13. ↑ See Michael Delahoyde: Arden of Faversham . At Washington State University [5] . Retrieved January 11, 2016.